Chapter ELEVEN
“There’s Michigan!” Em tapped JD wildly on the arm.
“Who the hell would come to Maine—from Michigan—in the middle of winter? Don’t they have their own snow?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. We didn’t have Michigan yet.” Em pulled a piece of loose-leaf paper from the glove compartment and made a note. “Only thirty-one states to go. . . .
God, I can’t wait for summer and tourist plates.”
They were in JD’s car, heading for Dunkin’ Donuts. Em’s car would be in the shop for the next few days, and JD had become her unofficial driver. They’d developed a great routine: He’d wait for her to wake up, then they’d text, meet in JD’s driveway, and head straight for coffee and breakfast sandwiches.
Then off to run errands or walk through the mall. Today, Em was supposed to meet up with Chase around three—he wanted her to write him another poem. She didn’t really have a choice except to say yes. But first, Em wanted to go to Staples or maybe that stationery store up near Portland to find a new writing notebook. Since she obviously couldn’t tell Gabby what
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she was going through, her journal would have to sub for her best friend.
“So, what kind of notebook are you looking for? A small one, to stick in your bag? Or a big one, like a school notebook?”
“I’m not sure, actually.” Em had been contemplating the same question. “I already have my journal-journal. The one I write in before bed. But this one I want to use for writing projects, not just for my own personal thoughts. You know?
But I don’t want it to be too nice—I know I won’t use it if it’s too pretty.”
“Like my hat?” Today, JD was wearing a rust-orange fedora, complete with a blue plaid ribbon around the rim. “It’s a little too pretty, huh?” He grinned at her, waiting for her to laugh.
“Yeah, like your hat. Which makes you look like a crazed pimp or a character from a bad detective movie.” She laughed as they were pulling into the lot. “Thank god we’re here. I need that coffee if I’m going to deal with you and your hat all day.”
Fortified by hot coffees (lots of milk and one sugar for JD; a little cream and no sugar for Em) and egg-and-cheeses on croissants, they headed to Staples, which sat in a shopping center in the next town over. On the highway, Em sipped her coffee and stared out the window, ostensibly looking for license plates but also thinking about Zach. She’d purposefully put her phone on silent so that she wouldn’t be listening for a call from him all day.
Still, she couldn’t help thinking of yesterday afternoon.
She’d had JD drop her off, claiming that she was tutoring Zach in math—precalc, big test at the end of January. It wasn’t too 138
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much of a stretch. She and Zach were in the same math class, and she was better than him. She understood how to solve for the unknown.
Actually, Zach had invited her over to watch a movie, but when she’d arrived, he’d been riding his snowplow around in the backyard, making looping figure eights and shouting for her to hop on. She did, grabbing him from behind like she was on the back of a motorcycle, giggling and burying her nose in his scarf because it was so cold.
“You’re a good copilot!” he’d yelled over the drone of the engine. She’d squeezed him tighter.
Inside, they’d stripped down to T-shirts, socks, and underwear, sweating in some places and frozen in others, and collapsed on his bed with Netflix. They hadn’t watched much of the movie. They’d kissed, laughed, and rolled around in his big bed, in his clean sheets. Everything about him felt so . . . manly.
Crisp, plain bedclothes; simple, spare furnishings. The bookshelf in his room held SAT study books and textbooks from the poli-sci course he’d taken last summer at the local community college. He had stopped trying to put his hand down her pants.
They were just waiting until they could tell Gabby, and until then, Emily was so happy just kissing Zach in so many different ways, hard and long or soft and curious, touching his amazing stomach, grabbing his arms. Being underneath him and then crawling on top of him so that her hair formed a cave around their faces.
It felt so real. And so different from every other random hookup she’d ever had—drunk at a party, or in the front seat 139
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of a car, hip bones digging into gear shifts, or even the Steve Sawyer “after-school basement special,” as Gabby had taken to calling it.
The truth was, Em had never been in love. She knew that.
And beyond the fact that she had such strong feelings for Zach, Em had always been jealous of Gabby and Zach’s relationship as a separate entity—the idea of long-term partnership, of waking up and going to school every morning and knowing that you would hold the same person’s hand between classes. It was what her parents talked about—that feeling of “just knowing.”
And for the first time, she thought she did know. Yesterday, on Zach’s bed, he’d fallen asleep. Right there, with his head on her shoulder, after kissing for hours. She’d stroked his hair and stared at the ceiling while the credits of some car-chase movie rolled on the laptop at the foot of his bed. This was what it was like to really be with someone. This was what it would be like if she and Zach shared a bed, a room, a life—together. It had made her want to cry, because of how overwhelmed she was.
