Which is why I can’t wait for college. I accepted my offer of admission back in March, and I already mailed in my deposit, picked my dorm, and signed up for a meal plan. But last week, I decided that fall seemed too far away, so I sent out eight other applications for summer jobs in national parks. Now, being here at school, walking through the dim hallways and by the banged-up lockers is even more torturous than before, because I know I’m so close to a way out.
Mrs. Martinez has already started class by the time I walk through the door. She raises her eyebrows as I slide into my seat, but she doesn’t say anything. Told you, Josie, I think to myself. I glance across the room and make eye contact with Cord Cofax, my best friend, maybe my only real friend, from school. He crosses his eyes at me and sticks out his tongue, flopping his head to the side and playing dead. Mrs. Martinez clears her throat, glaring at him, and I press my lips together to keep from laughing out loud.
I flip open my textbook as I fight back my laughter. I know the feeling, Cord. Twelve years of schooling, almost completed. But it seems like these last few weeks are destined to drag on forever. And while our classmates are getting all sentimental and emotional, Cord and I are so over it. I’m ready to be done. I’m ready for a change.
I’m ready to move on.
Chapter Three
Josie
I feel like I spend more time in the bed of Mitchell’s truck than in the actual seat inside. Most days, I spend the hour or two after school lets out sitting in the back of the truck, reading or napping or listening to music and waiting for Mitchell to be done with swim practice or club meetings or whatever. It’s either this or walk home, which takes two full hours and is basically all uphill. Or if we’re being precise, up-mountain. So I almost always sit and wait.
Today the sun is shining, and it smells so good outside. Like pine needles and flowers and that delicious, warm, summer-is-almost-here kind of smell. I brought Pride and Prejudice with me to give to Mitchell. We trade books back and forth because there are no TVs at Paintbrush. We have to occupy our time somehow. I’ve been trying to read the first page for the past hour, but even one of my favorite books can’t keep me from getting distracted by the chirping birds and blue skies.
I’m just getting back into the book when I hear the clatter of heels on cement moving toward me. I don’t even have to look up to know what’s coming next.
“Hi, Leah.” I close my book just in time to see my best friend collapse in a heap on the pavement next to the truck.
“I’m dead,” she announces from the ground.
I scoot myself over until I’m perched on the very edge of the truck, my feet swinging above the ground. I peer down at the jumbled mass of blond hair and textbooks and arms and legs below me. “No, you’re not.”
“Fine.” Leah sits up and smooths down her dress, pushing her long hair out of her face. “But, I swear, Mr. Johanssen is trying to kill me.” She reaches down and scoops her pile of books into her arms. “Do you see these? He assigned us reading from four different books tonight. Four. I tried to stuff them into my backpack, and it literally ripped at the seams.”
I glance down at her backpack. It looks fine to me. Leah likes to use a lot of creative license with her use of the word literally.
“Think of how toned your arms are getting, though.” I swing my feet by her head, and she bats them away.
“Do you always have to be so practical?” She sticks out her tongue at me, and I laugh.
My laugh falters as Emma Harris walks by, dark glossy hair blowing in the breeze like she’s some kind of supermodel. Or at least she thinks she is. She narrows her eyes at me in a bona fide death glare—not even casual or subtle, but blatantly obvious and totally scary.
Leah follows my gaze. Her brow creases when she sees Emma. “What’s her problem?”
I know exactly what her problem is: She’s got a thing for Mitchell. Probably half the girls at school do. And of course, it might seem like there’s something going on between us, with me spending all my free time in his truck and all, especially to people who don’t know about Paintbrush.
But the truth is Mitchell just doesn’t date. He hangs out and goes to parties, and if the gossip that floats around school is true, he’s been known to have the occasional hook-up. But he says he’s waiting until he can leave this town before he gets into anything serious. Nothing to tie him down.
