I don’t know that any of us will make it that long.
My hand flies out to the nearest wall to hold me up when it feels like nothing else ever will. I can’t do it. “Howard College,” I say, almost like a gasp. “I’m going to enroll in community college when I graduate. Being far from home doesn’t really appeal to me anymore.”
Jolting back into motion, Mom nods. “People don’t give community colleges enough credit these days. And she can always transfer somewhere else later if she wants.”
Uncle Mike frowns at me. “Yeah, but what about skating? We’re not just gonna let you give that up.” He turns to Mom to pull her to his side, but she’s already halfway out of the room and doesn’t look at either of us.
“I think I forgot to preheat the oven. Mike, do you mind? 350?”
Uncle Mike is on his feet before the request is out. He’ll do anything for her, even drop a conversation cold simply because she’s not ready to have it. She won’t meet my gaze, but Uncle Mike does. I try to smile at the apologetic look he gives me, and I manage enough of one that he moves past me into the kitchen without saying anything.
“Mom?” I call when she bends to retie her running shoe. “I think I’m going to head out for a bit. Maybe see if Maggie wants to go with me to the rink.” The words turn bitter on my tongue. I don’t like lying to her, but neither do I want to hurt her by revealing where I actually intend to go. She might decide to veer from her normal run south along the Wilcox River to watch me.
She hesitates, but if she can convince herself that Jason’s cadaverous form “looks better,” then my lingering pallor from Uncle Mike’s question should be nothing. She nods before turning toward the back door. “Be home in time for dinner.”
I leave through the front, hating that I feel better as soon as our house and the people in it fade from the rearview mirror.
CHAPTER 12
Idon’t stall even once as I drive down our long driveway and turn up Boyer Road. I like that all the roads back here are dirt, especially on the days after a light rain when the ground is packed down and still a little red. It makes them feel alive to me. It’s a few miles before I see any other houses, but the earthy smell of cattle and manure reach me long before I see the McClintocks’ ranch. A few cows look up as I pass, and I let my gaze travel fondly over the soft brown bodies until they shrink out of sight in my rearview mirror. I turn west on Pecan Road, which leads me farther away from town rather than toward it, and the road becomes less defined, with tufts of wild grass sprouting up between faded tire tracks. Jason was right about how little used these roads are these days.
A stranger might not even see the faint impression that marks the turnoff for Hackman’s Road, but I’d know it in my sleep. Soon I’m driving up the hill above the pond and wondering at the erratic beating of my heart. Heath’s not waiting for me by the massive live oak tree, and I tell myself he never was. It seems ridiculous to think we had a conversation, however vaguely, about meeting here, much less either of us actually showing up. Yet here I am, and I can’t say that a part of me isn’t disappointed that he’s not here too.
As I pull off the road at the top of the hill and lower my hands to my lap as the engine idles, I force my gaze to roam beyond the tree. This stretch of road doesn’t even have a name anymore. There’s a rusted pole several miles back, but if there ever was an actual sign on it, no one remembers what it was. It’s the road by Hackman’s Pond, and how the pond got that name is as big a mystery as the unnamed road. There isn’t a house or structure for miles. The verdant grasses grow high and wild and so thick on either side of the road that when the wind blows it looks like waves on a sea splashed with sprays of golden yellow wildflowers.
The sun is still high in the sky, making the smooth surface of the pond glow amber and gold. The sun-bleached white dock jutting from the pond’s edge is empty, but I know how smooth the worn planks would feel beneath my feet. This is exactly the kind of summer afternoon that would have seen me and Jason and Laura here, leaping off our bikes and kicking off our shoes—when we bothered to wear them—as we raced to see who would reach the end of the dock first. No matter how big our head start was, Jason always beat us. He usually had time to spin backward so that he could grin in triumph at us as he cannonballed into the water, drenching Laura and me before we even left the dock.
We didn’t come here as much once Jason turned sixteen and got his license, but there were always a few days each summer—the sweltering sticky ones—when Jason would look at Laura or me and without a word we’d all just know. We’d drive to the pond instead of biking, but still race like little kids to see who could reach the water first. My heart clenches tighter and tighter as I look at the empty dock, imagining the three of us running across it. It hurts to hold on to the memory, but I’ll never let go.
There’s nothing feigned about the relief I feel at being alone. It’s different than the kind of alone I feel surrounded by other people, even my family. I can cry here if I want, or scream, or both. I can think about the dreams I had for my life, the ones a tiny part of me still hopes will come true, and how not even my mom wants them for me anymore.
I can think about my brother and feel however I want to about the fact that he’s not with me and that we’ll never again be the kids who leap laughing off the dock at Hackman’s Pond. If I wasn’t alone, there’d still be no one I could talk to about Jason anyway, least of all Heath.
