I cross my arms. “What, Mom?”
She leans forward. “I want to explain.”
“There’s not much to explain, is there?”
She furrows her brow. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“I know what happened,” I say. “You got bored with us. You met a douchey teenager from California. You slept with him. You left us.”
She closes her eyes. “First of all, Joe is thirty-five.”
“Wow. It’s amazing someone that old manages to look like he just started shaving.”
“Well, he actually has very fine blond hair,” my mom says. “So he really doesn’t need to shave often at all.”
Are you kidding me? “Mom, I don’t actually give a shit about Joe.”
She winces. “Mitchell. Please. Language.”
I take a breath. I need to calm down. “I’m tired. It’s past midnight. Are you here to tell me that you and Dad are getting divorced? Because I figured.”
“No. Well, yes. We are getting divorced.” She looks down at her hands. “But I was actually here to invite you to have dinner with Joe and me tomorrow. At our cabin.”
Joe and me. Our cabin. Pressure builds up in my chest, the pressure of trying to hold back my biting words and my anger and to keep breathing, all at the same time.
“I think you’ll really like Joe once you get to know him,” she continues. “And if we’re all going to live here together, it would mean a lot to me if we could all get along.”
It’s too much. I feel like screaming, but instead my voice comes out a steady, deadly quiet. “You have got to be kidding me.”
She blinks at me. “What?”
I speak slowly, like I’m talking to a toddler. “I don’t like Joe. I never liked him. I will never like him. If I live my whole life without ever speaking to him, I’ll be better for it.” My voice wavers a little, but I don’t stop. “And I don’t know who told you we’re all going to live here together. You two get a trial month. That’s four weeks. Four weeks until Dad gets to say whether you stay or go. Four weeks until I graduate. And I couldn’t care less what Dad’s answer is. Because either way, I am getting the hell out of here in four weeks. And now, thanks to you, I’m never coming back.”
She’s watching me with wide eyes, glassy with tears, and her lips pressed tightly together. I’m out of breath from my rant. Already, I regret my words, I regret making my mom cry, I regret acting like a spoiled brat. But it feels so good to say what I’ve wanted to say to her. I can’t take it back. Even if I wanted to.
“Mitchell.” Her voice comes out soft and strangled. The tears in her eyes spill over and run quietly down her cheeks. “Please don’t say that. I love you so much.” She reaches a hand across the table toward me, palm up and outstretched. She’s trembling. “Please. You have every right to be mad at me. But I’m still your mother.”
My hand twitches in my lap. I know I can take her hand, soft and familiar, and she’ll forgive everything I said. That we can talk it out. That we’ll make it work. She’s my mom, and I’m her only child. I know if I take her hand, I’ll start to cry too, and she’ll hug me and we’ll talk and maybe, just maybe, everything that’s happened these past few days will hurt just a little less.
I stare at her hand, open and waiting. I look up at her face, expectant and hopeful and scared. And then I look at the third chair at the table. My dad’s chair. Empty.
I stand up, walk into my room, and close the door. I quietly slide down to the floor and lean my back against the hard wood, my head resting just below the doorknob. I listen to my mom cry on the other side, soft, steady sobs.
It isn’t until the front door opens and closes a few minutes later that I finally let myself cry, too.
I wake up, my eyes tired and sore, partly from the crying and partly from the tossing and turning I did all night. Despite being exhausted, I make myself get up early so that I have enough time to have a cup of coffee with my dad.
He blinks in surprise when I come out of my room, fully dressed, a full fifteen minutes before I have to leave. But he doesn’t say anything. He just pours me a cup of coffee in my favorite mug—with the handle shaped like an octopus—and slides half the morning paper across the table to me. And we sit in a comfortable silence, reading and drinking, until I have to leave. It still feels weird without my mom there. But I feel like I owe it to him after my disappearing act the last few days.
