The kiss went on, but eventually, it changed. It became softer. Sweeter. And it felt like good-bye.
Luke rested his forehead on mine again. “I can’t imagine what my senior year would have been like without you,” he said.
His words felt like good-bye, too.
I pretended they didn’t.
“I can,” I said, forcing a smile. “It would have been boring. You would have hated every second.”
He kissed me again. “No question in my mind.”
I waited until he left to fall apart.
I was still in Luke’s jersey. I ran my fingertip over the number thirty-four, remembering how I didn’t want to wear it at first. Now I didn’t want to take it off. I hugged my knees to my chest. And then I turned on the playlist he made me and sat there in the dark, ugly-crying for hours, until I’d demolished an entire box of Kleenex, my pillow was soaked through, my throat was dry and sore, and my eyelids were so puffy I could barely see through the slits.
But I wasn’t done. I opened my Notes app and scrolled down, reading every single thing I’d captured over the last three hundred and fifteen days. I read all the words he said to me at least four times, crying all over again.
Somewhere around 4:00 a.m., when I was so exhausted I could no longer keep my eyes open, and my body was so empty, I couldn’t manufacture a tear if I’d wanted to, I took a deep breath and held it in as long as I could. And then I let it out.
And I told myself I was done.
I went back to my Notes app, scrolled down to Day 315, and added a new entry.
“I can’t imagine what my senior year have been like without you.”
It was a good last line. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to top it.
I deleted all the empty lines and left it at that.
On Saturday morning, I pulled my shades open. I was about to open my window, too, but I stopped cold. Emory was sitting cross-legged on the grass, smack in the middle of our houses.
She held up her hand and waved. And then she curled her finger toward her chest and patted the empty space in front of her.
It was warmer than it had been in a while, so I went straight for the back door without grabbing a sweatshirt. I didn’t even put my shoes on. I stepped off the back porch and let the grass tickle my feet.
I sat down next to her. And I knew right away.
“He told you about the mission trip?” I asked.
Emory nodded. “How long have you known?”
“Just since last night. My mom told me he was considering it, but it didn’t sound like a done deal or anything.”
She sucked in a breath. “Well, it is now.”
“Are you okay?”
She plucked a blade of grass and wrapped it around her pinky finger. “No. I’m…” She paused, searching for the right word, and settled on, “Heartbroken.”
I hugged her. When she hugged me back, she squeezed me a lot harder than usual.
Then she pulled away and reached into her pocket. She handed me a slip of paper.
“Why are you giving me a Mentos wrapper?”
“Turn it over.”
On the other side, there was a hand-drawn map of the California coastline, starting in Orange County and ending in San Francisco.
“Luke drew this one night. It was our summer plan.” She rested her chin on my shoulder and began pointing at each of the dots. “We were going to camp in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Big Sur. We planned to make our way up the coast, stopping along the way whenever we felt like it, until we reached San Francisco. We figured our road trip would take two weeks, maybe more, and if we weren’t done, we could keep going up to Oregon or Washington.”
She pointed at the Mentos wrapper. “Anyway, I was stress-cleaning my room this morning, and I had this crazy thought. Luke made other plans for the summer, but this,” she said, tapping the map with her fingertip. “This was my plan. This is what kept me going when I was worried about my mom, or missing you, or watching Luke struggle with what happened to him. I was holding on to this. And I might have to let Luke go, but I’m not ready to give this up, too. I still need this trip.”
“You should go.”
“I know, right?” She smiled at me. “And you should come with me.”
I laughed in her face. “That’s ridiculous! I can’t go to San Francisco.”
“Why not? What’s keeping you here?”
Nothing, I realized. There was nothing keeping me there. Aaron and I were over. Alyssa was spending the summer at a music program in New York. Mom would be on the mission trips off and on, and Dad would be at the church every day, like he always was.
“Look,” Emory continued. “You’re leaving for Boston and I’m going to LA. We’ve spent our whole lives thirty-six steps away, and in a few months, we’re going to live two thousand nine hundred and eighty-four miles away.”
“You know the exact number?”
“I googled it.”
“I don’t know—” I began, but she cut me off.
“Look, I need to get away from here. I need to breathe in ocean air and feel sand between my toes. Don’t you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“We’ll make an epic playlist. We’ll blast it and sing at the top of our lungs, and it won’t matter that I can’t carry a tune to save my life, because you’ll be the only one who can hear me. We’ll drive winding roads, and stick our arms out the windows and flap them like wings.”
I was warming to the idea. When Emory grinned, her eyes twinkled, and I could tell from the look on her face that she knew she was getting to me.
“Okay, so…a couple thoughts,” I said.
“Hit me.”
“We don’t have camping gear.”
Emory made a check mark in the air with her finger. “Charlotte said I could borrow her family’s stuff. They don’t need it.”
“We don’t have a car.”
She got this funny look on her face. “Luke wants us to take the Jetta.”
“You told him about this already?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“And he offered his car, just like that?”
“He said he wouldn’t be needing it. He practically insisted.” She crinkled her nose. “He said something about being our glue.”
My face lit up.
Emory was waiting for an answer.
“When?” I asked.
“Right after graduation. The day after or two days later, I don’t care, you decide.” She knew she had me right where she wanted me. She leaned in close to my ear. “Don’t think about it, Hannah. Just say yes.”
I wanted to sleep on it, or at least go for a run and ponder it from the top of my rock, but instead, I acted on impulse.
“Yes,” I blurted.
“Yes? Like, yes-yes?” Emory came up on her knees and threw her arms around my neck, practically choking me with her hug. “You won’t regret this, I promise.”
