“Teaching?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not big on standing in front of people and talking. Besides, to become a teacher I’d have to go to college. Gerry moved us around so much, my grades are shit. I can’t get a scholarship and I’m not too keen on spending the rest of my life in debt up to my eyeballs. I’ll probably get some restaurant job and write on the side.” I glanced down at my hands. “I know that’s not very ambitious…”
Evan rested his chin on his forearms, watching me. “I’d like to read more of your poetry someday. If you don’t mind, I mean.”
“You would?”
“I would.”
I imagined Evan reading my collection. The poems I wrote in the darkest part of the night with ghosts whispering in my ear. “They’re not exactly light reading.”
“Are they about your scar?” he asked quietly.
“Some. They say to write what you know.”
Evan nodded and I could hear the unasked question.
“Car accident,” I said automatically. “When I was thirteen. Killed my mother and my uncle, and I…got cut. On a window. I mean… Anyway that’s how I got the scar.”
I looked away. I’d lied those words a hundred times and the words always rolled right off my tongue. But with Evan, it felt wrong. Like I was insulting his intelligence.
“It must’ve been hard to lose family like that,” he said.
And hell if I nearly told him he was only half right, and my uncle wasn’t anyone to be mourned. I wanted to spill my goddamn guts to Evan, and tell him the truth about my scar. He was putting crack after crack in the seal I tried to keep so airtight. I kept my mouth shut.
After a short silence, Evan said, “Where is your dad?”
“He died in Afghanistan when I was two.”
“Damn. I’m sorry, Jo.” He shook his head, his expression pained. It wasn’t pity—I can smell pity from a mile away and it smells like dog shit. Evan’s tone sounded like regret. Like he’d arrived at the scene of a disaster but it was too late to help.
“Yeah, well, what can you do?” I leaned my elbows on my knees. “So…What about your family?”
“Not much to say there.” He smiled wryly. “Why? What have you heard?”
I smirked. “Plenty. Rumor-mongers can suck it.”
“Yes, they can,” he agreed, and his smiled turned genuine. The air between us warmed and I sort of wished I’d brought a bathing suit to swim in.
“What about your real parents?” I asked. “Do they know where you are? Do you know who they are?”
He shook his head, and the heaviness in his eyes I’d seen when I first arrived returned. “No. They left me at a fire station in Halston when I was three. I got bounced around to a bunch of foster homes until the Salingers took me in three years ago.”
Another vision bloomed in my mind, and this one hurt—all thorns. A little blond boy, wandering alone into the driveway of a firehouse. Crying and confused and maybe calling for his mama…
I’d like to be a firefighter.
I flinched and pretended to be swiping away a mosquito. “Have the Salingers officially adopted you?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem much different from foster kid limbo. I mean, I have their name now, but I feel like a guest in the house. A guest who’s overstayed his welcome.” He pushed off from the wall again, to the middle of the deep end. “Jesus, that sounds pathetic, doesn’t it?”
I shrugged. “I get the picture.”
“I think they plan to cut me loose at the end of the year, too. Except Harris needs me. He’ll probably kick me out of his house and then offer me a job right after.”
“Can he do that?”
He shrugged. “I turned eighteen last month. He’s got no legal reason to keep me. I don’t think he was onboard with the whole adoption in the first place. Norma’s idea. But Shane is too sick and Merle too stupid to handle the business, so I’m useful to him.”
“But you won’t stay in Iowa,” I said.
“No. I’m leaving no matter what.”
No matter what. My brain unhelpfully offered up some math: twenty-two days left until graduation.
I inwardly scoffed. So what? He’s leaving, good for him. You’re going to have your own problems to deal with in twenty-two days. What do you care what Evan Salinger does or doesn’t do? So what if he leaves and you never see him again?
Yeah, so fucking what?
I kicked at a dead leaf too close to my lounger and looked up through my hair to see Evan still treading water, still watching me.
“What?” I said.
“The thing I told you earlier, about what I’d lost?”
“Yeah?”
“I was talking about…a remnant. A scrap of paper that was left with me at the fire station. It was pinned to my shirt. A note with my mother’s handwriting, I think.” He nodded to himself. “No, I know it was her writing.”
“What did it say?” I asked, my hard voice broken down to a whisper.