Outside, the sun washes over the city. People go about their Saturday morning as if the whole world didn’t just flip upside down and catch fire. As if my whole life weren’t just upended. As if my whole future weren’t just crushed.
Until I started high school, my parents and I used to visit my aunt Naomi and my cousin Sloane every summer. So I already know what I’m walking into.
I already know there’s nothing for me in Bramble Falls, Connecticut.
Chapter Two
Mom and I arrive in Bramble Falls early on Sunday. The newly risen sun reflects off the morning dew and paints the town in a golden hue. Sugar maples line the quiet streets, their green leaves clinging to the dregs of summer the same way I’m clinging to home, relentlessly resisting the inevitable change.
The passenger-side window is cold against my forehead as I take in the small town, which looks exactly the same as it did when I was a kid. Small houses sit atop small, perfectly landscaped yards. A few people walk their small dogs down the sidewalk.
Everything here is small.
I already miss New York City. I miss its vastness and its sounds and its bustle. I miss its food and its buskers and its bookstores. Hell, I even miss the trash and the awful smells and the subway.
I do not belong here.
Mom stops at the only traffic light in town and turns to me, grinning, as if everything is fine and normal. Her lips move, andGracie Abrams’s voice fades as I pull out my AirPods.
“What?” I ask.
“I said it’s beautiful here, isn’t it? Do you remember all of this?” She gestures at Bramble Falls’s town square in front of us.
The white gazebo where my cousin Sloane and I used to eat picnics and meet up with her friends sits surrounded by the same freshly cut grass that always felt like silk beneath my bare feet. The green lawn is dappled with trees, their branches casting shadows over beds of orange and maroon mums.
“Of course. I wasn’t in the womb the last time we were here,” I say dryly.
Mom frowns and accelerates when the light changes. We follow the road around the square, passing the old hardware store with the same sun-bleachedTOOLS & MORE!sign that’s always been in the window, the diner where Sloane and I used to get thick malts and chili dogs on unbearably hot summer days, the tiny post office where I used to mail postcards to my friends back in New York, and the market where I (accidentally) stole something for the first time.
Yeah, the quaint town is pretty, and I have a lot of fond childhood memories here. But warm memories aren’t enough to extinguish my bad mood. This place isn’thome, and I’m not going to pretend to be excited about moving just to make my mom happy—especially when it’s her fault I’m stuck here. I get that she’s going through a lot, but I still don’t understand why I had to come with her. It can’t be to stave off her loneliness, since she’ll be living with Aunt Naomi and Sloane. It can’t be to help her avoid homesickness, since home is evidently the last place she wants tobe. Every avenue of thought leads me to the same conclusion: that she’s doing it out of spite, trying to get under Dad’s skin, and I’m collateral damage.
As we drive past a tiny greeting-card store, a woman with curly brown hair and deep wrinkles smiles and waves at us. Mom waves back.
“Do we know her?” I ask.
“No,” Mom laughs. “People here just wave to each other. She was beingfriendly.”
“Right.”
Mom sighs. “This is going to be good, Ellis,” she says, staring at the road ahead of her. “For both of us.”
I turn off my music and put my earbuds away because Aunt Naomi only lives a couple blocks from downtown. “Sure.”
Silence stretches between us as we turn onto Saffron Lane, and the small, white colonial house with its bright blue door and shutters comes into view. We haven’t even pulled into the driveway when my aunt comes running out of the house with a face-splitting grin, her arms held out, ready to wrap us in hugs.
Great.
Mom swings our BMW into the driveway and barely throws it into park before she’s out of the car, hugging her sister. A second later, Sloane saunters out with a smile that matches her mom’s. While I look more like my dad, Sloane is her mom’s replica, sharing the same shoulder-length, pale blond hair, thick bangs, sky-blue eyes, and matching flannel shirt.
“Hey, Ellis,” Sloane says, wrapping her arms around me the moment I step out of the car.
“Hey,” I mutter, patting her on the back. I hate that the excitement over seeing my cousin again is tainted by my circumstances.
Yet another thing my mom ruined.
She pulls away and sets her hands on my shoulders. “Are you doing okay?”
I get that she’s trying to be nice because she knows about my parents, but I can’t stand the pity in her eyes. I donotneed pity. I just need to go home.
