“So what do people do for fun here?” I asked.
She shrugged. “During winter, people ski. In the summer there’s the community pool, fishing, hang gliding...”
“Hang gliding?” I asked.
“Yep. We’re kinda famous for it...something about the winds and the elevation.They jump from that mountain, right there.” She pointed to the dark shape behind the town.
“Did you ever go hang gliding?” I asked.
“It’s expensive. We couldn’t afford it. Besides, Dad would have flipped had I tried.”
“But youwantedto jump off a mountain while wearing a giant kite?” I asked.
“Spend enough time here, you’ll want to jump too.” Dylan grimaced. “With or without the giantkite.”
Any trace of excitement Dylan had shown earlier was gone. Despite everything she’d gone through, she was usually a glass-is-half-full type person. When life kicked her in the teeth, she learned how to make a mouth guard. But the strained look on her face told me how difficult this trip was for her. Alarmed, I asked, “What’s the real reason you left this place?”
“Everyone knows everyonehere, and gossiping comes as natural as breathing, I swear.”
“Everyone has to deal with gossips,” I replied. My mother’s inner circle was full of the biggest gossips I’d ever met. Seriously, those women needed a hobby.
Dylan nodded. “I get that. I just...did I ever tell you about Toby?”
I shook my head. “Not that I can remember.”
“I never really fit in here, so I kinda kept to myself. Thenin fifth grade there was this group of girls headed up by Brandy Standke, and they were brutal. They teased me for being such a goody two shoes. I got sick of it and skipped school one day to prove them wrong. Turns out an unpopular boy by the name of Toby Lewis chose that day for his pre-teen act of rebellion as well. Toby and I weren’t close, but Brandy and her crew spread the rumor that he andI were sleeping together, and we took the day off so his mom could drive me to Klamath to get an abortion.”
I gasped. “But you were only in fifth grade! Had you even started your period yet?”
“Nope. They didn’t care about things like facts or science. Neither did anyone who helped them spread the rumor. It was bad, Addie. That’s when I started researching ways to get out of here and came acrossthe boarding school in Portland.”
Dylan and I had met in sixth grade, when she transferred to my school as a scholarship student.
“Aw, buddy. That sounds awful. Brandy is...was such a douchebag...but female.”
“Yeah,” Dylan chuckled. “She’s a...a douche-hag.”
“Ohmigod, that’s perfect!” I laughed. “What are the odds we’ll run into her?”
“There’s two thousand people in town. If she’s still here,the odds are pretty good.”
“I’ve got your back. If she starts anything, I will deal with her, and she’ll wish she’d never been born.”
Dylan gave me the first real smile since we’d started this road trip. “I’m not sure that makes me feel better.”
“You’re smiling and your knuckles have lost their white pallor.” I shifted in my seat. “It absolutely makes you feel better.”
We passed a bizarrewelcome sign, a giant wooden cowboy holding a pistol in the air. The lettering at his feet read “Tallest town in Oregon.”
“Welcome to Lakeview,” Dylan said. “Weird. Those train tracks are new.”
“Train tracks aren’t exactly unusual, Dylan.”
“Here, they are. Amtrak doesn’t even come out here. We have some train tracks behind the school, but they aren’t used anymore. The old station was turnedinto a house.”
Well maybe that was strange to Dylan, but no more so than the mostly deserted road that never got any wider than two lanes. Beyond the sign was a residential district full of older homes. Slowing, we pulled into the driveway of what looked like a rundown church. “What’s this?”
“The newest inn.”