What if they got married? She could picture it. This was love.
“Em, did you hear me? I swear, Georgia just sped by.”
“Um. No, sorry, I didn’t see.” Em shifted in her seat, turning down the heat a notch. She looked at JD, studying his face.
The sideburns he’d started growing freshman year. The ridge of his nose, slightly crooked after falling from the highest tree in her yard years ago.
“If we missed Georgia because you were spacing out, I’ll kill you.”
Em couldn’t help it; she leaned over to check her phone.
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Thank god she did. Her stomach started doing somersaults when she saw there was a message from Zach. Movie date again?
She wished she could just teleport over to Zach’s house immediately.
“You know what? If I can’t find the notebook here, let’s just go home,” Em said, not caring how sketchy she sounded.
“I might need to stop by Zach’s again.”
“More math tutoring?”
“Yeah, more math. That test is going to be wicked hard.”
Em could hear her own defensive tone.
“Zach seems awfully preoccupied with his math score of late,” JD said just as they pulled into a parking spot. He put the car in park but left it on as he turned to face her. “And you, too. Where is this coming from? You were dying to spend half your winter break reviewing the quadratic equation? With Zach McCord?”
“It’s junior year. Every grade counts. We can’t all be super-geniuses.” She tried to keep her tone light as she moved to get out of the car. JD reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her.
“Em, I’m just saying. You should be careful. It’s starting to seem . . . weird.”
“Weird?” Em forced a laugh. “Come on, JD. Chill out. He barely understands the order of operations. “
“I’m chill, I’m chill. It’s just . . .” JD drew his eyebrows together. “It’s like . . . I feel like something’s up with you.”
“Nothing’s up with me. Come on. Let’s go.” Em grabbed her bag from the floor. She could feel JD’s eyes burning into 141
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her, and even when she’d placed her hand on the door handle, JD still hadn’t moved.
“Can I just say one thing?” he blurted out, and then, without waiting for her response, went on, “I think it’s weird that you’ve been spending half your winter vacation servicing the needs of your best friend’s boyfriend, while she’s off across the ocean.”
Em felt her heart stutter. She stared at JD, wide-eyed. It was a blatant accusation. “What. Are. You. Saying?” She tried to keep her face calm, but rising panic was making her feel flushed.
“Remember the other night? When you left on Christmas Eve? That was strange, Em. It wasn’t like you.”
“JD, stop it. You’re being ridiculous—” But as Em talked, fumbling with the lock on the passenger door, she felt her eyes get blurry and she could no longer see what she was doing.
Suddenly, the tears came hot and fast. She slumped back against the seat, eyes closed in defeat. Everything she’d been feeling the last few days overwhelmed her. She put her bag down between her feet.
JD cleared his throat and rolled down both their windows just a crack. The glass was fogging. The cold air sliced through the tension between them. “Em?”
For a couple seconds Em couldn’t say anything. And then she knew that she was going to tell.
“You’re right,” she finally spat out. “You’re right, okay?
The situation is weird. It’s weird because it’s true. I’ve been spending so much time with him—with Zach—because something is, like, going on between us. We’re . . . we’ve fallen for 142
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each other. When I left on Christmas Eve, it was that night . . .
I mean, you don’t want to hear about all this. But yeah. It’s happening.” Em didn’t know whether to be defiant or apologetic or embarrassed or what. She waited a few seconds, but JD didn’t respond. She rubbed her hands on her thighs.
“You know, it’s not like this came out of nowhere. It’s been building for a long time,” she went on. “And it’s real. We’re just waiting to tell Gabby when she gets home. And, JD, it’s been so hard, but I know it’s right. I mean, it’s wrong, I know that too.
But it’s one of those things . . . impossible to deny.”
He still didn’t speak. Was he surprised? Em didn’t think she’d ever seen JD’s face look the way it did then: ashen, angry.
“Are you serious,” he said, finally, slowly; it was more of a statement than a question.
“Yes.”
JD was staring straight ahead. His hands were in his lap.
“Did you know? Like, when you went over there the other night, did you know that was going to happen?”
“No. I mean, of course not.” Em had to keep telling herself that.
“He did.”
“What do you mean?” In her panic, Em thought for a moment that Zach might actually have discussed this with JD.
