Be still my heart, Ada wrote on her notepad. In sober, clean handwriting. Her heart had nothing to be un-still about, not since she had packed her bags and left Marcus and his silly-ass rabbit book collection behind. “This one is called Mr. Rabbit, how awesome is that?” was the last coherent sentence he had had a chance to utter in innocence before Ada had cut him off. Him and his books and paintings and records and telephone number and most definitely the accusing look in his eyes. How could she, he had howled, and didn’t she think he had considered breaking up with her before as well? But didn’t she know he had stuck it out with her and her instant scribbling on that damned notepad because he had committed to this. Yes, she had heard right, committed and if you moved your toothbrush over to somebody else’s bathroom and left pieces of paper flying around you signed a contract. Had she not, he had yelled, had she not herself opened her bra right here in their living room and asked him to pull down his pants?

Ada shook her head in the museum’s store and attracted unwanted attention from the store clerk. Be still Marcus, she wrote on the notepad and immediately scratched out the name. What for did she even think of him? Ada was here to absorb the arts. She enjoyed getting lost in the Tate Modern, searching the escalator and watching the river from the museum café. This was not the Tate Modern, unfortunately, this was her hometown’s museum of the arts, a sorry little collection of modern pieces interspersed with a few items by “talented” high schoolers. Ada wandered into the main hall and stood in front of the oversized portrayal of a naked hunter and his pet monkey. I understand everything, Ada wrote. Some blonde kid with an annoying voice snatched her notepad away from her and started running. “I know your mother, you asshole!” she yelled after him, defeated. She was shushed and silently reprimanded by the boy’s mother, who apparently felt no parental obligation to retrieve Ada’s property at all.

Fuck this.

Ada took out her magic marker and started writing on the stark-white museum wall.