Over You

by Amy Reed

  I will stop by the barn to say goodbye to the animals. I will say goodbye to Lark. I’ll say goodbye to Maria and Joseph and little Bean. I’ll probably even say goodbye to Skyler. I’ll have the whole car ride to Omaha to say goodbye to Doff, though I’m pretty sure he’s not a fan of the mushy stuff, which I’m sure I’ll be grateful for. That’s all. A handful of people, and a barnful of farm animals.

  Nobody’s going to throw me a going-away party. I’ll slip away at dawn, erasing all traces of myself. People may have a vague feeling that something’s missing for a while, but they’ll get over it quickly. And all that is fine with me. I don’t need to leave a wake, don’t need to disrupt people’s lives with my comings and goings.

  Maybe I won’t get the closure I want. But who ever does, anyway? Closure is just some word someone came up with, but I don’t think anyone really knows what it is. You leave or are left, and that is the end of the story. It is rarely clean or tidy. Maybe it could last forever if you let it; it could taper off into infinite half-lives, haunting you forever with its slow disintegration.

  Or you could decide it’s over, leave those loose strings loose, accept that the end is going to be frayed. Maybe that’s really what closure is—knowing when it’s time to give up on something that’s lost its hope. Knowing when it’s time to move on to the next thing that shines. Maybe sometimes you have to leave before you’re ready to let go; sometimes you have to leave before someone is ready to let go of you. That’s the rub of it—if you wait until you’re ready to do everything, you’ll never get anything done.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks as always to my agent, Amy Tipton, my editor, Anica Mrose Rissi, and everyone at Simon Pulse who helped turn this little story into a book.

  Thanks to my high school Latin teacher for naming me Diana. Thanks to Reed College and Hum101 for turning me on to the classics. Thanks to Robert Graves, Plato, Hesiod, and all you crazy people on the Internet who know stuff.

  Thanks to John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask for “The Origin of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

  Thanks to the book Life After Life by Raymond A. Moody Jr., MD, for teaching me about near-death experiences.

  Thanks to Teah and her family for that summer in Iowa so many years ago.

  Thanks to Northern California for teaching me all about woo-woo.

  Thanks to everyone who grows food.

  And a million thanks to Brian—my partner in crime, my best reader, and my forever best friend.

  Amy Reed is the author of Beautiful, Clean, and Crazy. Originally from the Seattle area, she now lives and writes in Oakland, California. Visit her at amyreedfiction.com.

  SIMON PULSE

  SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK

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  ALSO BY AMY REED

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition June 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Amy Reed

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Mike Rosamilia

  Jacket designed by Russell Gordon

  Jacket photographs by Michael Frost

  Author photograph by Erika Hart

  The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond Pro.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Reed, Amy Lynn.

  Over you / Amy Reed. — First Simon Pulse hardcover edition.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A novel about two girls on the run from their problems, their pasts, and themselves. Max and Sadie are escaping to Nebraska, but they’ll soon learn they can’t escape the truth.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-5696-9 (alk. paper)

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Communal living—Fiction. 5. Farm life—Nebraska—Fiction. 6. Nebraska—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.R2462Ov 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012023492

  ISBN 978-1-4424-5698-3 (eBook)