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s who he is, Em. You really think he would have invited you over on Christmas Eve if he didn’t think he could get some?” JD was blinking a lot. Was this what it was going to be like when they told Gabby?
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“It’s not getting some, JD. It’s not like that. I know it seems messed up, but I think we’re good together. It just feels right.
We’re going to explain it to Gabby.”
“I don’t.” JD almost spit the words. Em found herself recoiling.
“You don’t what?” She tried to keep the tremor from her voice.
“I don’t think you’re good together.” Here, JD used exagger-ated finger-quotes, mocking her.
Anger flared in Em’s stomach. “Fine. You know what? I don’t care what you think. You don’t understand. I didn’t expect you to.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand. Zach uses people, Em.
Can’t you see that? And really? You’re going to explain it to Gabby? You’ve said yourself that Zach is her whole world. You think she’s going to understand?”
Now the anger turned to alarm, ringing inside of her—
shrill, hollow. What if JD was right? What had she started?
She opened her mouth to defend herself, but JD raised a hand, cutting her off.
“Stop. I don’t want to hear any more.” He put the car in reverse and started to back out of the spot. He’d apparently decided that the shopping mission was over.
“Oh, so we’re done talking?” Em brought her hand down on the dashboard, more forcefully than she’d intended to.
“You’re always doing this.”
“What am I always doing, Em?” JD slammed on the brakes and glared at her.
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“Making your high-and-mighty decisions. Like deciding to drive off, which obviously means that we’re done talking. So you can just go home and just—just—look down on me without even understanding the situation.”
“Fine,” JD said, pulling back into the parking spot with an angry jerk. “You want to go buy a journal, buy a journal.
Maybe your journal won’t have any opinions.” He waved to the door. “Go.”
“What does that even mean? What are you talking about?”
She was so angry she could hardly see. But it was more than that. She felt like JD had reached into her stomach and squeezed.
“I have a right to my opinions, Em. You’re hurting people.”
Here, his voice broke a bit, unexpectedly. “You’re acting like a spoiled child. And for someone who’s not even worth it. Not even remotely worth it.”
“Shut up. Just shut up.” Em scrunched down in her seat and told herself she wouldn’t let JD see how much he had hurt her.
“Just take me home.”
“Why don’t I just take you to Zach’s? That’s where you want to go, anyway.”
“Fine. Why don’t you.”
The silence in the car was hideous. JD took off the orange hat and threw it forcefully onto the backseat. Em watched him, out of the corner of her eye, running a hand through his hair over and over.
Outside Zach’s house—she couldn’t believe JD actually brought her there—she took a deep breath and looked at him one more time. He stared stonily ahead. She got out of the car 145
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without saying a word, and slammed the door. For a second, as JD peeled out of the driveway and headed home, Em could only stand still, breathing hard. Then, with a firm shake of her shoulders, she walked up the front path to Zach’s house.
“Hey, you,” Zach said, sweeping her into a hug just inside his front door. Zach’s shirt smelled so good that she quickly bur-rowed into his arms. He held her tight, and she felt the familiar warmth at the bottom of her stomach. She wanted to reach up and kiss him, but JD’s words rang in her ears. Zach is an a*shole.
You are hurting people. Gabby, Gabby, Gabby. This wasn’t right.
“Zach, I’m nervous,” she said, her mouth pressing into the soft cotton.
“Nervous?” He pulled her to arm’s length. The front door still stood open. “About what?”
She drew in a shaky breath. “About this,” she said, waving her hand between them. “About us. About why you haven’t said anything to Gabby yet. Or why I haven’t.”
“Em, we’ve hardly spoken to her. She called me once from Barcelona, the day after Christmas, but I barely said hello before she had to go. What am I going to do, throw it in before I say good-bye? We didn’t even talk, she just, like, gave me a run-down of the hotel suite.”
“Yeah, but we need to say something. Maybe—maybe I should say something.”
For a second Zach’s eyes turned dark. “I thought we agreed I’d handle it,” he said. His tone of voice had an uncomfortable edge to it.
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“But I need to know that you’re going to. I need to know that we’re going to do this the right way.”
Just like that, he was all gentle again. “Em, of course I’m going to. I promise. It should wait until she gets back, though.
So we can talk in person?” He touched her chin, and she shivered, and he closed the door. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay.”
He bent down to kiss her, softly, his hand holding the back of her neck. Then he leaned away.
“You know, I like that about you. You see the big picture.”
The outside corners of his eyes were slanted down in a concerned way. “Do you wanna come in?”