My spirits don’t really lift until I glimpse Josie. She’s walking out of her cabin as I’m walking to my truck. She calls a cheerful “Have a good day!” at her family as she closes the door and then scampers down the wooden porch stairs and onto the green grass. It still smells freshly mowed from my work on Saturday, the little piles of grass clippings filling the air with their fresh, damp smell. I take in her long lavender skirt and black tank top and the lacy scarf wrapped around her hair. She strides toward the truck, quickly braiding her hair as she goes, eyes on the ground. She doesn’t see me until we’re almost face-to-face.
“Hi!” I say, loudly.
She stumbles and lets go of her almost-finished braid. “Mitchell!” She puts a hand on her chest. “I didn’t see you.”
I grin. “I was going to say something, but I thought it would be more fun to scare you.”
She reaches out and shoves my arm, and I stumble backward. “You suck,” she snaps, but she’s smiling.
My arm burns where she touched it, and my whole body feels warm all of a sudden. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“You okay?” She looks up at me, brow furrowed.
I take a deep breath and take a step back. It’s easier to focus when I’m not standing so close to her. “Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking . . . Is it really 7:30?”
She frowns and glances at her phone, and her eyes widen. “Shit!”
“Someone’s running late,” I say. “For once in her life.” I laugh as she starts jogging toward the truck.
“Mitchell Morrison!” she calls over her shoulder. “Hurry! I’m not about to get my first detention three weeks before I graduate.”
I jog after her. Her long hair is falling out of its braid, wild and tangled and tumbling in the breeze, and her shoulders are already a golden brown from her work in the sun this weekend.
Suddenly, my problems all seem to fade into the back corners of my mind. Suddenly, my day is getting way, way better.
Chapter Twenty-One
Josie
“There’s something you’re not telling me.” Leah eyes me suspiciously over her chicken patty.
My face reddens, and I look down at my tray.
“No, there’s not,” I reply automatically.
Leah puts her sandwich down and points at me with narrowed eyes. “There totally is. Something weird went on at that party, and you’re not telling me.” Her eyes widen. “Oh my god. Did you smoke weed?”
“Leah—”
“Because you promised me that we’d do it together for the first time. And that we could get it from Ned and Bernie so that we know what we’re getting into.”
“I didn’t smoke anything.”
Her shoulders fall, and she raises her sandwich to her mouth. But before she bites into the cafeteria chicken, her eyes light up and she drops the sandwich back to her tray. “I know! You kissed a boy.”
“Leah.” I glare at her.
“Josie.” She glares back. “This guessing could go on all day. All week, even. Unless you tell me what you’re hiding.”
“I’m not hiding anything.” I fiddle with my braid. “It’s just not worth telling.”
She just stares at me, her big blue eyes wide and expectant.
“Fine,” I say. “On the way home, Mitchell and I had a fight.”
Leah gasps, loud and dramatic. “A fight! About what?”
I shake my head. “He thought I was drunk, and he wanted to take me home. And I basically told him it was none of his business. That’s it.”
Le
ah leans in closer to me. “That’s it? That’s definitely not it. He was jealous, Josie! He was worried about you!”
“In a totally misguided and weird way.”
Leah shrugs. “Still.”
I exhale. “And then, on our way home, his truck ran out of gas. So we had to sleep in the truck overnight.”
She shrieks. “You slept with Mitchell Morrison?”
“Jesus, Leah. Could you be any louder?”
“Sorry,” she says. She leans forward and rests her chin on her hand, not looking sorry at all. “I just can’t believe it. He’s so dreamy.”
I snort. “What are you, a Disney princess? Who uses the word dreamy?”
She ignores me. “That’s hot, Josie. A night together under the stars. I bet he can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Oh my god. Stop.” There’s a crash as someone nearby drops their tray on the ground next to a group of freshman girls. I wait until the shrieking stops to continue. “We slept as far apart as possible. We didn’t even bump into each other or roll over or anything. It was not hot. It was the opposite of hot.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I sigh. “Leah, Mitchell is not pining away for me. We slept in a truck together for a few hours. It didn’t mean anything.”
