Maddox blinked once, processing. “In the woods?”
“What? You’ve never seen anyone do yoga outside?”
“Only soccer moms with nothing better to do while their rugrats are in school,” Mason retorted.
Offended, I snorted. “Are you comparing me to a soccer mom?”
Mason flashed his dimples. “If the spandex fits.”
I rolled my eyes.
Maddox casually hit his twin on the shoulder, gaining his attention. “We should go before Coach curses us out for being the last ones to practice.”
“Thanks for the lesson, Freckles.” Mason winked. “I’ll be sure to return the favor.”
“Can’t wait,” I muttered, watching the two of them take off in the opposite direction I was going. When they got to the path, they broke out into a jog, and I stood in the clearing, watching their forms until the trees swallowed them up.
I kickedoff my shoes at the door, leaving them in a heap, and padded upstairs in my bare feet, the hardwood cool and smooth, past the spare bedroom we’d shoved full of things we didn’t know what to do with yet and into my room, where cardboard boxes had finally been replaced by actual furniture.
I flipped on my lamp, one of our thrift store finds. Warm yellow light spilled across my desk, my bookshelf, and my bed, no longer inflatable but a real mattress on a frame with sheets that smelled like lavender.
Crawling into bed with my laptop, I propped pillows behind my back, pulling my deep green comforter up over my legs before opening my computer and waiting for it to wake from sleep mode. I put on a movie, ready to rot the rest of the day in bed. I was halfway throughNew Moon, my least favoriteTwilightmovie, when my computer dinged with a notification. A message from ToxicCharm.
I didn’t have many friends in this world outside of Mom. Well, any really, except for ToxicCharm. That was her username. We’d never met, and if we hadn’t video chatted over the years, she could have easily been a fifty-year-old man, but my mom taught me to be smarter than that.
Keegan was her actual name. Keegan Shaw, and we met in an online forum. She was seventeen, like me, with shoulder-lengthauburn hair she usually wore in a messy bun and freckles across her nose. She was an army brat kid, and it turned out we had a lot in common, things I could talk about with her that I couldn’t with anyone else. It was more than the moving constantly that connected us. She was also raised by a single mom. Both her parents were in the military, but her father died in combat when she was young. We often talked about death. Not in a morbid way. Well, maybe a little morbid.
And life. And everything in between. The messy parts. The complicated parts. The parts that didn’t fit into neat boxes or Instagram captions.
She was easy to talk to in a way I’d never been with anyone else. Maybe because we’d never met in person. There was safety in distance. We talked about meeting, always in the future, as in a someday-wouldn’t-that-be-crazy-to-finally-meet way, but I wasn’t sure either one of us actually wanted that someday to happen because meeting would make us real.
And I didn’t want to risk losing the one person who actually knew me.
I logged into the messaging app we used, the one that promised end-to-end encryption and disappearing messages if we wanted them. Her chat popped up instantly, two messages sent in quick succession.
ToxicCharm:Where have you been?
ToxicCharm:I thought you got kidnapped.
Not funny and not an impossible assumption considering what I learned about Elmwood.
Me:Sorry. Been knee-deep in boxes for weeks. Can finally see the floor.
I watched the typing dots appear immediately.
ToxicCharm:Oh, right. The big move.I totally spaced. How’s the new house?
I stared at my room for a second.
Me:It’s cute.
Me:And I never want to leave.
ToxicCharm:That attached already?
Me:And it has NOTHING to do with a boy.
Keegan was boy-crazy, and I smiled as the typing dots appeared instantly, faster than before, and I could practically hear her excited squeal through the screen.