Em grinned. “Yeah, but I have to be home at three to meet Ch—to meet someone.” She felt a little weird telling him about her arrangement with Chase. It was a bit too hard to explain.
Zach gave her a tight-lipped smile—one that said, Buck up, kiddo—and kissed her on the forehead, half jokingly, before pulling her toward the TV room.
Zach was right—telling Gabby in person was better. Especially for a situation like this one. Especially for Gabby, who they both cared so much about. See? He’d thought about it. Screw JD
and his condescending attitude. She knew what she was doing.
“Sorry about the mess,” Zach said, plopping down on the couch in front of several cardboard boxes. Clothes, picture frames, and books were arranged in seemingly haphazard piles around the room.
“What’s all this?” Em knelt down by a pile of cloth-bound books. She loved old books—their dusty smell, their thick 147
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pages, the random notes and inscriptions that often personal-ized their pages.
“Just going through some old crap,” Zach said.
“These are awesome, Zach.” Em had found a pile of old Life magazines, crisp and delicate, with huge black-and-white photographs.
“Yeah, those are pretty amazing, huh? They used to be . . .
They were my dad’s,” he said softly.
“Oh, wow.” Em didn’t really know what to say. She remembered that Claire Lewin had been Zach’s date when his mom got remarried—really quickly, it seemed, less than a year after Mr. McCord’s death. Em had overheard Claire in the locker room saying that the whole event “felt off, like a really awkward moment on reality TV.”
“Yeah, he loved photojournalism. So there are lots of these books and magazines downstairs. Plus his clothes . . . My stepdad wants to clear things out a little to finish the basement and make room for the new pool table. So I’m just sorting it out into what-to-keep and what-to-dump.”
Em nodded and tilted her head a bit, but didn’t say anything.
“It’s kind of hard.” Immediately, he cleared his throat. “But it’s cool we finally got a pool table down there. I love pool.”
“That’s good, then,” Em said gently.
“I’ll have to teach you to play sometime.” He grinned but didn’t look at her as he reached for a dark-blue sweater, thickly cable-knit, and held it up in the air in front of him.
“I hope you’re putting that in the ‘keep’ pile,” she said. “It would look good on you.”
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Zach blinked and looked down, folding the sweater on his knees. Em could almost feel him picturing himself in his dad’s old sweater. Shit.
“Never mind,” she said. “You know what we should do?
We should go sweater shopping. Get you something new!
Tomorrow. We could go to the old mall, or we could even mini–road trip up to Portland. It’ll be fun!”
“Okay,” Zach said, putting the sweater aside and smiling at her. She moved to sit next to him on the couch, and he ran a hand through her hair. “I love how your hair feels. It’s so smooth and soft. I could touch it all day long.”
Em blushed and couldn’t help doing a mental comparison of her stick-straight locks and Gabby’s bouncy curls, of which Em had always been jealous. Once, in junior high, Gabby had offered to curl Em’s hair for a dance. The results had been horrendous—Em’s longer face and big eyes looked cartoonish within the swooping helmet of hair-sprayed dark curls. “Whatever,” Gabby had said, turning on her shower. “I’d kill for your hair any day of the week.” And she’d waited, humming and dancing and retouching her makeup, while Em had washed out the spirals and the spray.
But Zach obviously liked it, her center-parted, simple cut.
She felt a rush of vindication. She practically jumped on him, pressing his shoulders back into the couch and kissing him hard.
He kissed her back with just as much ferocity.
Which is why it felt so terrible when, not five minutes later, she heard the trademark bouncy tune of Gabby’s ringtone coming from her phone, buried somewhere in her bag.
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“Shit, I’ve gotta get that,” she said, disentangling herself from Zach.
“Aw, what’s more important than this?” He grabbed her hand, still breathing heavily.
“Zach, that’s Gabs’s ring. Lemme go.” She found the phone and picked up, breathlessly, on the last ring. She signaled for Zach to be quiet. Gabby would kill her if she didn’t pick up. Just dialing probably cost a fortune.
“I’ll be quiet as a mouse,” Zach whispered—too loudly. Em swatted at his shoulder.
“Hey, Gabs,” she said brightly.
“What’s up? What are you doing?” Gabby sounded far away.
“Oh, I’m just . . . I’m just at home, watching TV. It’s freezing outside.”
“What are you watching? I can’t understand anything on the TVs over here. Times like these, I wish I’d taken Spanish instead of French.”
