“Fine,” I said. I brushed off some of the wet leaves that had stuck to my ankles, mostly so he wouldn’t see how flustered I was.
“Good,” he said. He started walking again, and I followed behind, careful to put my feet where I saw him place his, not wanting another mishap. In what seemed like only a few more seconds, I was following Henry out of the woods, blinking in the brighter sunlight, and realizing I was just two streets away from my house. “You know your way from here?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” I said, slightly insulted.
Henry just shook his head and smiled, the first real smile I’d seen since meeting him again. “It’s not like you have the greatest sense of direction,” he said. I opened my mouth to protest this, and he went on, “I just had to help you find your way out of the woods.” He looked at me evenly for a moment, then added, “And it wasn’t even the first time.” Then he turned and walked away, leaving me to try and figure out what he meant.
A moment later, when he’d passed out of sight, it hit me. The first time we’d met had been in these very same woods. As I walked home, shielding my eyes against the sun, so bright after the darkness of the woods. I realized that I’d been so caught up in thinking about how things with him had ended, I’d almost forgotten how they had begun.
“Taylor, where have you been?” my mother asked when I returned, her eyes widening as she took in the scratches on my legs. I’d been trying to sneak back to my room quietly, hoping that everyone would still be asleep, but no such luck. My mom was unpacking what looked like practically a kitchenful of paper bags from the PocoMart, the closest thing to a grocery store in Lake Phoenix. There were bigger supermarkets, but they were a good half hour drive away.
“Just walking,” I said vaguely as I glanced around the kitchen, not meeting her eye. I saw that the coffeemaker was still empty—my mother was a tea drinker—which meant that, two hours after I’d left, my father was still asleep.
“I ran into Paul Crosby at the market,” she said, referring to Henry’s dad. I felt my face start to get hot, and was just grateful that she’d run into him before his sons had a chance to report back about my getting lost in the woods. “In the dairy aisle. He said they’re living next door to us now.”
“Oh,” I said. “How about that.” I could feel my cheeks getting hotter, and I opened the fridge and stuck my head in, trying to pretend I was looking for something essential.
“You’ll have to go say hi to Henry,” my mother continued, as I concentrated on making sure the expiration dates on the containers of milk were all facing out.
There is only so long you can stand with your head in a refrigerator, and I had just reached that point. Plus, my ears were staring to get cold. “Mmm,” I said, closing the door and leaning my back against it.
“And I suppose I should go and say hello to Ellen,” my mother continued. She sounded distinctly less excited about this thought, and I didn’t blame her. Henry’s mother had never seemed to like kids very much unless we were quiet and out of the way. While we had always dashed full-out into my house, sometimes mid-watergun fight, when we reached Henry’s door, we immediately settled down and got quiet, without even talking about it. Theirs was not a house you ever made blanket forts in. And without my mother saying anything outright, I had always gotten the sense she really hadn’t liked Mrs. Crosby very much.
I pulled an apple from one of the bags on the counter, and my mother took it from me, washed it quickly, patted it dry, and then handed it back. “You and Henry used to be so close,” she said.
I glanced through the kitchen window to the Crosbys’ house, mostly so my mother wouldn’t be able to see my expression. “I guess,” I said. “But that was a long time ago, Mom.”
She started to fold up the bags, and I could have helped, but instead, I leaned against the kitchen counter and started to eat my apple. “Have you called Lucy yet?” she asked.
I bit down hard on my apple, wondering why my mother always assumed she knew what was best for me. Why didn’t she just ask me if I wanted to call Lucy, for example? Which I absolutely didn’t, by the way. “No,” I said, trying to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “And I don’t think I’m going to.”