Back the cry creeping up my chest.

I want to go to her, but I can’t make a move with everyone around. I don’t want to see my mother, and I don’t want Mr. Brandt to see me like this. Dirty and bruised.

I just want to grab Tate’s hand and run.

“You can show him the moves you and Will learned at Karate this summer,” Mr. Brandt says, and I stop breathing. The sob held hostage in my throat turns into a fire in my belly.

Will? Geary?

My eyes shift left to right like I’m searching for an explanation, but I can’t find one. She was still seeing him?

“Well, it’s nice that you had someone to spend time with while Jared was gone.” My mother pops the top on a Coke. “And I think the distance is a good thing. You two were getting pretty close.”

My mom smiles at Tate and nudges her leg. Tate looks away, embarrassment in her eyes. “Gross. We’re just friends.” She scrunches up her nose, and my breath catches.

I duck completely behind the boulder, leaning back and dropping my head. Not now. Don’t do this to me now!

I shake my head from side to side, the filth on my hands grinding with the sweat on my palms as I clench my fists.

“You’re a good girl, Tate.” I hear my mom say. “I’m not good with boys, I guess.”

“Girls are tough, too, Katherine,” Tate’s dad chimes in, and I hear him unpacking their picnicking supplies. “Jared’s a good kid. You two will figure it out.”

“I should’ve had a girl,” she responds, and I clamp my hands over my ears. Too many voices. My head feels like it’s in a vice grip, and I can’t shake free. My eyes burn, and I want to scream.

I blinked and looked around the pristine, shining water. I haven’t stepped foot in this park in over three years. When I was fourteen, I was sure this would be the place where I kissed Tate for the first time.

But then it just became a reminder of what I’d lost. Or what I thought I’d lost.

On the last day I came here, I had reached a point where I couldn’t be disappointed anymore. I couldn’t listen to anyone else not want me.

So I shut down. Completely and immediately. That’s the thing about change.

It can be gradual. Slow and almost unnoticeable.

Or it can be sudden, and you don’t even know how you could’ve been any other way.

Becoming hard at heart isn’t an intersection in your brain where you have a choice to turn left or right. It’s coming to a dead end, and you just keep going, over the cliff, unable to stop the inevitable, because the truth is you just don’t want to.

There is freedom in the fall.

“Jared,” a hesitant voice sounded behind me. My shoulders straightened, and I turned around. Oh, what the hell?

“What are you doing here?” I asked my mother.

And then I remembered that her car had been in the garage when I got home from the race. I’d thought she’d been gone for the weekend as usual.

She was hugging herself against the evening chill, dressed in her jeans and long-sleeved cardigan. Her chocolate brown hair—same shade as mine—hung loose to her shoulders, and she wore brown boots up to her knees.

Since getting sober, my mom was beautiful all of the time, and as much as she pissed me off, I was glad I was the spitting image of her. I didn’t think I could stare at my father’s eyes in the mirror every day.

Lucky Jax.

“The front door was open.” She inched closer, her eyes searching mine for a way in. “I heard what happened with Tate.”

Not going to happen.

“How in the hell did you know I’d be here?”

Her small smile confused me. “I have my ways,” she mumbled.

I wondered what it was, too, because my mother wasn’t that clever.

She sat down next to me, our legs dangling off the small cliff with a five foot drop to the pond. “You haven’t been here in years.” She acted like she knew me.

“How would you know?”

“I know a lot more than you think,” she said, looking down to the pond. “I know you’re in trouble right now.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t start acting like a mother now.” I pushed off the ground and stood up.

“Jared, no.” My mother stood up and faced me. “If I ever ask anything of you, it’s that you listen to me now. Please.” Her tone threw me off. It was shaky and unusually serious.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 739