“Just channel surfing.” The room seemed oppressively warm, and Zach kept poking her, tickling her, which only made it worse. The tips of her ears were burning. She got up and walked out of his reach.
“Well, I’ll be home in less than a week! Three days!”
“That’s great, Gabs.”
“Are you okay? You sound weird.”
“I feel a little weird. Must be something I ate,” Em said.
“Poor Emmie! Get JD to bring you some ginger ale or something.” And then, to someone in the background: “Okay, okay, 150
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I’m coming.” She sighed, and groaned to Em, “We have to go to a museum. Can’t wait to see you! Tell Zachie I said hi. . . . I haven’t spoken to him in two whole days!”
“You’re breaking up, Gabs. I can barely hear you. Enjoy the museum.”
“’K, love you times seven million!”
“I love you, too.” Em hung up. The phone felt like a stone in her hand, and suddenly her whole body felt ice cold.
Zach came up behind her, putting his arms around her waist and his head in the crook of her neck, but she pulled away.
“Zach, that was Gabby. We have to be careful. She could have heard you! I mean, do you even understand how crushed she would be if she had any idea what we were doing right now?”
Zach ran his hand through his light brown hair, which flopped right back down into place. “Em, yeah. We talked about this. No need for Gabby to know anything about us.”
“Okay, but.” Em bit her lip and tried to calm herself. “Yet, you mean. She doesn’t need to know yet but you are going to end things with her when she’s back. Right? I know I’m probably driving you crazy about this, but it’s just really important to me. She doesn’t deserve to be lied to.”
Zach was back to dumping sweaters into a large trash bag.
“I hear you, Em,” he said.
Oh god, this was going all wrong. She didn’t want him to be mad. “Okay,” Em said. “Good. But I just need to know—we should just decide—when. I mean, I thought you said you hadn’t talked to Gabby since the day after Christmas,” she went on, 151
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keeping her tone casual, so she wouldn’t sound like she was nag-ging.
“Or the day after,” Zach said casually. “Whatever, it was like a minute-long conversation.” He surveyed the piles around the room. “I gotta take some of this stuff to Goodwill. Want me to drop you off on the way?”
Em sighed and grabbed a bag. On the way to the door, he took it from her, then placed both bags on the tile floor in the foyer, so he could grab her and kiss her. She couldn’t help but melt into him, his soapy smell, his warm lips.
He grinned at her. “My little worrier,” he said. Then he picked up both bags and headed out the door, leaving Em to follow him. And she did.
Chase was sitting on her stoop, waiting for her, when they pulled into her driveway. His expression was unfocused, like he was dreaming with his eyes open. He sat there clenching and unclenching his bare fists. She wondered how long he’d been sitting there.
“What’s Singer doing here?” Zach asked.
“I’m helping him with a project,” Em said. Now was not the time to get into the whole saga of Chase and the mystery girl.
“’K, babe.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I had a great time this afternoon.”
“See you tomorrow, right?” she said as she opened the door.
“You got it,” Zach answered with a smile.
Sometimes Zach seemed so oblivious. Like, not as affected by how huge this situation was.
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She and Chase both watched as Zach zoomed away.
“Come on in,” Em said. “The next poem is . . . I kind of need to keep working on it for a little while.”
Chase wordlessly followed her inside. He hung his coat next to hers, unlaced his shoes, and lined them up neatly next to the bench in the front hall.
“Lots of salt on the roads,” he said. “I don’t want to trek it through your house.”
Em had never seen Chase so pale, or so polite. He sat tentatively on a stool in the kitchen and looked as if he didn’t know where to put his hands. His wrinkled, ratty sweatshirt was frayed around the collar and stained at the cuffs. His jeans were ripped at the knees and his eyes had circles under them.
Chase Singer, preppiest of the preps, going for hobo chic? It was unheard of. But it was more than his fashion choices. Chase looked haunted, as though he hadn’t slept in days. Em kept waiting for his bravado to emerge, to hear a smart-ass comment. It never came.
“You want some hot chocolate? I could make it while you write,” Chase said.
“Hot chocolate? Sure. That sounds great.” Chase Singer offering to do something nice? This day could not get any more bizarre. “Thanks, Chase.”
Once her laptop was open, Em couldn’t stop her emotions from surging and flowing onto the page. Her confusion about Zach, about his feelings for her and hers for him, came pouring out of her fingertips. She wrote fast and furious, banging at the keys while Chase banged around by her stove, warming some 153
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milk, digging around in her cupboards for cinnamon and cayenne pepper.