But she didn’t have to tell me that. I already knew I wouldn’t.
“How many steps did you say there were between our windows?” I asked.
She looked offended, like this was information I should have committed to memory. “Thirty-six.”
“That was over two years ago.” I lifted my foot and wiggled it in the air. “We’ve grown.”
Emory jumped up, grinning as she offered her hand to help me stand. We walked to my house and slid in between the rosebush and the flowering shrub, and I pressed my back against the siding as I looped my arm through hers.
We stepped forward in unison. And then we each tapped our heels to our toes and stepped forward again. We counted aloud.
“Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.”
And then Emory stumbled and fell to one side, so we walked back to my house and started over. The next time, we took slower, more careful steps. We wobbled a few times, but we didn’t lose count.
“Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five.”
But Emory tickled me in the side and I lost my balance, a
nd we had to start again.
When we took off the third time with our arms interlocked, we were laughing so hard we were almost crying.
We did better. As we neared Emory’s window, we were so focused on our objective, we didn’t say a word. I was counting in my head.
Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.
She tightened her grip on my arm and yelled, “Thirty-three.”
We took one more step, and at the exact same time, we each slapped our palms against her house.
“Thirty-four,” we yelled in unison.
I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
All my life, I’d believed that everything happened for a reason. That it was all part of God’s plan. A puzzle He’d created, made up of tragedies and joys and everything in between, each event clicking into place exactly the way it was supposed to.
I didn’t think I believed that anymore. Each choice, good and bad, branched out and created a new path, and on and on, piecing itself together along the way, with no real vision for how it would all come together in the end. God wasn’t in control. None of us were really in control either.
But then I thought about Luke pulling up in front of my house that night, and me getting a glass of water exactly as he did. I thought about him saying that maybe it had happened for a reason.
“That’s weird,” Emory said, crinkling her nose. “Luke’s jersey number is thirty-four. Isn’t that weird?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Weird.”
Maybe it was totally random.
Maybe it was meant to be.
I’d never know.
While this is a work of fiction, both Hannah’s and Emory’s stories are deeply personal ones.
Like Hannah, when I was young, I went on a similar quest to better understand my faith. I wanted to ask myself big questions, learn as much as I could about religions that were different from my own, and discover what I believed in context with everything I’d been taught growing up. The experience opened my mind and changed me forever. It felt like an important one to share when I began writing this novel in 2014. Today, in an environment more focused on dividing us because of who we are and what we believe than uniting us as human beings, it feels even more important.
While some of the details of Emory’s assault were fictionalized, the words she hears are the same ones that were said to me when I was a young woman, word for word, by an older man in power who I trusted completely. Those words were incredibly difficult to write, not only because they forced me to relive a moment that terrified me, but also because they’re so painfully indicative of the larger problem that has since (thankfully) come to light through the #metoo movement. “I can’t be responsible for what I’ll do to you,” he said. In other words, this is happening, there’s nothing you can do about it, and it’s your fault, not mine. I haven’t forgotten those words in over twenty-five years, and it took me that long to find the courage to tell this story. To all the people who have lived with this secret, and to those who still do, you’re not alone. You did nothing wrong. We see you. We believe you. #metoo
I am grateful to the five brilliant, patient, and supportive women who believed in this story from the very beginning and helped me figure out how to get it out of my head and onto the page: Emily Meehan, Hannah Allaman, Julie Rosenberg, Caryn Wiseman, and Lorin Oberweger. This novel simply wouldn’t exist without them. Huge thanks to everyone at Hyperion, especially Holly Nagel, Cassie McGinty, Seale Ballenger, and Dina Sherman. Special gratitude to Marci Senders and Sabeena Karnik for the absolutely stunning work of art that graces this cover.
Four inspiring people allowed me to weave pieces of their personal stories into the pages of this one. I’m forever grateful to:
My two dads, who both had near-death experiences they can recount with absolute clarity and were forever changed by them, but in very different ways. James Stone and Bill Ireland, thank you for sharing every detail with me. It was an honor to hear you tell your stories and I’ll never forget them.
And my two moms, both deeply spiritual women, each drawn to different faiths, yet always open-minded and respectful of everyone’s chosen path. Susan Cline Harper and Rebecca Stone, thank you for always putting love above everything else.
This is a story about friends who truly get each other; I’m lucky I got to marry a friend like that. Mike, there are so many lines in this book that are just for you. I know you’ll smile when you find them.
TAMARA IRELAND STONE writes young adult and middle grade novels. Her New York Times best seller, Every Last Word, won the Cybils Young Adult Fiction Award, the Georgia Peach Book Award, and was a YALSA Teens’ Top Ten pick. She is also the author of Time Between Us, which has been published in over twenty countries; its sequel, Time After Time; and Click’d, the first book in her new middle grade series.
Before she began writing fiction full-time, Tamara spent twenty years in the technology industry. She cofounded a woman-owned marketing strategy and communications firm where she worked with small startups as well as some of the world’s largest software companies. When she’s not writing, she enjoys skiing, seeing live music, watching movies, and spending time with her husband and two children. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit her at TamaraIrelandStone.com.
Also by Tamara Ireland Stone
Time Between Us
Time After Time
Every Last Word
Click’d
TAMARA IRELAND STONE (www.TamaraIrelandStone.com) is the New York Times best-selling author of Every Last Word; Time and Time Again, a collection of her two novels Time Between Us and Time After Time; and Click’d, her middle grade debut. A former Silicon Valley marketing executive, she enjoys skiing, hiking, and spending time with her husband and two children. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
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