“Sweetie. I know everything that happened with Owen was scary. But he’s okay. They’re not pressing charges and we need to move past this. For us. For our family.” She tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “We miss you, honey.”
Hannah’s tears from last night flash in my memory, a firework blasting into the dark sky.
But last night was more than sadness. It was more than anger. It was the way we curled into each other. Our song. The way my confession blended with her own story and it became something more than just what happened to me and what happened to her. It became what happened to us. Together. Last night, after I told Hannah everything and then we threw our voices out into that old theater, peeling walls and littered carpets and all, there was this hint of something I haven’t felt in years.
Freedom.
Release.
A sort of falling apart that felt like letting go. And maybe that’s what I’ve needed all these years. That’s what she needed. Just for someone to hear us. There’s a warmth in my blood from that, from Hannah, but I worry it’s just a drop of fire in a frozen ocean.
I look down at my bare feet, green nail polish that Charlie painted on weeks ago receding away from my cuticles. The truth is, I miss the hell out of my family. Not only Owen, but my parents, too.
And I know Hannah’s tired. We’re all ready for this to be over. Really, I’ve been ready for three years. Everyone wants to move on. Problem is, I think everyone has a different idea about what moving on actually is.
I don’t know what to say to my mother, so I sort of fall forward, hooking my arms around her waist and pressing my face against her shoulder.
Mom lets out a surprised oof, but wraps her arms around me immediately. She runs her hands over my hair, down my arms, all the ways I’ve wanted to let her hold me for the past week. For the past three years.
“I love you, honey,” she says.
I squeeze her tighter, inhaling familiar hibiscus lotion and Dove soap. I do it for comfort, for connection, because I so want this moment with my mom to feel like a victory.
A change.
Even when everything in me knows there’s still so much to say.
Chapter Twenty-Two
OWEN AND I DRIVE to the festival in silence. He keeps inhaling sharply, then clearing his throat, then picking a new song on his phone, then starting the whole routine over again. It reminds me of Charlie, both of them habitual fidgeters, so I know he wants to say something. I can’t decide if I want him to or not.
That moment with my mom at home was the truth—?I’m ready to move on. Criminal charges for Owen aren’t a possibility now. Mr. Knoll was too long ago, too hard to prove. What else is there to do? What else is there for any girl to do, when everyone but her can just forget everything like a random bad dream? I have no idea what moving on sounds like, looks like. I’ve spent the past three years trying and decidedly not getting over anything.
“So,” I say, swallowing hard. “How’s first chair stuff?”
I feel him glance at me and I make myself meet his eyes. “Good,” he says. “It’s busy with the fall concert coming up. You know, I have to walk out there all by my little lonesome and lead the tuning. It’s weird.”
“Oh, please.” I force a laugh. “You love it and you know it.”
He shrugs, a smile touching the edges of his mouth. “What can I say, I was born to make grand entrances . . . before everyone else.”
“You did not just compare first chair to our birth.”
“Birth certificates don’t lie.”
“Are you kidding? Of course they do. It’s called human error. Some overworked and exhausted nurse clearly got our birth times all turned around and . . . maybe . . .”
My words slow and trail off, my throat tight. This feels wrong, this banter back and forth between us, as though these words are not the ones I should be saying.
“Mar?”
I don’t answer him.
A few minutes later, Owen pulls the car into the school’s parking lot, and we walk over to the grassy field next to the stadium where the festival is already in full swing. He hesitates near the booth he’s manning, a cakewalk set to recordings of the school orchestra’s best concerts.
“So, this is me,” he says.
I nod but say nothing.