It felt almost like her fingers and brain were possessed by something else, the way the words came so freely. And although the poem didn’t name names and didn’t once say “him” or
“he”—so Chase could use it too—it was clearly coming from her own experience, and that made it real. Powerful. Em could feel in her bones that it was a good poem, even better than the first. She was going to call it “Unstoppable.”
“Sometimes I feel like Ty could just completely vanish at any second.” Chase stood next to her, reading over her shoulder, holding a steaming mug of cocoa. It smelled delicious.
“Who is—oh. Ty?” Em didn’t want to pry. He’d tell her, or he wouldn’t. She knew what it was like to want to hold the heart’s truths as close as possible. To know that once you spoke them aloud, they might evaporate or tangle further.
“Yeah, Ty. She loved the last poem. Thanks.” Chase absentmindedly stirred his cocoa as Em printed a copy of the new poem and retrieved it from her father’s study. She watched as Chase removed some books from his backpack. He placed the sheet of paper between two of them and repacked the bag.
“Don’t want to lose it,” he said sheepishly.
“You really like her, don’t you?” Em blurted.
For a moment Chase looked wary, and Em saw some of his usual bluster and defensiveness. But then his face seemed to collapse, and he just shrugged. “Thanks a lot, Winters. You need me to wash out the mugs?”
She waved away the offer. “I’m a master dishwasher-loader,”
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she joked. Chase gave her a quick smile and raised two fingers to his forehead, an old-fashioned salute. She followed him to the front door and locked it behind him.
Then she returned to the kitchen, sat down, and took a deep breath. Rolled her head around on her neck a few times, stretching. That’s when she saw Chase’s football playbook on the counter—of all the surprises Chase had pulled that afternoon, this was the biggest one. Em couldn’t believe he’d forgotten it.
She raced to the front door and opened it to shout after him. But he’d gone; the yard was dim and quiet. She was about to shut the door when the tinkling sound of female laughter caught her ear. It was faint but somehow sounded nearby. She poked her head farther out, looking to see where the sound was coming from. But it was fading already. And all she could see were three dark crows overhead, circling. They looked sooty and ominous against the sky and she slammed the door against them with particular strength.
Dinner was chicken and roasted tomatoes with her parents, who basically spent the whole time discussing, without much input from Em, why she’d be better off taking AP Bio next year instead of AP Environmental Science. Afterward, Em decided to go for a walk. “I just need some air,” she told her mom, who was loading the dishwasher and humming.
Things were so confusing. Zach and Gabby. Her fight with JD. How stony and serious Chase had looked today. She wandered down her street, arms wrapped around herself, hat pulled down over her ears. The night was silent and her footsteps 155
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echoed around the lawns and woods that lined the street. She thought about Zach’s snowplow and Gabby’s curling iron and Chase’s playbook. . . .
And before she knew it, she was at the tiny playground at the end of her road, the one shared by neighborhood families, with just a slide and a swing set and a wooden seesaw.
Em swung open the creaky gate and wandered into the deserted little park, remembering how she and JD used to play here a long time ago. It looked so small now, so underused.
She could hardly believe she once thought of it as vast and exciting.
She sat down on one of the swings. Its chain still shrieked with every motion. Some things hadn’t changed, at least. She pumped her legs listlessly, letting the cold air chill her even through her coat, hoping it would clear her head, help shake loose the trapped feeling in her chest and throat.
Was this what love was? Complicated, sad, messy? Why couldn’t life just go back to how it used to be, when the biggest problem was who got to go down the slide first? She sighed and looked up at the stars, shoving her hands into her pockets with a quick shiver.
Deep in her peacoat, her hand brushed against a piece of paper. She pulled it out and saw that her name was on the outside fold, but didn’t recognize the handwriting. She opened the paper and as she deciphered the words, her breathing got increasingly shallow.
Sometimes sorry isn’t enough.
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in the still, dark playground. For a second she thought she saw a flash of white beyond the seesaw.
Without waiting another second, Em bolted toward the gate, totally shaken. How long had this note been in her pocket? Who put it there? Sometimes sorry isn’t enough. The words jumbled in her head.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her this very second, following her. Her heart hammered heavily as she ran the rest of the way down her block and back to her house, knowing that even inside, she wouldn’t feel safe.
Sometimes sorry isn’t enough. She didn’t know what the note meant. Not really. But she could tell by the cold, black feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that it was true.
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