It had started a month earlier. Cassie’s family moved to Illinois from Georgia just before the end of the school year. She’d sat next to Sammie in several of their classes, and their teachers had asked Sammie to help her out before finals.
The girls had hit it off immediately, fast friends bonding over Sailor Moon and sports. Cassie didn’t play volleyball, but she’d been a softball star back in Atlanta.
After a few weeks spent passing notes and sitting together at lunch, something new had begun to swell inside Sammie. She couldn’t help but notice how pretty Cassie’s black curls looked when they were loose from the ponytail she wore most days. How the periwinkle dress she sometimes showed up to school in made her dark brown skin glow. How her hazel eyes sparkled whenever she got excited about something.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Atticus accused, but there was no real heat in the question. Sammie frowned.
“I just did,” she fired back. “Why didn’t you tell me about Carl?”
The name brought a smile to her brother’s lips, one that had a fist clenching around Sammie’s heart. If even just hearing the other boy’s name made him that kind of happy, then…
“It’s sorta new.” Atticus shrugged, finishing off his sandwich in one more massive bite.“I was gonna tell you soon.”
Sammie nodded. She couldn’t say the same. She’d spent the last several weeks terrified, even if every day she had wanted desperately to let her secret out.
“Are you gay?” Sammie winced at her own question.
“Don’t know,” Atticus said, his gaze falling to his sneakers. “I think I still like girls too.”
Sammie’s mind flashed back to the way her heart had skipped at Kieran’s waved goodbye.
“I think I still like boys too.”
The air seemed to thin out between them, the pressure that had been building since the moment Atticus arrived finally releasing.
“But right now you like Cassie?”
Sammie nodded, pushing Kieran out of her mind, waiting for Atticus to meet her eyes again, silently begging him to look up andseeher.
When he did, the tears she had been holding back finally slipped free.
“Wait!” Atticus was across the room in a heartbeat, hands on her shoulders, his grip firm. Strong. “You don’t need to cry about it.”
“I thought I was alone, Attie.”
His expression folded at her words, going soft in a way it only ever did for her. He pulled her against his chest, arms wrapping tight around her shoulders. He’d shot up over the last school year, and even though Sammie was tall for a girl her age, Atticus now stood a head taller than her.
“We’re never alone, Sammie. We’re a package deal.”
She pulled back, swiping at her wet cheeks. Despite the tears, Sammie felt lighter than she had in a good, long while.
“Are you going to tell Granny?”
Atticus chewed on the inside of his cheek, brow furrowed. “I don’t know yet.”
“I’m afraid to.” The confession brought back some of that guilt Sammie had been fighting. Atticus nodded. She didn’t have to say why she was scared of telling their grandmother. The bible pushed to the back of her desk drawer was a constant reminder that not everyone would react to her confession the way her brother had.
“I won’t tell her for you,” Atticus said, letting her go. “Our secret is safe, just between us for now.”
Sammie really wasn’t as alone as she’d thought.
The sound of the front door shutting echoed through the house once more. Atticus glanced over his shoulder, back toward the hallway.
“Take a minute.” His voice was light, gentler than normal. But then his trademark smirk tugged at his lips. “You’ve got snot dripping from your nose.”
Sammie shoved him away. “Get out. Why do you always have to ruin the moment?”
He grinned. “Makes things more fun.”
