Page 17

Mom stands in the kitchen, on hold with our insurance company, phone in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other.

The sun’s just starting to come up, casting Mom in a golden glow that just barely glamours the dark half-moons under her eyes.

She exhales as though all her patience is spent.

It makes me wonder exactly how long she’s been up, which cup of coffee this is.

“When did you tell me about this?” she asks, more furious about the packed backpack and sleeping bag at my feet than the automated voice in her ear telling her she’s thirty-eighth in line to speak to a real person and her business is very important to them.

“Last week?” I know she’s spotted a chink in my armor when my words come out like a question.

“Nova, you did not breathe a word about this camping trip,” she snaps.

“I swear I did.”

I didn’t, but considering that I only had last night to hastily pull everything together, it’s easier to let her think she’s just forgotten. My thumb lightly rubs the green beads on my wrist.

Last night, after returning Inky and a quick stop at Bee Outdoors to grab hiking boots, I used my so-called feminine wiles—something I’m pretty sure I’ve never had—on Kiara—who has them in spades—to convince her that finding the wishing well was in her best interest. To my surprise, she didn’t seem that keen on going into the woods despite Radhika’s claims at the tree house.

It turned out that Radhika was the one who was trying to talk Kiara into it. Which, weird?

But Kiara has me to help her now. Whatever wiles I managed to employ were hard won, and even though she seemed deeply distrusting at first, she’s going to meet me at the edge of the woods at 8:00 a.m. on the dot.

I can’t be late, and if Mom holds me up much longer, I will be.

The obstinate jut of Mom’s chin mirrors mine. “Don’t lie to me, Nova.”

I inch toward the door, but the look on her face stops me in my tracks. “I didn’t think you’d mind. We’re just going to hang out,” I try.

“And if I hadn’t been up, would you have sneaked out?”

That does kind of offend me. “Of course not!” I exclaim. “That’s shitty. I would have woken you up.”

She rubs her eyes and sighs. “The woods are dangerous. And you’ve never been camping without your dad. And who did you say you’re doing this with? Austin and Caroline? Do either of them know what to do if you encounter a bear? Has Austin even been in the woods since—”

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure my best friend wouldn’t let me get mauled by a bear.”

“Camping is still dangerous,” she says stubbornly.

“Plenty of people do it, and nothing terrible happens.”

Mom tugs her fingers through her unbrushed hair and yanks harder when the tangles resist. “To them . Do you know how many people go missing in national parks and forests every year? I watched a docuseries about it! That couple new to town who just lost their baby? They’ve been telling horror stories all over town about how they got so turned around in there that they nearly didn’t make it out!

That DUI driver trying to undo the death he caused didn’t make it out at all!

And everyone at Chalice has been talking about that handsome Australian hiker who stopped in for a drink before he headed into the woods.

He’s retired from the army and hiked all over the Outback, and he still hasn’t returned yet.

I’m sure he also thought nothing would happen to him. ”

“That’s exactly why I’m not going alone!”

“His wife and children were on the news, Nova. Heartbroken. Wanting answers they don’t have.”

Like us , I think but don’t say. But I need to push this. It’s my only chance to find out what happened to Dad. Does she really think I don’t know why she’s up early in the morning to talk to our insurance company? Does she think I’ve forgotten that she’s going to declare him legally dead?

“Mom, I just turned seventeen. You can trust me.”

And she can. I don’t drink, don’t party, don’t stay out late and make her worry. Even when I go into the woods for Dad, everything is perfectly timed so she’s never scared about where I am.

“You want to talk about trust?” She actually hangs up the phone, losing her place in the queue. “You think being old enough to lie to your mother makes you old enough to go camping by yourself? This is just like that damn field trip.”

“Mom.”

“Nova.”

Mom takes a deep breath that does nothing to steady the hysterical edge in her voice then says, “Do you know that your father proposed to me in those woods, Nova? He got down on one knee in the violets and butterfly weed and promised he’d love me forever. Forever. We barely got a decade.”

I feel like an asshole, and then I don’t. She kept this story to herself all this time and only shares it to guilt me?

“Do you think I want Jules declared dead?” she demands.

“Do you think I don’t hate myself for it?

But you’re going to college in a couple of years, and maybe, just maybe , if we do this, the insurance bastards will finally pay out on your dad’s policy after years of telling me death by misadventure or hazardous activity isn’t covered.

