But he had to have been a little disappointed, didn’t he? He didn’t come after me, after all. I stared up at the moon, half obscured by clouds.
“What?” Ethan asked.
I shrugged again. “I guess I wanted him to follow me.”
“But he did,” Ethan said. “I mean, he stayed long enough to tell off Gibson and then he went after you. We all did, me and Cora too. But by the time we made it outside you were being whisked away in a car, and we’ve spent the rest of the night searching for you.”
“He told Gibson off?” I don’t know why I was so surprised—or why I wanted to cry. Except I wasn’t sure I deserved my dad standing up for me.
But I was really glad he had.
“Yeah. Well, in your dad’s very polite way of telling someone off. He said Mr. Gibson couldn’t speak to you like that, and he was being rude and inappropriate, and his reaction shouldn’t have been to be challenged but to find out what your whole case was.”
Oh. “But why didn’t he say that when we were fighting?” I asked in a small voice. “Why didn’t he back me up?”
It was Ethan’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know, I think he waslistening. Processing. Your dad doesn’t always jump into the middle of conversations.”
This was true. It probably did not mean he thought I was the worst, but rather too rapid-fire. Maybe. “Oh.”
“You should let him know you’re okay,” Ethan said again.
A terrible and painful idea. I winced, then pulled my phone out. Ignoring the cacophony of alerts, I called Dad. He answered right away.
“Hi, Dad,” I said in a small voice.
“Jordan?” Dad sounded panicked. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry for bolting. And—exploding.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at my friend Stella’s.”
“I’ll come pick you up.”
Of course he would. Which I hadn’t quite been ready for. “Okay,” I agreed, and gave him the address.
Hanging up, I turned back to Ethan. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Cool.” Ethan opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it, then tried again. “Are we okay?”
I looked down at the moss and the forest floor and the ferns, then up at the sun casting its last rays of light through the forest canopy. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t speak up, either.” He paused. “And you left me behind.”
Struck, I stared at him. I hadn’t realizedEthanmight be afraidImight leave. That he might have a hard time trusting me.“Ethan. I’m so sorry.” I stepped forward, cupping his cheek with my hand. “I’m sorry I freaked out. And I don’t want to break your heart either. I think you’re amazing.”
He smiled at me, a soft smile that made his entire face glow with a golden light. “I think you are, too, Jordan. I’m wild about you.”
Something hard and tight broke apart in my chest, leaving breath coursing freely through me, my heart pumping hard enough I could hear it, feel it. I rose on my toes and kissed him.
He smiled down at me. “What next?”
I leaned my head back, gazing through the tree branches above us. In the dusk, only the brightest stars could be spotted. I sought Polaris, steady and bright. What could anyone ever do but follow their own north star? “I’m not ready to give up. I want to figure out what really happened. Maybe later on, I’ll be too tired to try to right wrongs. Maybe at some point I’ll be exhausted and burned out, but right now—I have the energy. If we want to make the world better, we have to try.”
“All right. Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“That’s what we’ll do,” I agreed. “We’ll show the world what Andrea Darrel of Nantucket discovered.”
