“Okay,” I agree, forcing down all the parts of me screaming that I should end this now. I should tell him it’s better if we don’t see each other again. Instead I let myself live in the dream a little longer.
He smiles, then descends the porch stairs and steps over the creek. “Good night,” he says, even though it’s morning, taking several steps backward up the driveway, like he can’t bring himself to turn away.
I don’t care where he’s taking me later tonight. The heat inside me is a roar. I only care that I’ll be seeing him again. And this feeling is starting to feel like air, like something I’ll die without.
I should be afraid that I’m losing control.
But I watch him walk away, and it’s only warmth I feel. A dizzying euphoria that must be akin to what others feel when they’re near a Goode.
NINE
Seated on my bedroom floor—listening to old Madonna tapes—I add a dozen stars to the skyline above the sketch of Oak. The portrait has become a record, an archive of all the moments we’ve shared.
A knock vibrates through the walls of the house, and I drop the notebook to the floor, hurrying out to the living room.
But I’m too late.
Archer reaches the front door before me, the shotgun already held at his side. “If you came for a tulip…,” he barks as he pulls open the door. “You can fuck off.”
There is a heavy pause, feet shifting against the rotted wood boards of the front porch. “I’m looking for Lark,” a voice answers.
I dart across the living room, peer over my brother’s shoulder, and find Oak staring back. He’s earlier than I expected—the sun not quite set—or I would have met him at the end of the driveway.
He stands with his hands slid into the pockets of his dark jeans, looking like he was blown in by a stray summer breeze and deposited on our front porch like Dorothy inThe Wizard of Oz.
Archer’s expression sours, pulls tight.
“It’s okay. I know him,” I tell my brother. But he shoots Oak a warning look before finally stepping back into the kitchen out of sight.
Oak blinks at me like he’s briefly forgotten why he’s here. “Sorry, should I not have come to the door?”
“No, it’s fine. My brother’s just a little jumpy.”
I hear Archer let out a grunt from the kitchen.
But Oak seems to relax. “You ready?”
I flash my eyes back into the kitchen, where Archer is frowning at me, eavesdropping, wondering who the hell this boy is. But I look back at Oak and nod.
In the driveway sits a rusted gray truck, the hood sunburned and peeling, the side mirror on the passenger side sheared off—it’s old, 1970s probably, the kind of thing that surely breaks down all the time. Hardly worth the scrap metal it’s made of.
“Is this yours?” I ask as he opens the passenger door for me.
“I bought it when I turned sixteen. Been repairing it ever since.” He smiles as if there’s more to the story, but he moves around the front of the truck, then climbs into the driver’s seat. Surprisingly, the engine fires right up.
The night is starry and clear, and he drives us to the far edge of town, past the lumber mill and the Rabbit Cross Bed and Breakfast, but when he turns down the red-gravel road, heading west, I flash a look at him. I know where we are, where he’s taking me, and a coil of tension rises up in my gut.
Ahead of us, the road opens into a clearing, where I can see three other cars are already parked on Cutwater Ridge, overlooking the abandoned quarry. This is the place Cole Campbell invited me to,back when the tulips first bloomed. A place where kids from school park their cars and kiss beneath the moonlight. A place I’m sure Archer visits all too often.
I’m about to tell Oak that I don’t want to be here, when he steers the truck away from the other cars and onto a narrower road that leads back into the trees—a road I didn’t know existed.
“You didn’t think I would take you to Cutwater Ridge, did you?” he says, shooting me a furtive look.
“Then whereareyou taking us?”
But he only winks at me.
The road is rocky and uneven and steep, but finally we emerge from the trees, and I realize where we are. The road has led us down the cliff, and now Oak parks the truck beside a large, glittering lake. The quarry has filled with water over the years, and there is a sandy beach leading down to the water’s edge.
