His voice is rough. “With who?”
I take a deep breath.
His dark eyes flash like he already knows.
“Barry.”
“BarryHolt?”
“I know he was never our favorite—”
“Not our favorite? Ruthie, he’s an asshole.”
“He never did anything. He was just oblivious, part of the football crowd. But he was a kid back then. It was high school. People change.”
Everett braces a hand against his mouth, which is what he does whenever he has trouble processing. It’s as familiar to me as my own tics. His eyes cast around the room, like he can’t stand to look at me. “Is it serious?”
I bite the inside of my mouth. Ever has to understand that the thought of being without him made me feel like a kid again, trapped in those awful years before we became friends. The loneliness had been so powerful I would’ve done anything to stanch it. Even say yes to my parents, who’d been trying to marry me off since the day I turned eighteen. Without Everett around, I’d been too tired to keep beating them back.
I’m struggling to find the words, but it turns out my silence is enough.
A look of panic flashes across Everett’s face, so vivid I’m halfway reaching for him before he schools his expression. His next words are directed at the wall. “First Renard and now Barry. I don’t come back foronesummer, and the whole world falls apart.”
“Nothing’s official yet,” I say, trying to soften it. “He hasn’t proposed.”
Ever still won’t look at me. He presses his hands to his mouth again, his distress palpable. “Onesummer, Ruthie.” He’s trying to keep his voice low, but it comes out choked. “I thought you and I were supposed to—” He cuts himself off. Then he shakes his head and pushes away from the couch, away from me, striding out of the living room. My screen door rattles as he shoves through it.
One night when we were seventeen, after we’d escaped Ever’s father and mine, escaped the whole miserable town, we’d charged deep into the woods, running until we were out of breath. We’d stretched out together, looking up at the stars through the trees, and he’d said, “Promise me it’ll be you and me forever.” I’d promised, the stars my witness. We would never give ourselves over. Never let them win. It would be the two of us always, safe in the secret world we’d created for ourselves. It was the kind of vow a person made when they were young, still reeling from discovering the world was hard and cruel. But for years, our promise had such a hold over me. I used to float past other people, barely registering them, ignoring their stares, their whispers that my oddness, while excusable in childhood, was becoming uncomfortable as I grew into a woman. I had Everett, so I didn’t need them. Even if I was trapped in Bottom Springs, I was free.
That’s what his disappearance took from me. Without Everett, there was no more safe, secret universe. I’d been shoved back into the world where things and people outside us mattered. He’d escaped, but I was stuck here and always would be. So of course I knew dating Barry Holt meant breaking our promise—but I thought Everett had broken it first.
“Wait!” I yell, shoving my feet into Keds and flying after him, laces whipping my ankles. Everett’s making his way to his car, an old black convertible he rebuilt after high school, tweaking it until it ran as fast and smooth as he does.
“I can’t be inside your house.” He hops in the car, not bothering with the door. “All of it together is too much. I need to think.”
I wrest his door open and climb into the passenger seat. He turns to me, glaring, but I fasten the seat belt and look resolutely ahead. “I know where you’re going and I want to come.”
He’s quiet for a long time while I stare out the windshield, refusing to look at him out of fear that if I do, he’ll kick me out. The wind blows myhair over my face until I can’t see, but I remain stubbornly still. Finally, I hear his soft sigh and then he shoves his key in the ignition, roaring the engine. Ever slings an arm over the back of my seat and takes off, gunning backward down the road.
5
NOW
There’s a place in the woods near my house he showed me years ago. It’s one of the sacred spots no one else in Bottom Springs knows about, because it turns out no one else can comb through the wild quite like Everett can, a skill born from necessity. When he pulls up and cuts the engine, tires settling in the grass, we get out and step inside the thicket without speaking, as synchronized as birds in the wind.
Eventually the tall, skinny pines give way to a small clearing, and in the middle is a tree that towers above the others. It reaches out with a hundred snaking arms, some of them bent low to the ground. We call it the Medusa, because long ago, Everett and I decided we would give our love to villains. We know all too well how easy it is to become one when you’re misunderstood. Our love is a corrective measure.
Ever leaps onto the Medusa’s lowest branch and extends a hand. I take it and feel him shoulder my weight until I’m light as a feather. Then we’re off, climbing. Maybe it’s childish to climb trees at twenty-three years old. My parents and Barry would certainly say so. But joys are few and far between in this life, so I can hardly bring myself to feel guilty. Besides, Everett’s expression is already calming. I can feel the forest settling me, too.
“If you won’t tell me why you didn’t come last summer, will you atleast tell me where you were?” I find a curved branch and pull myself up. My white dress is useless for this kind of climbing: already filthy and with no protection for my knees. But there are more important things to focus on, like getting information.
Above me, he catches hold of a branch and pulls himself up. “I heard the mechanic in Trouville passed away and they had no one else, so I moved. That’s where I’ve been the last year. It’s a bigger town. There’s more work for me.” Everett’s a mechanic like his father. It turns out that even if you hate your family, you still inherit from them. But unlike his father, who planted his garage here in Bottom Springs, Ever’s an itinerant mechanic, unable to commit to any town for more than a few months at a time. I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of his restlessness.
He’s made it safely to the branch above, so he turns and grips my hands, helping me climb the rest of the way. Perched on the same branch, he leans back against the Medusa’s trunk and I lean toward him, still holding his hands for balance. “Do you think you’ll stay, then? Is Trouville the one?”
He shrugs and looks away. “I like it. But it doesn’t feel like home.” He nods up at the next branch and releases my hands. We like to go high enough to get a clear view of the forest. “One more, I think.”
I follow after him, trying to gain purchase on the slippery bark.