A few dozen yards from the road is the massive tree Heath mentioned, with its gnarled, tentacle-like branches that rise and dip like they truly were once moving. Even from this distance I can see lighter patches against the gray bark, the names and initials carved by people in this town going back generations, back when this road was the only road. I watched Mark Keller, the first and last boy I ever kissed, immortalize our initials onto the trunk some twenty feet above the heart Jason painstakingly carved around his and Allison’s—the girl he’d openly talked about marrying after college.
Jason claimed he broke up with Allison in the wake of his arrest and wouldn’t let her come to the courthouse or visit him in prison. He said he didn’t want to ruin her life any more than he already had, but that never sat well with me. I know Cal was her friend in addition to Jason’s, but Jason was supposed to be her soul mate. If she loved him a fraction as much as he loved her, she’d have been there even if it hurt, even if it was only to say goodbye. But she wasn’t. The girl who was at our house so often that Dad made her her own chair vanished, practically overnight. She didn’t come to the arraignment or show up at our house to cry with Mom. She never once sought solace from the only people who understood what she was supposedly losing. As far as I know, she still hasn’t said a word to him. I don’t know if Jason would have told her what drove him to...do what he did that night, but I do know that she made it impossible for him to even try.
Daphne’s engine dies before I’m conscious of turning the key. A warm breeze ripples across the tall grasses lining the road and surrounding the pond. I shade my eyes from the sun and keep the loose strands of my hair from blowing into my face as I scan the ground for a rock sharp enough to suit my needs. A few more steps take me under the canopy shade of the tree, and instantly the temperature feels a good twenty degrees cooler on top of the sudden ice in my veins. Someone has already beaten me to the task of severing Allison’s initials from my brother’s. Where Jason’s initials used to be, there’s a jagged hole as deep as my fist, as though someone took an ax to that one part of the tree and made sure not a single line remained. It was such a violent assault that not even Allison’s initials escaped the attack. My fingers reach for the gouge and press against the splintered wood as I bite the inside of my cheek to hold back the tears building in my eyes.
I turn my back to the tree and to the memories that have grown more bitter than they ever were sweet, and that’s when I see what the pounding in my ears didn’t let me hear: a red truck pulling up behind Daphne.
CHAPTER 13
Itake a step to slide in front of the hacked part of the tree only to stop when the realization hits me that Heath might have been the one who did it. The entire town down to the smallest child would like nothing more than to see the blighted memory of my brother cut out of this tree and every other thing that proves he was ever here, possibly none more so than the guy staring at me through his windshield. Something sharper than the rock I scooped up slices at my heart, and I let the stone tumble from my fingers. Understanding how Heath could hate my brother doesn’t dull the bleeding pain I feel when confronted by it; if anything the pain feels magnified, because reality no longer makes sense. It’s like there are two different people—my brother, and the person who killed Cal.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have given him any indication that I would be. The whisper of disappointment I felt earlier when I thought he hadn’t come is shouted down by the dread locking my joints. It feels like the time I let Laura and Jason talk me into jumping off the train tracks over the Wilcox River.
Kids in Telford had been jumping off the tracks for decades despite the warning signs. It didn’t look very high from the ground, and even I could admit it wasn’t dangerously high. The worst thing I’d heard happened to a jumper was a split lip, and that was because a couple had tried to jump together midkiss. My siblings had both made the jump before and were relentless in taunting me about being a coward. So one day I caved. I followed them to the middle of the bridge when the morning sun was bright and warm on my skin, watched my then fearless eleven-year-old sister step backward off the edge like she’d done it a million times and had to swallow back a scream as she fell. Not even Laura’s smiling wave from the water below could quell the tremors racking my body. Jason tried to give me a pep talk, pointing out that the drop wasn’t high enough to hurt anything even if I belly flopped. But it was too late. My toes were curled around the rail as I looked down from the dizzying height—in reality no more than forty feet but it felt like forty miles.
“I can’t do it,” I told Jason.
“You can,” he said. “I’ll even jump with you.”
I tore my gaze away from the river to the hand my brother offered me, but only shook my head. I was up too high and the water was down too far. My heart was jackhammering in my chest, fear flooding my mouth with saliva that forced me to swallow endlessly.
“Don’t be such a baby, Brooke!” Laura shouted up.
“Give her a sec!” Jason called back, and then met my wild, frightened gaze with his steady one. He inclined his head in Laura’s direction. “She’s gonna hold it over your head for a really long time. I’ve seen you get more height at the rink than this, and water is a lot more forgiving than ice.” He smiled at me, but my lips stayed thin and pressed taut. He sighed. “You can’t do one jump? You can say it wasn’t fun or whatever and you won’t ever have to do it again. Come on, let’s go on three?”
