CHAPTER 79
Your name's live, Caro said, near-jabbing me with her tablet. "Go on. Touch your future."
I fluttered my eyes at the screen as if it might burn me.
There it was. My byline. In the biggest print I'd ever seen beside my own name. Photos and Words by Mackenzie Lanka.
The title: Urban Survival: Portraits of Strength in Transit.
I scrolled—slowly, reverently—as if I didn't want it to vanish if I blinked too fast. My photos dominated the screen as if dreams at last fleshed out. A violinist with a ripped tuxedo jacket on the corner of 5th and Broadway. A single mom reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to her child while balancing two jobs and a half-emptied coffee. A drag queen stretching to do splits under an overpass as the city honked overhead as if it didn't know brilliance was unfolding beneath its feet.
It was raw. It was alive.
It was mine.
Caro stepped back, arms folded. "Told you. You shoot like you've bled. But now? You're learning how to shoot like you hope."
I tried to speak, but my mouth was doing this wobbly, half-smiling thing I wasn't used to. My chest thrummed like an angry bee, every breath full of something more than air—more than relief.
It was recognition.
"I—thank you," I whispered.
She clicked her tongue. "Don't thank me. Thank the girl who didn't delete the photo despite everyone in school despising her for it."
Oof. That hit home.
I nodded. "Yeah… she was sort of a bitch. But she fought."
"She did," Caro said, eyes mildly softening. "And now she writes her own headlines."
\---
I exited the office about noon, article still live, still hot, already piling up comments and reposts like confetti.
I ought to have gone back home immediately.
I called into a deli, purchased two coffees and a bag of hot kettle chips, and rang the one person I wished I could share the event with.
Tony answered on the second ring. "Say it's up."
"It's up."
"You cried, did you?"
"No, but I made a good attempt. Want to view it?"
"I'm coming over."
\---
We met at the High Line.
It was one of those strange, perfect New York afternoons—sun slicing through buildings, air heavy but not suffocating, wind teasing the strands of your hair just far enough to be cinematic.
Tony leaned against the railing like he was born to own skylines. He wore his usual—black top, slim jeans, boots he always insisted were "broken in just right"—but today, there was a little something extra, too.
Pride.
He didn't say it. He didn't have to.
I put the coffee down on the table in front of him, opened the article on my phone, and pushed it over to him.
He read it slowly. No rush. No swooping dramatic pauses or patronizing flicks. Just his thumb dragging down the screen and his lip curling every few lines.
Then, after an eternity, he looked up.
"You created survival poetry," he breathed. "I knew you could do that. But damn, you turned it into art."
Something in me contracted and unwound all at once.
"Are you positive you're not biased?" I joked, sliding my hand against his.
"A hundred percent. And that's exactly why I'm doing it." He pulled out his own phone, took a screenshot of the article, then—right there in front of me—set it as his lock screen.
I groaned. "Tony—seriously."
"What? Do you not like being the first face I see when I wake up my phone?"
I rolled my eyes, but I was already grinning.
"You're crazy."
"And you're an author."
He leaned forward then, his forehead against mine. We stayed there for a second—long enough for my heart to thump, slow, and then settle into the rhythm it always seemed to find with him.
"You did it," he whispered once again. "Nobody gave it to you. You earned each click."
I closed my eyes and breathed in the moment.
Tony was no longer the flame.
He was the warmth I could stand next to without being singed.
\---
Arizen FaceTimed me that night, her hand holding a cupcake with one wonky candle inside.
She said, "Blow it out, star girl. Make a wish."
"I'm not twelve."
"Don't have to be," she teased. "Wishes don't care about your age. They want momentum."
I blew out the candle. The wax sputtered. My face on her screen lost its brightness.
"What'd you wish for?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said softly. "For once, I didn't need it."
She grinned, her face loose but alert. "Damn right you didn't."
\---
In my apartment, I wrapped myself on the couch with Tony, his legs with mine and the soft hum all around us like an old friend.
"Sometimes I dreamt about this," I admitted, tracing one finger along the edge of his arm.
"Being famous?"
"No. Being visible without being ripped apart."
He shifted a little, his voice low. "You were more than what they did to you."
"Sometimes I knew it. Sometimes I didn't."
"Believe it now?"
I nodded slowly. "I think… I do."
He kissed my knuckles. "Then it's real."
\---
I woke up early the next morning—before Tony—and stared at the light seeping across my wall as if the city itself was giving me a new start.
I pulled out my journal. The one with the blank pages Tony had gifted me. On the front inside cover, in his sloppy, uneven handwriting, were the words: For the stories we're still writing.
I opened to a fresh page and typed a sentence:
This is not the end of me.
And then, below it:
This is the version of me I get to choose.
\---
When Tony left that afternoon to drive his bus, I walked him down to the street.
"I'm gonna frame it," he said, waving his phone overhead once again.
"What? The byline?"
"No. The look on your face when you saw your name in print."
I prodded him on the arm. "You're crazy."
"With you?" He bent down to kiss the tip of my nose. "Absolutely."
The bus arrived. He kissed me once—slow, hard, definite.
Then he got on. And I stayed on the sidewalk long after he was out of sight, the ring of his laugh resonating in my chest like a keepsake.
\---
I headed back up to the floor and reloaded the page.
Scores of shares. Scores of comments.
Some reported that the photos brought tears to their eyes.
Some reported they saw themselves.
One just said: "This saved my day."
I wasn't a shadow anymore.
I was light.