But now here you are, wanting to go off and do exactly the same thing. ”

Looking into her watery eyes—the eyes she gave me—I almost want to call everything off.

Text Kiara back and tell her I’m out, I can’t help, she’s on her own.

Except I’m terrified of what will happen to her if I do.

Even if it’s too late for Dad, if I give up on her now…

I can’t. I can’t do it. Dad would be so disappointed in me. I would be disappointed in me, too.

I’d been prepared to lie to my mom, told myself the duplicity was a necessary sacrifice. But I wasn’t prepared for how much it would hurt her. Hurt both of us. My throat is tight, scraped raw with lies.

“Austin’s and Caroline’s parents said yes,” I say, which isn’t a lie but not the whole truth, either.

Her fingers twitch like she wants a cigarette. Has she taken it up again? She hasn’t had one since she found out she was pregnant with me. It was a resolution she and Dad made together on a full moon, and they stuck to it.

It’s the story he liked telling the most, even more than how they met (Fall Festival caramel apple stand and love at first sight) or how I was braver at age six than some adults when we camped under the stars together for the first time (I wasn’t, but I liked that he thought so).

Dad’s stories were like that—less about the events that happened and more to do with how the stories of those events made him feel.

Once we knew you existed, our whole lives became about you , he would tell me, showing me the nautical star tattoo on his wrist that he’d gotten when I was born. We have to take good care of ourselves so we can always be here to take care of you, my little North Star.

Mom presses her palms together, exhales, and then opens the kitchen drawer behind her.

She digs under a mess of coupons and appointment cards and pulls out a battered pack of cigarettes.

I stare. She always said if it wasn’t for Dad’s willpower, she would never have managed to kick the bad habit.

She’d say it with an arm around his shoulders, her lips pressed to his cheek, so close to the corner of his mouth that I used to groan and pretend to close my eyes.

It was revoltingly cute how they’d kiss each other so deeply, as though they’d never get enough, not those quick little parent pecks I’d seen other adults do.

But as annoying as it was that my parents had been smokers in the first place, it isn’t nearly as heartbreaking as the realization that Mom wasn’t exaggerating Dad’s role in her going cold turkey.

I drag my gaze away from the cigarettes and search her misty eyes for the woman she used to be.

The ache in my chest reminds me that we could fill the Longing Woods with all the things we’ve never been able to say to each other.

If I was his North Star, he was hers, and without him, she’s lost and adrift.

“How long?” I ask. I have a sudden vision of her sticking her head out the window at night to smoke so the smell doesn’t reach me, religiously swishing mouthwash so I can’t catch it on her breath.

“It’s not mine. It’s your dad’s from before you were born. It comforts me.”

She doesn’t do anything but hold it. Doesn’t pluck one out or reach for a lighter. The rubber band around my chest eases a bit.

“I don’t care whose parents said they could go,” she says, still clutching the pack.

“ I’m your mother, Nova, and I do not give you permission.

” She huffs, shaking her blond waves behind her shoulders.

“I hate calling my kid a liar, but unless you give me a good reason, you are not walking out that door.”

“Mom, it’s all planned,” I protest. “They’re all going to be waiting for me, and if I don’t show up—”

She frowns, still unconvinced. “Who’s ‘all’? It’s not just Austin and Caroline?”

Oops, I didn’t mean to let that slip. I hesitate then say, “Kiara Mistry is coming, too.”

Both of Mom’s eyebrows jump, that little tidbit clearly taking her by surprise. I’ve certainly bitched about Kiara stealing my crushes often enough. “I thought you didn’t like her,” she says.

“I don’t dislike her.” Again, not exactly a lie. “Actually, I’m…trying to get to know her better.”

Mom’s face relaxes a fraction. “Are you two…?”

It takes a second for her meaning to click. My face feels as hot as the bottom of the cast-iron skillet I use for blistering brussels sprouts. “Oh my god, no. It’s not like that. I just have to do this one thing with her, and then—”

“And you want to go camping with her?”

“Y-yes?”

“Oh, I knew it!” she crows, as though I’ve given something away. “I don’t appreciate your lying to me about having okayed this trip, Nova, but I understand how it feels when you have a crush on someone. Especially someone you’ve liked for such a long time.”

This is mortifying. I can’t believe she thinks—