Page 184 of Tangled Like Us

But it’s hard not to think about.

Especially when it happened mere hours ago.

I showed up to the recording studio for my first session narratingWildfire Heart. It lasted ten minutes before the producer paused and took a phone call. When he came back, he simply said, “I’m sorry Jane. I just got a call from the publisher. They want to go in a different direction.”

It was so formal and direct. Like a swing of an axe, I was cut just like that.

Different direction is so vague. It could have been my fault—they didn’t like my voice or didn’t want my name attached to the audiobook—and they’re just trying to be professional and diplomatic. Not wanting to burn bridges. Or it could have been something out of my control.

I don’t know.

I suppose I never will. And that’s the hardest part in all of this. When you don’t know why you’ve truly failed, but you have. Eliot told me it’s like that all the time in casting, and you just have to believe you’re talented enough. It’s just outside factors. And the truth—it doesn’t matter in the end.

But I truly don’t know if I’m talented enough at anything that could deem me worthy of my Cobalt name. Except math.

Tom says it’s a curse. To have talent for something you don’t love.

Lately it’s felt that way.

Girls Night has never been more necessary. I’m in Luna and Sulli’s room, and I need to forget aboutWildfire Heart.

And I especially need to forget about the call I made to my little sister, breaking the news that I’d no longer be narrating one of her favorite books. Or any books.

She just stared at me through FaceTime, red hair framing her face. “Oh Jane,” she said in her whimsical, velvety voice like she stepped out of the pages of a Jane Austen novel. “Please don’t weep. Those publishers truly don’t know what they lost. They should be the ones in tears.”

Disappointing her is what hurts the most.

“Jane.” Sulli tosses one of her squishy basketballs at my face. It bounces off my forehead. Sulli turns to Luna. “We’ve fucking lost her.”

“To the aliens,” Luna nods.

“I’m here,” I say into a sigh and pick up the ball. I try and aim for the small hoop on the back of the door. Sulli and Luna’s room is a combination of them both. Alien beanbags on a fuzzy rug, hand weights tucked under the bottom bunk, and posters taped over every inch of the wall.

I lob the ball. It doesn’t even reach the net.

“That air ball must be a metaphor for my life,” I muse aloud.

Sulli tosses me a bottle of avocado facemask. “You can’t think everything is a sign. It’ll drive you fucking crazy.”

She’s not wrong. I uncap the bottle.

Luna lounges on the bottom bunk. She squirts three bottles of the creamy green facemask in a large bowl. “I dunno,” she says. “I kind of like thinking everything is a sign. It’s a reminder that we’re not alone.” Luna also tells us that she’s been taking online classes at Penn on extraterrestrial life in the universe.

Sulli adds, “All I’m saying is that we go with the hard-earned facts. And fact is everyone in this room is fucking awesome. Including you.” She looks straight at me.

I slide on a cloth headband above my hairline to avoid avocado hair. “Thank you,” I say. “I needed to hear that today.” I look between them.

They’re not much younger than me, but in a completely different place in their lives. They can figure things out. Take some time off. But I’ve already done that.

I’m heading into my mid-twenties and it feels like the clock has officially run down. That I should have my shit together by now. Thank God, I’m still on the Cobalt social media blackout. I can’t look online at the tweets or comments on Instagram. I’m sure the majority of them are reaffirming what they already believed.

That I am a complete disappointment. And how could I be the eldest child of Rose and Connor Cobalt?

“Luna, what’s your theory on body-snatching?” I ask.

Sulli gives me a look likeno fucking way have you been body-snatched.Luna now squirts body glitter into her bowl. “Body-snatching is not impossible. I once thought I had this out-of-body experience one summer. But I think I was just huffing too much glue.”

Sulli and I look at her.