Page 89 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

The thought stung, but she hadn’t known where else to go. She couldn’t sit in her childhood bedroom and cry, and she couldn’t be around people right now, even April, who would do her best to comfort Ramona, but Ramona didn’t want comfort right now.

Comfort was for tomorrow.

Right now, she wanted to be pissed and hurt and confused and sad.

She sat cross-legged on the cool sand, the lake’s gentle waves whispering against the shore.

Shh.

Shhhhh.

The sound did help to calm her a bit, made everything feel delicate and soft, as though she were under those waves, water shimmering above her. The moon spread silver over the surface, sparkling and dancing.

It was a perfect night.

Clear and warm with just enough cool breeze to keep her hair from sticking to the back of her neck.

But everything else was a mess. Dylan, Ramona’s whole sad little life. She shouldn’t even be here. She should be at home, spending time with her sister, who was leaving in a couple short months, but no, because Ramona’s most soft and secret memory was in a tabloid.

Atabloid.

She sighed and scooped up a handful of sand, tossing it at the water as hard as she could. It was completely unsatisfying, the dirt scattering in the breeze and mostly back onto her bare legs. She stood, hunted around in the sand for a good rock, then hurled it at the lake. It landed with a plop that still did nothing to ameliorate the pressure in Ramona’s chest. She switched to skipping the rocks, hoping the more skips she could achieve the less she’d feel like screaming at the sky.

She’d been at it for a good five minutes when she heard a branch crack behind her. She whirled around, hoping a racoon hadn’t ventured out of the woods to crash her pity party.

But it wasn’t a racoon.

She would’ve preferred a racoon to who was actually standing on the beach in her cove.

Herfucking cove.

“Hi,” Dylan said, breathing hard as though she’d run here. She had a box of Kleenex under her arm. Ramona opened her mouth to ask why, but then decided she didn’t care.

She turned back to the water, side-armed another rock over the surface.

“You’re good at that,” Dylan said.

“I know.”

Dylan laughed softly. “I’ve never been able to skip rocks very well. I always—”

“What do you want, Dylan?”

Ramona didn’t turn around. Didn’t look at her. Didn’t even really want an answer. Still, infuriatingly, she felt her throat go a little thick.

“I…I wanted to talk,” Dylan said, her voice closer now.

Ramona released a bitter laugh. “I think you’ve done enough talking.”

Dylan was close now, standing in front of her. She was gorgeous even with her red-rimmed eyes. The moon made her hair look silvery, her Evenflow tee loose over her cuffed jeans.

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said.

Ramona’s face crumpled, but she smoothed it out fast. Her heart, however, wasn’t so easy to keep in check. “So it was you?” Her voice was soft, too small.

Dylan took a tiny breath. “Indirectly, yeah.”

Ramona didn’t even know what that meant. Didn’t care. All that mattered was that Dylan had shared their story with the world without even asking her.