Page 13 of All the way home

Waving him off, Rena shakes her head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“What Band-Aid is there to rip off?” He fidgets in his seat. “It sounded kind of like a big deal.”

“It wasn’t,” she snaps, a little more waspishly than intended.

Lucas glowers.

“It’s just Mom,” Rena tells him after a moment, even though it’s a small offering. “She’s being overbearing, and Kieran’s being avoidant. What else is new?”

Lucas nods. By the pinch of his lips, she can tell he’s not quite happy with how little she’s confiding in him, but something is better than nothing.

And he knows that she’s not interested in discussing Kieran’s issues with him.

Rena turns her attention to the whirling storm outside, which does nothing to alleviate her anxiety.

“It’ll be safe,” Lucas assures her, voice low, as if he can read her mind. “They won’t take off if it’s not safe.”

She nods woodenly.

“I was just thinking about our first flight together,” Lucas says.

It’s a transparent attempt to distract her. She gives him the stink-eye momentarily, then gives in. “Oh?”

“The school trip,” he says. “What was that—grade ten?”

Rena nods absently until she registers his words and shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“It was in grade eleven,” she reminds him.

“No, we hadn’t been together for a year yet,” Lucas says, shaking his head. “Remember? The school trip was in grade ten.”

“We got together in grade ten. The fall before I turned sixteen. The school trip was in grade eleven, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’d definitely been together a year.”

“Had we?” he furrows his brow.

“I have receipts,” Rena says dryly, thinking about the photo album she has somewhere on a computer. It’s not on the cloud, so she can’t access it from here, but she can picture where it lives in the documents folder. “Anyway, our real first flight together was over the summer after grade ten. You brought me with you to Denver when your aunt got married.”

“How do you even remember that?”

Trying not to flinch, Rena lets her hair fall over her eyes, surprised that the question hits her directly in the center of her chest. “You don’t?”

Lucas frowns.

Rena folds her arms. She reminisces on the trip fondly. They’d held hands the entire way, and he hadn’t even said anything when her fingers got sweaty.

“It was a long time ago,” he says, frowning. Then, he asks, “Are you sure it wasn’t grade ten?”

With a sigh, Rena nudges Kieran’s leg.

He’s staring across the gate. When she follows his gaze, she sees Not-Josiah sitting and frowning down at his phone.

She nudges him again.

Kieran pops out one headphone, glowering at her. “What?”

“What grade was our school trip?” Rena asks.