by Lara Avery
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Kelsey sped west as if a fire spread behind her. It may have not been the right thing to do. She didn’t know if this was the right thing in the eyes of her mother, of all others, but she knew it was right for her.
When she arrived at Peter’s doorstep, uncertainty kept her on the lawn. She was conveniently forgetting all the hurt she caused him, she knew that.
But it didn’t have to be hurt. Anyone who had been in their shoes would know how certain she was that she loved him, and that he loved her.
She knocked.
Cathy answered, dressed in an oversized Kansas Jayhawks T-shirt and Garfield pajama pants. At first, she didn’t register Kelsey’s face, in all her dance makeup and her Lycra outfit. Then her blue eyes narrowed.
Peter must have told her everything.
“You,” she said, in disbelief that Kelsey was right there, in front of her. “What are you doing here?”
Kelsey kept her chin up. She would not be ashamed. She would not be afraid anymore. “I came to say sorry, and to explain.”
“Apology not accepted,” Cathy said. “Get out of here!”
“Please let me in. I need to talk to Peter.”
“You are the last person he wants to talk to.”
That hit hard. She had fallen so far. Kelsey said nothing, but she didn’t move.
“Listen, I’m telling it to you like it is. He never wants to see you again. Get the picture?”
Kelsey tried to glance beyond Cathy’s arm, hoping for any trace of Peter. But she only saw a dark house.
“Please,” Kelsey said, her voice smaller now. “I didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand. I love him.”
Cathy said nothing. She only made an exaggerated pointing motion, whirling her finger, as if she were telling a dog, Go.
Her skin glowing with shame and anger, Kelsey walked off the stoop.
“Just stay away from my son,” Cathy said to her back. “That’s easy enough.”
Kelsey whipped back around to say something, she didn’t know what, but the door had closed.
She got into the Subaru and started the ignition, staring at her steering wheel.
Suddenly, there was a tap on the window. Her heart jumped.
Meg stood outside the car, with her same high ponytail, this time wearing a T-shirt that said WILDCATS DANCE TEAM.
Kelsey rolled down the driver’s-side window.
“Hey,” Meg said.
“Hey.”
“How ya doin’?” Meg said, and Kelsey could tell she had silently cursed herself for asking a pretty obvious question.
“Can I ask you something?”
Meg nodded.
“Is he in there?” Kelsey pointed to the house.
Meg looked back, and nodded again. He must have seen her, or at least heard her. The house wasn’t that big. Maybe his mother was right: He must really, truly hate her.
Kelsey looked at Meg. She was surprised she’d even talk to her. “What do you think of all this?”
Meg frowned, thinking. “Well,” she said, hesitant. “I’ve known for a while, actually.”
“How?”
In answer, Meg held up an envelope. Kelsey’s video.
“It got redirected here when they switched bases,” Meg explained. “I opened it because… Well, I don’t know why I opened it. I was curious about you, I guess. And then I met you, and I liked you, and then I met you again, and I liked you again. I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t want to mess with what you had, you know, going on. You and my brother, you’re good together.”
Kelsey felt her mouth twisting, her teeth clenched. They may have been good together, but it was too late now. He hated her. As he should.
Meg continued, “So, I think… you should have it. Right?” She dropped the envelope in Kelsey’s lap through the open window.
Kelsey picked it up, and tossed it right back out. “Burn it,” she told Meg.
She didn’t want another reminder of her stupid mistake. She would cut herself off from this family, from these memories, from this house. She revved her engine.
Meg picked the envelope off the ground and hit herself on the head with the palm of her hand. “I ruined everything, didn’t I?”
“Nope,” Kelsey said with a sarcastic smile. “I ruined everything.” Then she noticed Meg’s shirt. “Congratulations on making the team, by the way,” she said, and rolled up her window before she drove away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Packing for Paris was much more pleasant this time around. More peaceful, at least. Kelsey folded—well, more like stuffed; she wasn’t a big fan of wasting time for the sake of creases—pair of skinny jeans after pair of skinny jeans, cardigans on top of cardigans, never having to worry about anyone’s taste in clothing but her own. She left room for all her dance stuff, which was still in the wash. She wasn’t sure what kind of apparel she’d need for an intensive modern dance program, but assumed she’d have most of the basics already. If not, she’d wing it. There were worse problems in life.
A week ago, after she had returned from El Dorado, Kelsey had walked with her graduation cash to the bank downtown, created herself an account, and found she had enough money for airfare to pretty much anywhere.
She had considered South America, but her Spanish was as rudimentary as her French, and she was never one to romanticize grand chains of mountains or the rain forest. The prairie did her fine, as far as nature went. She was a Kansas girl.
Paris, however, still called to her as it had the first time she saw it, and after all, she hadn’t even gotten to see half the places she had seen on the subway posters.
Her parents had agreed to use her first semester’s tuition at KU to fund a month-long dance program in Paris over the summer. Kelsey had deferred her acceptance to college. She would get there eventually.
But first: This evening she’d be gone. She’d have two months to herself in the city until the dance program started, and though it sounded lonely, it was probably just what she needed: time to gather a semblance of Kelsey as she was now, no Michelle, no Peter, no Davis, no University of Kansas dance team.