And anyway, I could never have a thing for Mitchell. I know too much about him. I remember the time he got his head stuck in a yellow plastic bucket when we were six, and how his mom called him Mitchie until he was in middle school, and the time in fourth grade when he had the flu and threw up all over my shoes, and a thousand other completely unsexy things. There’s no mystery there.
I glance down as Emma walks by, to avoid eye contact. She makes me nervous. But Leah glares right back, holding Emma’s gaze until she’s forced to look away.
“Leah.” I nudge her with my foot as we watch Emma’s retreating back. “God. Do you have to be so aggressive?”
“Yes, actually. I do.” Leah stands up and brushes herself off. “No one stares at my best friend like that and gets away with it.”
I have to grin at that. As much as I hate confrontation, I love Leah’s fierce loyalty. We’ve been friends since the sixth grade, when Mitchell and I stopped homeschooling at Paintbrush and started at the middle school in town. Her last name is Seely, and mine is Sedgwick, so we ended up sitting next to each other in homeroom. In all the ways I’m quiet, she’s loud. She’s fashionable and artistic and the center of attention, and I’m outdoorsy and earthy and happy to fade into the background. We’re opposites, but it works. Like two pieces of a puzzle coming together.
A car beeps across the parking lot, and Leah hauls her backpack over her shoulder and stacks her textbooks in her arms, staggering dramatically under their weight. “Well, here I go.”
I wave at the truck across the parking lot. Leah’s dad sticks his head out and waves back.
“Tell your dad I say hi,” I say.
“I will. If I can even make it over there.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of dramatic?”
“I may have heard that before. Maybe once or twice.”
Leah is the star of all the school plays. A born actress. Not to mention the only girl in a family of four rough and rowdy brothers. She probably gets told she’s dramatic at least five times a day.
She traipses across the parking lot, wobbling on her high-heeled boots, and then slides into the passenger seat. I can just barely see the outline of her dad as he leans over and kisses her on the head, but it’s enough for that twinge of jealousy to twist my stomach into a knot. Like always.
I’m dozing off in the sun when I hear a bang on the side of the car, close to my head. I sit up to find Mitchell smirking at me.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he says in a sing-song voice. In one easy movement, he launches himself over the side of the truck and into the bed next to me. He lands in a graceful, cross-legged heap.
I shake my head. “I wasn’t asleep.”
“Oh. Sure.” Mitchell watches me in amusement. “You were just reading with your eyes closed.”
I make a face at him. “I was resting my eyes. And also avoiding glares.”
“What glares?”
“The glares of every girl in school who happens to walk by and see me in your truck.”
“Oh, come on,” Mitchell scoffs. He props his backpack up behind him and leans back.
“You should have seen Emma Harris. Full on death glare.”
He rolls his eyes. “And why would that be?”
“Because I get to ride home with the amazing Mitchell Morrison. Smile of a movie star. Boy next door personality. Body of a Greek god.”
“Oh my god. Stop.” Mitchell runs a hand through his hair and gazes up at the sky, his face turning red, a pink flush creeping over his cheeks. I grin. It takes a lot to make him uncomfortable, so it’s like a speci
al victory when it finally happens.
“You should just date someone,” I continue. “Get it over with. That way the girls of North Mountain High will know you’re unavailable, and they can stop torturing themselves.”
“Or, you could stop being a crazy person and making up ridiculous things that have no basis in truth.”
I hold up my hands in defeat. “Okay, okay. Just a suggestion.”
I lean back next to him, and we both stare up at the blue above us for a second.
Finally, Mitchell sits up. “So. The Princess Bride.”
I shrug. “It was okay.”
His mouth drops open. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yeah. I am.” I smile. “It was so good.”
Mitchell shakes his head. “That’s not even funny. Don’t ever talk about my favorite book like that.”
“Favorite book? Really? Last week Watership Down was your favorite book.”
He crosses his arms. “I didn’t say it was my favorite book ever. It’s my favorite book today.”
“Well, now it’s your turn.” I toss my copy of Pride and Prejudice onto his lap.
He picks it up and squints at the cover. “This is a girly book.”
