Mom was quiet for a long moment. "I think that people forgive each other, because we're all stupid sometimes. I think that we let go of the pain, because we also want to be forgiven ourselves."
I closed my eyes. That's why Mom wasn't yelling at me, now. I'd done stupid things, but now that she knew the whole truth, she could see that she also had a part in it. She'd hurt me, and I'd hurt her, and if we wanted things to be different, we couldn't keep making the same stupid mistakes. We had to live differently.
I hadn't given Mom a say when I decided to give her a baby. I'd kept it secret, because I wanted to decide for her what she would do. I'd done the same to Rodney, and if I broke up with him now, I'd be doing it again—making choices for him, without giving him a say. That was the same old Penny, the same old habits, the same old problems.
I didn't want that anymore. I wanted things to be different. And that meant I had to give Rodney a choice, and really listen to what he wanted.
Hurting each other was what people did. But maybe we made up for it by loving each other, too. Even if sometimes loving meant letting go.
I wasn't going to have that conversation with him over the phone. "Can I borrow the car?"
Mom smiled. "My keys are on the counter," she said. "I'm supposed to tell you not to stay out late while you're recovering."
I nodded. My body was sore, but not broken. Healing was possible. I needed to give it a chance for once, instead of getting in its way.
Rodney's room was upstairs at the front of his house. I could see his light on as I parked Mom's car out front. The only other light in the house came from Rodney's parents' bedroom. I could ring the doorbell, but one of them would answer the door, and if they chewed me out for what I'd done to their son, I'd lose my nerve.
Instead, I slipped through their side gate and into their backyard. I sat down on a bistro bench at the roots of their huge shade tree, and pulled out my phone.
I'm in your backyard, I texted. Does that make me a stalker?
Depends, he replied. Can you tell me what I'm doing right now?
I smiled. Texting.
Busted. You ARE a stalker.
Among my many talents. I also predict the future.
Oh? And what do you see in mine?
Hmm, I typed. A bench, a garden, and a girl.
"I see that in my present," Rodney said from the corner of the yard. I'd left the gate open, and he'd come through so quietly that I hadn't heard.
I turned around to smile at him. "Maybe," I said. "But I saw it first."
Rodney sat down next to me on the bench. He was wearing jeans and a thick hooded sweatshirt. Given the time it had taken him to come down the stairs, he must have still been up and dressed.
"So," Rodney said.
"So," I said back.
He smiled. "I'm glad you're here."
My heart picked up pace. We sat there, side by side, not touching. My head swam with the enormity of all I wanted to say. I didn't know how I'd ever get it out.
Rodney looked at me. "How are you feeling?"
Did he mean physically? Or otherwise? "Crappy," I said. "But I'm surviving."
He nodded slowly. "I think that's going around."
"How are things with your parents?" I asked. "Athena said they were pissed."
"Yeah," Rodney said, drawing the word out. "They yelled. A lot."
I shuddered. "They probably hate me."
"I think they're more mad at me," Rodney said. "I may have told my dad that he only wants me to take responsibility if there's no actual responsibility involved."
Ouch. "That's the truth, isn't it?"
Rodney nodded. "It's also true that I think he's an ass."
I put a hand on his arm. "You didn't say that."
Rodney didn't pull away. "I didn't. But I thought it. A lot."
I sighed. "I haven't exactly been the kind of person they'd want you dating, you know?"
Rodney gave me a sidelong look.
I cringed. "Not that we're dating anymore." I sounded like I was fishing, and maybe I was, but mostly I was drowning. Rodney just sat quietly, refusing to rescue me.
"I almost called you, earlier," I said. "I was going to tell you that obviously you'd be better off without me."
Rodney exhaled loudly. "What changed your mind?"
"My mom, actually," I said. "She told me I was being stupid."
"Thank her for me."
"So you don't want me out of your life?" I asked. "Because you probably should."
He cocked his head. "I tried that. It was awful."
