Damaged
Page 26
“Jesus!”
“City life already getting to you?”
A few minutes later, we barely avoid a fender bender. Hunter honks and curses the guy in front of us. “Are all these people high? These are the worst drivers I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Take a deep breath,” I say. “We’re almost there.”
* * *
Earth lost in a sea of fog.
We are floating above it, held suspended by blood-orange bones.
The sound of water, of waves crashing. Wind howling.
Jagged land opening to ocean.
After ten hours of driving, we are finally here, just in time to see the sunset off the Golden Gate Bridge. But we can’t see anything. The perfect summer day of Oakland seems so far away—a different season, a different world. I have Terry’s scarf wrapped around my neck; never did I think I would actually be grateful he gave it to me.
“It’s July in California,” I moan, my teeth chattering. “And I’m going to freeze to death.”
I can make out other tourists through the fog, huddled together in their summer shorts and tank tops, wondering what to do with their cameras.
I prop Terry Junior on top of the fence separating us from the white nothingness. He can’t see anything either.
“How’s our love child doing?” Hunter says.
“He’s a little disappointed with the view.”
We look out into the whiteness. There’s a huge world out there, but we can’t even see it.
“I think we need to start talking about the custody arrangement,” Hunter says.
“He should stay with you. I get the scarf, you get Terry Junior.”
“But a child needs his mother.”
“But you need supervision. Someone to keep you accountable.” I don’t need to remind him that it’s only Terry Junior and me who know about his promise to stay sober.
The wind changes. Fog swirls around us, the water droplets so big we can see them. They stick to our skin and our clothes until we are wet. We are drowning in a river of thick white blindness, caught in the current, suspended. The wind gusts and I have to grab onto Hunter to keep from falling. Tourists squeal and scatter.
Then one more gust. Color pushes out the white. The sky opens and gives itself to us.
The crowd utters a collective “Ahhh” as the famous view is unveiled before us. The sunset is a rainbow above the perfect cushion of white fluff that still hugs the sea, a thin strip of blue the only barrier between the fog and every hue of orange imaginable.
“We’re at the end of the world,” Hunter says. “What do we do now?”
I don’t know the answer. In the past, this would have filled me with panic—not knowing, not having a plan, not having a direct route from A to B. But maybe it’s okay to not always know the path in advance. Maybe it’s okay to allow for some wandering.
I’m eighteen years old. I’ve barely even lived yet. How could I possibly know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life? How could I possibly know who I’m going to be in five, ten, fifty years? Maybe that’s how people get stuck in lives they don’t want—assuming that their decisions must be permanent, that there are no do-overs. But what if life is really a series of lives, a series of reinventions? What if the best paths are made up of detours?
“We turn around, I guess,” I say.
“Can’t you hang out for a while before school starts?”
I lean into him. “I’m not going to suffer the last two weeks driving across the country with you just to turn around as soon as I get here.”
“Good,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. His musk mixes with the smell of the sea water and I breathe it in deep. “Then I guess real life starts after that.”
“Hunter,” I say, kissing him lightly on the lips, the sun setting behind us like a postcard. “This is real life.”
About the Author
Photo by Erika Hart
Amy Reed is the author of Beautiful, Clean, Crazy, and Over You. Originally from the Seattle area, she now lives and writes in Oakland, California. To learn more, visit her at AmyReedFiction.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition October 2014
Text copyright © 2014 by Amy Reed
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reed, Amy Lynn.
Damaged / Amy Reed. — First Simon Pulse hardcover edition.
p. cm.
Summary: Numb after the death of her best friend, Camille, Kinsey starts to shut down, but Hunter, Camille’s mysterious boyfriend, has other ideas and whisks Kinsey off on a multistate road trip to forget the ghosts of their pasts and their own fears.
[1. Death—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction.
4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Automobile travel—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R2462Dam 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014002657
ISBN 978-1-4424-5699-0 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-5701-0 (eBook)