Page 47 of On the Way to You

It was a question I didn’t let myself ask last night, at least not out loud, but it was sounding in my head on repeat now that the morning light was shining. I’d never been kissed before. Emery knew that, and he kissed me. He was my first kiss. That had tomeansomething, right?

Or was it just for fun? Was it just Emery being him, kissing girls like it was no big deal, like everything would be normal the next day?

Were we just friends?

Were we eventhat?

My smile faded when I realized we’d known each other for less than a week, and here I was getting butterflies over a make-out session. He probably did this all the time — he probably usually didmore.

Desperate for reassurance, I eyed the tent opening before pulling Emery’s journal out of his bag and into my lap. I heard his voice fade along with Glen’s, and even though my heart thumped with a mixture of adrenaline and guilt, I opened to the last page.

But there was nothing new.

Of course, he hadn’t written about it yet. When would he have had time?

But I needed something, needed his words, needed to be inside that beautiful brain of his. So, I flipped back toward the beginning, reading an entry not too long after the one aboutthat day.

I stopped taking my medicine.

Marni knows, but my parents don’t. They think it’s the only way to save me from myself, to dope me up to the point of basically not living at all. Marni gets it, she knows why I don’t want to take them. She still thinks I should, but doesn’t press me to. She says it’s my choice. My parents make me feel like I don’t have any of those, anymore.

Grams has been on medicine all her life, the exact kind they prescribed me. She said she doesn’t know how she would have survived as a mother, as a wife, without them. But after Gramps died, she stopped taking them.

I liked her better then.

Maybe she’s a little crazy, maybe she talks about darker things than most preferred — but she’s here. She’s alive, and alert, and real. Uncensored. I appreciate that.

So, when I told her about not taking my pills anymore, she didn’t judge me, either.

She told me how to get rid of them and make it look like I was taking them when I wasn’t.

Anyway, I stopped taking my medicine, and I feel a little better and a little worse. Dad wants me to step up in the business, and I’m trying, but my heart isn’t in it. My heart isn’t in anything.

When I was little, I used to love the swings. It was the only place I wanted to be on the playground. I spent my entire recess on the swings. I loved that feeling, of flying, of falling. Marni said I should focus on things that make me happy, so I went to the park today. I went to the swings.

They don’t make me happy anymore.

Maybe today is just a bad day.

“Whatcha reading?”

I jumped at the sound of Nora’s voice, tossing Emery’s journal across the tent like it’d bitten me. One eyebrow raised on her face as I pressed a hand flat to my chest.

“Sorry, you startled me,” I said on a laugh, crawling out of the sleeping bag to retrieve his journal. I tucked it back into his bag, but when I faced Nora again, I saw suspicion all over her face. “Just the map we have for the trip, figuring out the next stop. We’re thinking Rio Grande National Park.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, eyeing me. “Great park, definitely worth the stop.” She paused, her lips rolling like she was tasting her next words before she said them. “I’ve got coffee and breakfast out here. Care to join an old woman?”

“I’d love to. Let me put something warmer on and I’ll be right out.”

She nodded once, eyes flicking to Emery’s journal before she ducked out of the tent. I cursed under my breath, dressing quickly and pulling my hair up into a messy knot on top of my head before joining her by the fire.

Nora poured me a fresh cup of coffee, adding a little pumpkin spice flavored creamer to it before handing me the steaming mug. I inhaled the scent, a wide smile finding my lips.

Fall.

“There was one summer when I thought Glen was being unfaithful,” Nora said, and I nearly choked on my coffee.

I managed to swallow it down, giving her my full attention, not sure where that confession came from. “Really?”