"Yeah, but—" I put my head in my hands, steeling myself for what I had to say. "I don't want to hurt you anymore. I don't want to drag you through hell." I kept my face down. I couldn't look at him and say this to him. "I just think it might be better for you if we were just friends, like you said."
Rodney's hand rested on my shoulder. "Yeah, but that's crap, isn't it? We were never really just friends."
I groaned. "No. We never were. So maybe that means we shouldn't be anything. If I turn out like my mother—"
Rodney's fingertips rested in the groove of my collar bone. "You're not your mother."
He sounded so sure that I wanted to believe him. I looked up. "How do you know? Because if I lost this baby, I might lose them all, you know? I might turn out to be just like—"
"Whoa," Rodney said. "Are you planning our whole lives already?"
My heart hammered so hard it about broke my ribs. Our lives? His and mine? Together?
"I think," I said. "I think I was trying to tell you that being with me won't be good for you."
Rodney leaned against the back of the bench and let out a long, slow breath. I waited for him to admit I was right. I was, wasn't I? He still loved me, sure, but loving someone and thinking they're good for you are two different things.
"So can I kiss you yet?" he said.
My mouth dropped open. "What?"
His arm shifted around me, warm against my shoulders.
"Um," I said. "Did you hear anything I said?"
"Yeah," Rodney said. "I heard my best friend spouting self-loathing crap about what a terrible person she is. You don't expect me to actually buy into that, do you?"
I smacked him on the shoulder. Hard.
He didn't even wince.
What was wrong with him? "Could you consider just for a minute that this is probably not the last time in your life that I'm going to hurt you? That I might make you really miserable? That our lives might be full of pain?"
"Okay," Rodney said.
I kicked my feet at some leaves, waiting, but Rodney was quiet. "Okay, you'll consider it?"
He sighed, and ran his thumb under my jaw, turning me to face him. "Okay," he said. "Sign me up."
A gleam of moonlight ran through his eyes. "Don't be stupid," I said.
The ghost of a smile played across his lips. "Take your own damn advice."
I wanted to ask him why he would do that, but his hand brushed against my cheek, and my breath caught in my throat.
He'd do that because pain wasn't the only thing in my future. It swallowed my mother for a long time, but even she was finding a way past it. She'd held onto her pain, onto her one precious vision of the future, and lived inside it like a moth refusing to emerge from its cocoon.
But now, she was starting to cut her way out.
Maybe I didn't have to build a sack around myself at all. Maybe I could make a different choice than she made. Maybe I could be like Rodney—accept the pain, embrace it as part of what was necessary.
Part of what I wanted, even.
And move on to everything else that would also happen in our future. Take millions of pictures. Be stupidly happy.
Forever.
"Okay," I said.
Rodney's mouth broke out in a full smile. And then I threw myself at him, literally. I buried my face in his shoulder and tossed my arms around his neck, pressing against him so tight that I could barely breathe. He wrapped his ar
ms around my back, the sleeves of his sweatshirt enveloping me like a blanket. I ran my hands up the back of his neck and through his hair, my fingers tingling at the mere thought that they were allowed to be there. How? How did I take this for granted for so long?
When I trusted myself not to burst into tears, I whispered into Rodney's neck: "Is this what it feels like to be stupidly happy?"
Rodney laughed. "You wouldn't believe how much I've missed you."
"Mmmm," I said. "I think I have a pretty good idea."
"Oh," Rodney said. He leaned back, digging into his sweatshirt pocket. "I have something for you."
He reached for my hand, and I felt a cool metal chain coil into it, followed by something smooth and thin. I held it up to the moonlight. In my palm was a heart-shaped locket on a long silver chain. I held my palm under my nose, running my fingers over the etched surface. My thumbnail traced the groove in the side, and I slid it in, popping it open. There inside was the picture we'd taken of Gabriel. Rodney had trimmed off half of his hands to fit it inside, but I could still see the edges of them, wrapped around mine.
