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And though it’s been part of my plan for getting out of here since Lydia gave me the house, I’ve yet to put much serious thoughtinto what it looks like if I’m not here. Not just what would happen without me here, what I would do without being here. For the first time in twenty years, I wonder what life might be like if it wasn’t consumed with death and ashes.

Thirty-Six

“Isthatamile?”Wren asks, barely out of breath as she jogs next to me.

I nod.

“Ha,” she huffs out, slowing to a walk. “We’re getting better.”

I slow to match her pace, Molly doing the same. “I’m definitely feeling less pissed about the situation.”

“What happened to you this weekend?” she asks as we turn back toward the house. “After my dad’s declaration I thought you’d, like, live at my house or something.”

“Just because your dad went all ’90s rom-com with a microphone doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.”

She rolls her eyes with a light shake of her head. “Okay.”

“What about you and Luke?” I ask in a sing-songy voice. “You make out behind a barrel of cider?” She makes a face but her cheeks flush. “You did!” I shout, bumping my shoulder against hers. “And?”

“And what?” she asks, unable to hide a smile.

“And, I don’t know, are you a thing or like, you know, taking blood oaths and eloping?”

“No.” She snorts a laugh before her expression turns serious. “I’ve been thinking about my arms. My scars, I mean—no.” She reads the look on my face, answering my unspoken question. “I haven’t done it. Just, I don’t know, at some point I might need to explain it. If I’m wearing less clothes.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “Sex?!”

“Scotty! I’m fifteen.” She says it like I’m preposterous.

“Right. I was sixteen when your dad got the goods from me.” She groans. “I’m just saying there’s time.”

“Anyway. Do I just tell him? Or hide it? Or lie? Or . . . ?”

We stop walking and I look at her. She looks young—so young—and scared. And, as different as our problems are, I get it. “I think, when you decide he’s worth seeing more of your skin, you know he’s worthy of knowing. If you own your choices, they can’t own you.” Wanda and Blair flash through my mind. “And if he can’t handle it, that’s a him problem, not a you problem.”

Some of the worry leaves her face. “Okay.”

We walk until Molly stops to sniff a tree.

“Remember that girl I was telling you about that I thought liked Luke?”

I scoff. “The Letts girl?”

“Yeah, Becca. Well, so weird, since the festival she’s been nice. Really nice. I guess I read her wrong. We’re hanging out after school this week.”

I stop dead in my tracks in the middle of the road. “Why in a shit-swirled milkshake would you want to do that?”

“Uh, because she’s being nice,” she says, using a tone that makes my middle finger twitch. My eyes narrow as I recall just hownicethe Letts girl was before I squashed her like a cockroach. “And my only friend can’t be a forty-one-year-old loner.”

“Okay,” I drawl, walking again as I grip Molly’s leash so tight it burns my skin. “Do you think it’s smart? I knew her mom and, I can tell you—”

“Everyone isn’t their mother,” she snaps.

And there it is. All roads lead to us not being our mothers.

I wonder if she wants to slap me as badly as I want to slap her. We say nothing as we walk. I debate telling her about the festival and what the girls said, but it will crush her. All the progress she’s made will be erased.

“Right,” I finally say, taking the route less violent. “All I’m saying is be careful.”