I frown, thinking about a kid needing a new heart and wondering how someone can live being so sick.
None of this seems to bother her because she sighs and falls backward into the bushes like it doesn’t matter. Maybe she’s used to it. Something else I don’t understand. “I’ve always wanted a dog, but Mason is allergic, and we don’t want it triggering anything.”
“What about cats?”
She groans. “No cats, either. My mom doesn’t want to deal with a litter box.”
I watch her close her eyes and wonder if she’s thinking about her sick brother or the pets she’ll never have. “I have a cat. She’s a gray tabby. Her name is Celine Dion.”
She looks at me curiously. “You named your cat Celine Dion?”
“She meows all night at the top of her lungs. You can come over and hang out with her whenever you want.”
This makes her eyes light up. “Really?”
A group runs by, laughing, and I watch their feet pass, hoping they’re oblivious to our hiding space. I’m relieved when they leave as quickly as they came. “You sure scared Robbie.” She shrugs again like it wasn’t a big deal. Except to me, it was. I sit up as straight as I can, considering where we are, and stick out my hand. “I’m Julia. Julia Marrow.”
She eyes my hand curiously and gives it a shake with a firm grip. “Alex Pestano.”
Alex. I repeat her name over and over in my head, never having met a girl with the name Alex before.
“Do you want to go swing?”
Her question catches me off guard, and my stomach flips. “I don’t want anyone to know I was crying.”
She kneels in front of me, her head smooshing inside the bush above her, and uses the bottom of her shirt to wipe at my cheeks. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
“Robbie probably already has,” I grumble, heat crawling up my cheeks, embarrassed that the one boy I despise the most made me cry.
“That’s okay. I’ll just tell everyone he wet his pants when I threatened to punch him.”
As exciting as that rumor would be, our school has a strict no bullying policy. It’s bad enough that she already threatened to deck him. “You’d get in trouble for sure.”
Her grin only widens, as if she doesn’t mind a little bit of discipline. That’s when I notice she’s looking at my shirt. “You like Bruce Springsteen?”
“I love him,” I tell her seriously, but I’m also surprised because no one has ever mentioned knowing who he is before.
“Me too,” she says, her smile wide and her eyes sparkling. “I really like his stuff from the eighties. I love the eighties, but right now, I’m obsessed with ‘Born to Run,’ and that’s not the eighties,” she tells me, as if she’s an expert.
“I love the eighties, too,” I tell her excitedly. When she laughs, it makes my stomach swoop like I’m on a roller coaster. “My parents listen to them a lot.”
“So does my mom.” Another group runs past, and she glances at the opening and crawls out. “Come on. There’s no one on the swings. I bet if we go high enough, it’ll feel like we’re flying. We can pretend we’re on our way to the beach and sing Bruce at the top of our lungs.” She waits for me to take her hand like she knows there’s no way I’m not going to.
“Or we can pretend we’re flying to Tasmania,” I offer while she helps me out of the bushes and onto my feet.
“A beach in Tasmania. Sounds perfect.” She gives my hand a squeeze, and I allow her to lead me to the two empty swings, “Born to Run” ripping from our mouths, off-key and perfect.
Chapter One
Julia, eighteen years old
Where are you?
The tassel hooked to my navy blue cap dangles in front of my eyes, and I shove it away with a huff while I check my phone for the millionth time. When no answer comes through, I glance over my shoulder, scanning the crowd lined up behind me.
“Gentle reminder that if I see any phones, I will be confiscating them until the end of the ceremony.”
I quickly shove my phone inside the sewn pocket of my gown before Dr. Radly passes. More orders are tossed at us, including a two minute warning, and I check the line again as if Alex is going to magically appear.