I was struck speechless. Tears welled up in my eyes. Our future was uncertain, but here he was, still taking care of me in just the right ways, not the stupid, damaging ways that I kept trying to take care of everyone else.
"I thought," he said, "that this way, you could always carry him with you."
I couldn't take my eyes off the tiny picture. "Thank you," I said.
"I've decided," he said, "that maybe doing kid portraits wouldn't be such a terrible thing, you know? We could still do art photos on the side."
I looked into Rodney's eyes. His face was serious; he wasn't speaking hypothetically. I saw it, then: the ways our future might unfold in front of us. We could have that future together, and we didn't have to wait. We didn't have to pretend that wasn't where we were headed. We could start building it now.
I'd never wanted anything so much. "Yes," I said. "Let's do it."
Rodney wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and I leaned my head on his shoulder, my forehead resting against his jaw. And then he did something he'd never done before. Another first for us.
He just held me. Before, I would have made out with him, or pulled away, or made a joke out of it. Anything to push back my nerves, to convince myself that it wasn't serious. But today I just relaxed against him, floating in his arms, and let him hold me.
I couldn't remember anything feeling as good.
Acknowledgments
As always, this book was not written in a vacuum. Many people read various drafts. Thank you to all of you, for your feedback and your support.
Many thanks to Lisa, Eddie, and Krystyna at JABberwocky, for their candid and honest critiques. Eddie—you put up with so much from me. Thank you.
Thanks to Carol, Tessa, Erin, Tara, Sandra, Kara, and Isaac, who loved the book even before I rewrote it from scratch, and gave me most excellent advice to help with that rewrite. Thanks also to Kathy, Theresa, Emily, and Megan, for their reads, feedback, and encouragement.
Thanks especially to the Seizure Ninjas—James, Sandra, Jenn, Heidi, Lee Ann, Cavan, Alex, and Heather—for their glowing praise and unrelenting criticism. Your critiques of this book can be summed up in five words—It's brilliant! Now rewrite it!—and I love you all for that. You guys give the best prescriptive feedback around, and all my books would be much worse without you. (You know; you've read them.)
Thanks to Isaac, for his fantastic design advice and his InDesign expertise. But most of all for his friendship and support over the years.
Thanks always to Brandon, who taught me everything, and continues to astound me with his generosity.
Thanks to my husband, who has heard me think aloud about this book for nearly four years, and has endless patience for my constant rounds of "what if…" Thanks also for not laughing at me when I finally figured out what this book was about four drafts in. Sometimes I'm special like that. And thanks to my daughter—I didn't even know toddlers could be so patient, but you are. Thanks for putting up with your working mom. I love you.
Thanks most of all to my amazing editor Kristina Kugler, who helped me turn a pretty good draft into a polished finished work, and the incomparable Melody Fender, whose beautiful design work you see on the cover. Thanks, both of you, for your kindness and patience with me. You are both amazingly good at what you do, but more than that, you're incredible people. I am honored to work with you.
Janci Patterson is the author of two other contemporary young adult novels: Everything's Fine, which won the Utah Arts Council award for Best Young Adult Novel in 2007, and Chasing the Skip, which was released by Christy Ottaviano books in 2012. For more about Janci, visit her online at jancipatterson.com.
Kira thought she knew everything about her best friend, Haylee. But when Haylee commits suicide immediately after her first date with her longtime crush, Bradley Johansen, Kira is left with nothing but questions, and a gaping hole in her life where Haylee used to be.
Kira is sure that the answers to her questions must be written in Haylee's journal, but she's not the only one searching for it. The more Kira learns about Haylee's past, the more certain she is that other people grieving for Haylee are keeping secrets—especially Bradley, and Haylee's attractive older cousin Nick. Kira is desperate to get to Haylee's journal before anyone else finds it—to discover the truth about what happened to Haylee—
And to hide the things that Haylee wrote down about her.
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