Leah takes a gulp of water. “Once again, my friend, you totally underestimate yourself. And your hotness. Any guy would be going crazy after a night under a blanket with you.”
“Separate blankets,” I point out. “And that is so not true.”
Leah crosses her arms, about to respond, when a shadow falls over our table. I look up to find Mitchell towering over me.
“Hey,” he says.
I open my mouth. Then close it again. Then open it again. God. I probably look like a fish.
I pull myself together enough to respond. “Hey.”
Very smooth. Very original. I’m sure all the girls who flirt with Mitchell over on the other side of the cafeteria are full of witty repartee and hilarious anecdotes, and I’m over here with monosyllabic answers, opening and closing my mouth like a trout.
He looks at Leah. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” she says. She smirks at me, and I kick her under the table.
Mitchell focuses back on me. “I was wondering what you were doing right now.”
I blink down at my lunch tray and then back up at him. “Um. Eating lunch. And then when the bell rings in two minutes, going to class.”
“Good. Right. Good.” He bobs his head up and down in a vigorous nod. “Well, our next classes are close, I think. So would it be okay if I walked with you?”
I’m pretty sure he has no idea what class I have next. I definitely don’t know what he has next. But when I glance at Leah, she’s staring at me so hard that I can practically see a blinking Say Yes Say Yes Say Yes sign flashing on her forehead. I glance back up at Mitchell and nod just as the bell rings.
“Okay.”
I get up and gather my trash, and Leah wiggles her eyebrows at me as I leave. I cross my fingers that Mitchell doesn’t notice.
The hallways are packed and loud, as usual. The swarm of students moves in a current; go with the flow, or get swept away. A tall guy with an enormous green backpack slams into Mitchell, while next to me a tiny girl with scary crooked teeth elbows me out of the way in order to catch up with a friend. Mitchell’s arm bumps into mine. There’s nowhere for us to go. So we keep walking in the bustling, jostling crowd, shoulder to shoulder, neither of us talking.
To our left Emma Harris leans against a locker, playing with her long dark hair. She gives me the evil eye—twice in one week! A new record—and then calls a very loud, very seductive, “Hey, Mitchell.”
Mitchell keeps looking straight ahead. He doesn’t even bat an eye. The hallway is noisy and all, but I know he heard her. A flash of annoyance crosses Emma’s face before she quickly rearranges her features back into her perfectly styled I-couldn’t-care-less expression. I concentrate on the ground and try not to smile.
We reach my classroom in less than a minute; it’s right around the corner from the cafeteria. And we still haven’t spoken. It’s just too weird, hanging out with Mitchell at school. If seeing him at the party on Friday was strange, this is even stranger. I’ve always observed Mitchell from afar here: at pep rallies, in the cafeteria, in the halls. We never exchange anything more than a friendly wave or the occasional hello. So to be walking with him, purposefully, down the hallway—and it being his idea, no less—is beyond bizarre. And as it turns out, also kind of awkward.
I turn to him at the doorway. He bounces on the heels of his feet, looking at the ground, then at me, then down the hallway, then back at me again.
“Well . . .” I say. “Thanks for the walk?”
It comes out as a question because I’m confused as to what, exactly, the point of this was.
“Right. Sure. Yeah.” He shuffles his feet back and forth. “I just wanted to ask you . . .”
He’s acting so weird, and it’s making me nervous. My palms are sweaty, and I’m pretty sure some of my classmates are staring now. “Ask me what?”
“If . . . you were gonna need a ride after school?” he asks in a rush.
“Um. If that’s okay.” What’s wrong with him? Obviously I need a ride after school. The same as every single other day in the history of forever.
“Yep!” Again with the crazed nodding. He looks like a deranged bobblehead. A cute deranged bobblehead, but still. “No problem! So I’ll see you then!”
