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He doesn’t respond, merely strolls to his truck and lifts his hand in a wave before disappearing down the road.

Inside, I scoop up his marker, stopping when I see what he’d written.

Someday I’ll tell you the

Color of your eyes is my favorite shade

Over every feather of every bird

Then you’ll know you’re worth it

Tomorrow I’ll be back and I hope

You’ll let me look at you without making me swim

When I reread mine—Fuck Off you Royal Dick—it doesn’t seem near as funny as it did when I wrote it. Mostly because I don’t mean a single word.

Eighteen

WhileeveryDIYingmaniacon the internet made me think I’d be done with my house in a weekend, a month in and it looks worse than it did the day I moved in. Bare floors, bare walls, no furniture. All that remains in the gutted downstairs is the woodstove, a mini fridge, and a microwave. Other than the bathrooms I’ve decided out of sheer exhaustion to hire out, it’s a blank slate if a blank slate was wood paneled and triangular.

Even with the delays, the house will still be ready by Thanksgiving for June’s ridiculous feast and, per the weekly emails I get from Vince reminding me of all the money we’re going to make, will be listed on December first.

And yet.

The more I move forward, the more complicated my feelings get. The more I start to imagine myself here beyond a single season. Despite the lack of people in my life to fill the house, I wish I hadenough money to load it onto the back of a truck and take it with me to wherever it is I end up going.

“We just scraped all that wallpaper and you want to put more up?” Wren asks with a groan, glaring at the floral printed material in my hands. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Don’t swear.”

“You swear all the time.”

“Fine, I’ll quit.” She looks at me like I can’t do it, and I give her a silent look that sayswatch and fucking learn.“As I was saying, this is just a little wallpaper for that weird-shaped wall under the steps. See the greenish blue in the flowers? It will go with the paint.” I hold the paint chip out, and her neutral expression confirms my decision. “Told you I’mcluckingsmart.” I grin; she rolls her eyes. “Anyway, we should technically do the wallpaper last, but I’m worried I won’t like it—and it’s small—so let’s start there and we’ll paint the other walls after.”

“Your pyramid, your rules,” she mutters.

A Third Eye Blind record plays as we get to work, rolling the paste on and lining up strips. “How’s school been?” I ask, holding the ladder as she smooths the paper near the top with a wide-bladed scraper.

She shrugs, her oversized sweatshirt hanging off her shoulders. “Fine. My grandma homeschooled me for the last few months of school when we moved here in the spring, so I’m still the new kid, but it’snot bad.”

“And”—I trade her scraper for another strip of wallpaper, and she works to line the pattern up—“do they know about your mom?”

“I’m not a psycho,” she says, smoothing bubbles out of the paper. “The kids at my old school knew, that’s why my dad wanted to move here. Fresh start.” She rolls her eyes. “Adults always think a fresh start is the answer.”

I almost laugh at how ironic the statement is: her here because Ford was chasing a fresh start, me leaving because I’m doing the same.

“And it isn’t?”

“My mom’s still in prison, still killed someone, still wanted to do drugs and whatever else she did more than she wanted me.” She smooths a palm along the wallpaper. “Doesn’t seem like where I live matters that much.”God, she’s smart. In my contemplative silence, she adds, “But I’m fine.”

Fine. I know that word and know it never means what it’s supposed to. Fine is the word used to make everyone else more comfortable. It means falling apart but hiding it. When parents choose something else—something poisonous. When there’s loss. Heartbreak. When I watched my brother spiral like dirty dishwater draining from a kitchen sink. Me spending the last twenty years making decisions in hopes of actually beingfine.

Fine: Pretending to be someone else at the lake when I was a kid.

Fine: The desperation I felt after things fell apart and left me hollow as a dead tree trunk.

And then it hits me: Maybe I’ll never be fine. Maybe she’s right. Maybe fresh starts don’t exist for people like me. Maybe the constant red thread that’s always connected me to where I came from will never end, not a pair of scissors in the world strong enough to cut it.