Her father called up to her from downstairs, “You ready, sweetie?”
“Coming!” she called.
Before she left, the Maxfields had one more thing to do.
As they exited the front door, her mother picked up the simple silver urn they had finally taken from the funeral home. It wouldn’t stay in their house. They had agreed there were already enough memories of Michelle there.
With it, they walked down the street, along the jagged brick sidewalks, under the canopy of thick oaks and cottonwoods, all the way to the old railroad tracks.
The three of them passed over the tracks and down the path to the dam, where they found a makeshift trail of rocks through the low water. They climbed the limestone ramp to the top of the dam, where they stood in its center, watching the Kansas River wind all the way west, through the landscape.
Kelsey took the silver urn out of its bag, and handed it to her mother.
Her mother held it to her lips briefly, whispering something Kelsey could not hear. She handed it to her husband.
“Good-bye, my sweet baby,” her father said, cradling the urn in his arms for a moment.
Then he handed it to Kelsey, a small smile on his face. It was heavy and warm from the sun.
Kelsey knew she didn’t have to say anything out loud. She and Michelle would always be speaking back and forth, whether she wanted to or not. That was the way they worked, and would always work; tied, taking from, pushing, completing the other.
Have fun, she said silently to Michelle, and lifted the lid.
The unknowable ache inside her dimmed, and the ashes fell into the breeze, flowered into the water, and traveled on their way.
When they were a block from home, they could see a figure sitting on their porch swing. She recognized him in a second, and her chest burned. Kelsey’s mother and father passed
him on their way inside, without a word, but Kelsey stayed.
“Hi, Peter,” she said.
He was wearing jeans and a faded blue Kansas Jayhawks T-shirt. Where she stood, a few feet away, she could see his eyes capture the color.
“Meg gave me this,” he said, standing, and in his hands was the envelope holding her flash drive, now frayed at the edges from its journey to Afghanistan and back.
Kelsey remained quiet. She hadn’t had the faintest hope he would have seen it, and now that he had, she prepared for another wound to open. If he hated her then, he would hate her more for her delusion. And yet, nothing could keep her from wanting to pour out gratitude that he was even here, so unexpected. When you love someone that much, you don’t get to choose when or how or whether or not to stop. She had tried, but she had given up quickly.
“Did you mean all of it?” he asked.
She sighed. “Every word.”
Why was he here?
“In that case,” he said, stepping down off the porch, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. And my mother, I’m sure she’s sorry, too.”
“Well,” Kelsey said, putting her hands on her hips, recovering from a blow that never came. “I forgive you. Of course I forgive you. I’d be crazy not to forgive you.”
Peter held up the envelope, with a half smile. “You’d be crazy either way.”
“You’re crazy, too,” she said, shrugging, remembering the way she watched him lie in her lap in Snake Country, fighting battles real and unreal.
“We’re both a little nuts, aren’t we?”
Kelsey nodded, smiling, staring at the brick sidewalk below her. He touched her arm, and she lifted her head.
Peter’s face had shifted. “But we’d be worse off if we didn’t have each other. I know I’d have been worse off if I didn’t have you, no matter who you were, or were pretending to be. You made me feel brave.” His mouth twitched. “Like I could get through it.”
“And you did,” Kelsey said.
“I kept your letters,” he said, speaking quickly, nervously.
A tight smile grew on Kelsey’s face. “I dug yours out of the trash.”
“Well, thank you,” he said. “For doing that.”
“They smell like mustard now,” she let out.
He laughed loudly, surprising both of them. His eyes met hers, and then their gazes couldn’t unstick.
They didn’t speak for a while, considering each other. Music began to play from inside the house, some sort of piano. A warm gust blew around them.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Want to start over?”
Kelsey’s eyes stung for some reason, though all she felt was relief. Everything was clear, even the tears through which she saw him.
“Sure,” she said, as casual as could be.
“Hi, I’m Peter.” And he smiled his smile, holding out his hand.
“Hi, Peter,” she said, and she took it. “I’m Kelsey.”
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my mother and father, and to all of my family and friends in the Sunflower State—Elise, Jamie, wherever you are, for making my memories of Lawrence bright and rich. To my older brother, Wyatt, for his service to our country, and for his consultation on the experience of being deployed to Afghanistan. Ian, for cheering me on as you went to bed, and again when you saw me in the same spot in the morning. Mandy and Emma, I would not be who I am if you were not who you are. A toast to the Revolver crew, who lights a fire in me whenever I see them. Thank you, Katie McGee, for being my editor and champion at Alloy, and for being the inceptor of this incredible story. Thank you to Pam Garfinkel and the entire team at Little, Brown for making all of this happen. We writers would be nothing without you.
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Alloy Entertainment
Cover photo © 2015 by Keely Yount
Cover design by Liz Dresner
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Lines from “And The Wind Sings Boo” from The Wish Book by Alex Lemon (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Alex Lemon.
Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. milkweed.org
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
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First ebook edition: July 2015
ISBN 978-0-316-28369-4
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