I cross my arms. “Why? Because it was written by a woman? Did I say that The Princess Bride was a guy book because it was written by a man?”
He cuts me off, laughing. “Whoa, whoa, calm down. You know I’ll read it.”
“You better.” I check my phone and sigh. “We gotta go. It’s almost 5:00. We can’t be late again.”
He groans. “Shit. I forgot it was Thursday.”
I stand and hoist my backpack onto my shoulder and then reach down for Mitchell’s hand and pull him to his feet. “Community dinner night. Your favorite night of the week.”
He shakes his head. “Myra will be pissed if we’re late again. She’ll make us sit next to her and listen to her ramble on about the healing properties of plants.”
I hop down onto the pavement. “I know. So let’s go.”
Mitchell’s feet hit the pavement beside mine with a resounding smack, and he sighs. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Four
Mitchell
We make it into the dining room right at 5:30, and the chaos is in full swing. Josie’s mom, Layla, waves to us, and Josie jogs over to help set the table. It’s a long wooden table dubbed The Meeting Place by Myra when she founded Paintbrush twelve years ago. Back then, it seemed ridiculously huge. There were only ten of us, and we would all crowd around one end while the other side stretched out to the opposite end of the dining room, long and shiny and empty. Now, there are forty or so members, and the table is full. So full, in fact, that we have to squish together way too close for comfort to make everyone fit. We bump elbows and knock stuff over during every Thursday night dinner. But it’s all in the name of community. Or so Myra says.
The other main community room is the Sanctuary, the room next to the dining room. It’s big and open, with huge windows and skylights. There are these old braided rugs Myra made forever ago that cover the floors, battered thrift store couches that are surprisingly comfy, plus a TV—no actual channels, but there is a DVD player. The sign on the door reads The Sanctuary: A Place to Relax and Revel in Community and in Spirit. I mostly use it to watch movies when I’m bored.
“Welcome, Mitchell!” Myra’s booming, gravelly voice echoes over the scraping of chairs and banging of pots in the kitchen.
I turn to see her beckoning to me from the kitchen doorway, her hair in its signature long gray braid, colorful scarves draped around her shoulders. Myra is almost seventy-five, but she could pass for being in her fifties, easy, and she has the energy of an excited puppy. She has so much energy that sometimes just being around her makes me exhausted.
“Hi, Myra.” I trudge toward her, but I’m forced to speed up as her waves get more and more frantic.
She grabs my arm as I reach her. “Thank god you’re here. We’re having an apple emergency, and we need your help. Wendy is nearly at her wits’ end.”
“An apple emergency?” I peer into the busy kitchen behind Myra. I can’t really imagine what an apple emergency would entail.
“An emergency, a crisis, a fiasco. Whatever you want to call it.” She pushes me forward into the kitchen. “See if you can’t help Wendy salvage the meal. Before we all have to go to bed hungry.” She strides away, toward Josie and her mom. No doubt trying to correct them on the right way to place silverware or something.
I head toward Wendy, who is humming to herself as she chops fruit in the corner of the kitchen and not at all looking like a person in the throes of an emergency. She’s part of one of the young couples here. She and her husband Eric had their first baby a few months ago.
“Hi, Wendy,” I say as I reach her. I lean into the nearby sink and stick my hands under the warm water, lathering them with soap. “I heard there’s something up with the apples?”
“Mitchell!” she exclaims. She wraps an arm around me and gives me a quick hug, like she hasn’t seen me in forever. Even though I just saw her yesterday. A lot of people here are very touchy. “I’m making a fruit salad here. Want to peel and cut some apples for me?”
I grab a knife and the nearest apple and sink the blade into the top. The skin comes off in shiny, red peels. “Myra said it was an emergency.”
“Well, I was originally going to make it without apples, but Myra thought that was a bad idea. And then I was going to put the apples in with the skins still on, but Myra said that’s not a proper fruit salad. You know Myra. She thinks everything’s an emergency.”
I nod. “How’s Lucy?”