He is talking in exclamation points. Big, enthusiastic pronouncements. Like maybe he thinks I’ve gone deaf since we last spoke.
The bell rings again, and Mitchell winces at the sound. “Shit. I have Calc. Gotta run.” And he dashes down the hall.
I watch him go, as guys reach out to slap him on the back and girls give him friendly waves. He weaves his way through the crowds with ease, the same way he navigates his life at this school. He never swaggers through the halls yelling at his friends, but he never quite blends into the crowd, either. I’m beginning to reconcile the Paintbrush version of Mitchell, the one I grew up with, and the school version of Mitchell, this calm, cool, happy-go-lucky guy. I’m finally getting to know both sides of him, and suddenly, he’s a whole new person.
Mitchell zips around the corner, and a realization hits me. I have to smile.
Because the math wing is all the way across the school. Nowhere near my classroom.
English is boring. Someone who loves to read as much as I do should enjoy English class a little more. While Miss Martinez drones on and on about the upcoming final essay, I discreetly rummage in the front pocket of my backpack. In my mind I call it the trash pocket because I basically use it to dump all the shit I don’t want but am too lazy to throw away: snack wrappers, pencils that need lead, old homework assignments, etc. Finally I close my fingers around what I’m looking for: the stack of wrinkled brochures at the bottom. I pull them out and smooth them over my desk.
They’re college brochures. One for each of the colleges I started an application to and a few other ones as well. I agonized over these brochures for weeks before stuffing them into the dark chasm of my backpack. I knew the black hole of the trash pocket would swallow them right up so I wouldn’t have to think about them anymore.
I don’t know why I’m dragging them back out now. Boredom, I tell myself. I skim them again, just the bold-faced headlines at the top of each paragraph: Starting a New Chapter; New Life. New Experiences. New You; The Adventure of a Lifetime; The Path to Success. And one from the bottommost brochure: Your New Home Is Waiting.
The pages are shiny and silky under my fingers. The fonts are crisp, the colors are bright, every picture features a group of attractive, racially diverse friends smiling—in lab coats, on a perfectly manicured green lawn, at a stately library table. These places look too good to be true. They look fun and interesting and happy. And they look very, very different from my cozy home in the North Carolina mo
untains.
Suddenly, I feel anxious. Like all the cheerful college students in the pictures are staring right through me. I push the brochures back down into the trash pocket, as far as they truck go. And I push all thoughts of them out of my mind until the bell rings, and I practically race outside toward Mitchell’s truck. I don’t know what all his stuttering weirdness in the hallway was about, but I intend to find out.
I’m not fast enough because he still beats me there. If I raced out of school today, he must have sprinted. He’s fiddling with the radio as I approach the car. But as soon as I pull the passenger door open, he sits up straight.
“Josie.” He gazes at me, intense and serious. “We’re going on a mission.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mitchell
We’ve been driving for forty minutes straight so far, weaving around backcountry roads and rolling through small towns. And still our mission has not been completed.
“How exactly am I supposed to help you complete this mission when I have no idea what we’re looking for?” Josie’s bare feet are propped on the dashboard, and the wind from the open window is tangling her hair. She sticks her hand outside as we zoom around a corner, making waves in the air. And then a fly smacks right into her fingers.
“Shit!”
She jerks up and yanks her arm inside. I crack up as she desperately shakes her hand, trying to get rid of the bug guts. She glares at me and gives me the finger.
“Told you. Nature’s a bitch,” I say. “And as for the mission: You’ll know it when you see it.”
“Whatever it is, it better be worth a bug attack,” she grumbles. But she sticks her arm right back out the window anyway.
I’m feeling good. The sun is shining, the mountains are gray-blue and gleaming and beautiful, and my truck is running smoothly and quietly, for once. I’m not thinking about things I don’t want to be thinking about. All I can think about is how I hope to god Josie recognizes the place when we get to it, and how totally and completely embarrassing it will be if she doesn’t.
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