Predictably, Wendy breaks into a huge smile. “She’s beautiful, of course. So happy all the time. And I know it sounds crazy, but I think she might be starting to recognize letters already.”
I don’t know much about babies, but it sounds unlikely that Lucy, at five months old, is already learning how to read.
Still, I smile. “That’s great, Wendy. I’ll have to stop by and see her this week.”
Wendy nods. “You sure do, Mitchell. Your mom was over playing with her just this afternoon.”
Mom. I look around to find her. Usually she’d be here in the kitchen by now, humming with energy and activity and helping everyone with every little thing. But not today. I see Dad, though, washing dishes at the far end of the kitchen. He catches my eye and gives me a grin, one of his classic, easy-going, ain’t-life-grand type of smiles. I try to be annoyed by his constant enthusiasm for life, but it’s too contagious. I wave.
My dad is actually pretty old for a dad, though he definitely doesn’t look it. He hikes around and fishes and canoes and does woodworking and gardening and builds furniture, and basically anything else even remotely outdoorsy. Just last month, we celebrated his sixtieth birthday. He’s toned and tanned, though, so he looks way younger. Maybe that’s why my mom fell for him. They got married in their twenties, when they were both young corporate lawyers at this fancy firm in New York City. Then, they had me, and shortly after that they had some kind of big epiphany about right and wrong and the meaning of life and purposeful living or whatever. Moral of the story: They sold their big apartment and fancy car and basically all their belongings, gave all their money to charity, then moved down to the North Carolina mountains and joined Myra’s new communal village. Now they spend all their time farming and working at Paintbrush and occasionally teaching business classes at the local community college for a few extra bucks. And being blissfully, annoyingly happy.
People are finishing the preparations and starting to move plates out to the dining room. I finish the last few apples and toss them in the bowl, and Wendy whisks it away. As I’m making my way out behind her, my mom breezes into the kitchen, looking a little disheveled. Her usually sleek ponytail has stray hairs falling out, and she’s biting her lip.
“Mom?” I tap her on the shoulder, and she jumps, like I yelled in her ear.
“Oh, Mitchell. Hi,
honey. How was school?” She kisses the top of my head while scanning the kitchen.
“It was fine.” I follow her gaze in time to see my dad bustling into the kitchen from the dining room, whistling. When he sees my mom, his face breaks into its usual giant grin. He loves her so much. Gross.
“There you are, sweetie. I was wondering where you’d got to.” He strides over and wraps his arm around her, surreptitiously grabbing her butt in the process. I pretend not to see. Mostly because I wish I hadn’t seen.
My mom pulls away as my dad leans in for a kiss. “John. Wait.”
He pulls back. “What’s wrong?”
She sighs and slips out of his grip. She opens her mouth to say something and then glances at me.
“What?” I ask.
She pauses and shakes her head. “Nothing. I just . . . Can we all talk? After dinner? Just the three of us?”
My dad nods. “Of course.”
She looks at me. “Mitchell?”
“Uh, yeah.” I roll my eyes. “Considering we do that every night.”
My dad furrows his brow and places his hand on my mom’s arm, but we’re interrupted by the dinner bell before he can say anything.
Out at the Meeting Place, most of the seats are already taken. I grab an empty chair a few seats down from Josie and across the table, sandwiched between Ned and Maddie Macpherson. Maddie is around eight years old, one of the younger kids here at Paintbrush, and she’s part of the enormous Macpherson family—one of seven kids. She wears glasses and has very severe bangs and is overall very studious. She’s like a mini-adult. Last week, she beat me at a game of chess in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
My dad is across the table from me, and my mom is all the way down at the other end. Families are supposed to split up during community dinners, for the sake of bonding with the community and making connections with those you might not know as well. Myra’s words. My mom is sitting next to Joe Jagger, deep in conversation, her brow creased, her mouth moving a mile a minute. Joe nods slowly as he listens, his floppy blond hair swinging into his eyes. God. Dude needs a haircut.
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