What makes him so sure? He’s never been far from Pinecraft. As far as I can tell, he’s never going to leave. That’s his choice. Not mine.
“Please,” I tell him. “This is something I need to do. I know you don’t understand.”
Jacob gets in front of me, blocking the way. “I used to think you were smart,” he says. “But I was wrong.”
It hurts, the way he’s talking so mean. He probably thought we’d end up together. But here’s the cold honest truth: Jacob would be a lot happier with a Mennonite girl from Pinecraft.
I push ahead of him.
“You’re no better than anybody else,” he shouts at me.
I never said I was better. Just different, that’s all. And I’m smart enough to know I don’t belong. If I stayed here, I’d always be wondering. Always questioning. And that’s why I have to leave.
When Faron starts the engine, I’m almost ready to walk away. Turn around and walk home, where nothing ever changes. I march right up to that truck and grab hold of the door. Then I scoot next to him.
Faron stares out the windshield at the drizzly rain. “You sure about this?”
The lucky rabbit’s foot swings back and forth, the keys winking in the streetlight. If only we could stay inside the truck forever, while the traffic swirls around backyards so empty, even birds don’t rest there. I want to hold the Gulf in my fist, let the salt water rinse away the past.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
He reaches across the seat and kisses me. “You’re a brave girl, Lucy Zimmer.”
chapter nineteen
quilts
All night, Faron drives. I crack the window and breathe in the smells of new places. Every so often, I spot a fish camp on the side of the road. Brightly painted shacks rising on stilts. Plywood signs for mangrove snapper and smoked mullet. Hours pass and I don’t say a word.
“Ever been this far from Pinecraft?” Faron asks.
“Never.”
“It’s kind of scary, right?”
Yeah, I’m scared.
In the morning, Dad’s going to wake up to an empty house. He won’t understand why I’m gone. He’ll probably think I’ve run off like Alice.
He won’t understand what I’m looking for.
“First time I left home, I couldn’t sleep,” Faron says. “It takes some getting used to.”
“What does?”
“Being on your own,” he says, looking at the road.
A siren wails in the distance. All of a sudden, a flood of blue and red light swells inside the truck. I turn around, squeezing my eyes against the brightness. I can’t stop thinking about what Faron told me. This truck doesn’t belong to him. I don’t care if he built it from scrap.
“You never got caught,” I say quietly.
Faron watches the police car swerve ahead of us. “That don’t make it right. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I didn’t say it.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
“What if someone finds out?” I ask.
“They can’t tell, just by looking. Nobody knows what I did.”
“And what happens if we get pulled over?”
“Then we’re both in trouble,” he says, cutting into the next lane.
Near the highway a billboard rises above the straggly trees. A girl, her red mouth. Then another girl. Bleached hair and smiling teeth. The woods are filled with billboards, their silent faces zipping past us, one by one.
When Alice stepped off the bus in Pinecraft, I couldn’t imagine I’d be on the road looking for her. Everything’s different here. I’ve never seen buildings that tall, their jagged shapes filled with light, yet somehow so empty.
As we speed across a bridge, I study the cables slanting above us like a rib cage. That’s all that keeps us from falling.
“Are we still in Florida?”
“Jacksonville,” he says. “About an hour from the border.”
Already I’m so far from home. Even if we turned around, it feels like I’m never going back.
• • •
The sky is still dark, though morning’s coming soon. Faron’s been driving for hours. When I look through the windshield, I can’t tell where we’re headed.
North.
That’s all I know.
My eyes burn from lack of sleep. I can barely keep them open. Then the truck begins to drift into the next lane, sparking a round of honks, and I know that Faron must be tired too. More than tired.
“We’ve got to pull over,” he says, jerking the wheel. “Or else I’m going to wake up in a ditch.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere not in plain sight.”
I squint at the field beside the road. Picket fences, arranged in a circle. There’s no place to hide the truck, so we keep driving. A couple minutes later, we pass a silo on a hill. Maybe it belongs to a farmer. I’ve never seen a real farm. Only the pictures in Alice’s old recipe book.
“Over there?” I say, pointing at the woods.
He shakes his head. “The sun’s going to rise pretty soon. We can’t take a chance on a farm. They might already be up.”
We get off the highway at the next exit. Faron steers the truck down a dirt road, searching for a spot that looks good. A sign says there’s fifty acres for sale. All those pine trees, ready to be chopped down and turned into Luxury Homes with Spectacular Lake Views.
“What about there? Does that work?” I ask.
“Works good,” he says, cutting the headlights. We cruise real slow, bumping our way through the vacant lot. Branches scrape against the window. I can barely see the “spectacular view.” It’s more like a shimmer behind the trees. A promise of something better. Or a wish that you know won’t come true.
I climb out of the truck and the cold slams into me. When I tried to imagine someplace that wasn’t home, I didn’t picture this muddy patch of land. I thought it would be bigger somehow. And I always thought I’d be alone. I’m not sure why. It’s just the way I’d always been.
“You cold?” says Faron, unzipping his backpack. He takes out a quilt. It’s a Morning Star pattern, crisscrossed with blue and yellow squares. “This used to be my mom’s,” he tells me, unfolding it in the truck bed.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him. And it is.
“She made this quilt. I’ve had it since I was little.”
“I have one too.”
“Yeah?” he says, smiling. “Did your mom sew it for you?”
It’s strange, but I didn’t realize until now. Mama probably stitched that quilt for me a long time ago. Maybe before I was born.
“She’s gone now,” I say, watching him spread out the quilt.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“She died after I was born. That’s what Dad told me. Fever or something.”
Faron is quiet for a moment. “That doesn’t mean you can’t miss her.”
He’s right.
In a way, I do miss Mama, though I never knew her. Most of all, I miss the conversations we never had. As much as I love my dad, it’s not the same thing. I can’t tell him my secrets. Or ask him questions. At least, the kind I’ve had lately.
I stare at the quilt in the back of that truck. A rush of heat floods through me. Of course, we’re sleeping together. I mean, side by side. I want to act like it doesn’t mean anything. No big deal. But I’ve never been this close to a boy. Never done more than kissing.
“You go first,” I say.
Now Faron’s the one who seems nervous. He reaches up and pushes back his hair. “I’m going to take my jeans off, okay?”
I nod.
He turns his back to me. It’s sort of sweet and ridiculous at the same time. I mean, it’s not like I can’t see him. Slowly, he tugs off his jeans. He unzips his hoodie and shrugs out of the sleeves. Then he yanks his T-shirt over his head. Maybe he can feel me watching, but I don’t look away.
I remember Alice talking about the guys back in Maine. One time, Alice told me she li
ked looking at their arms. The muscles in their legs. That’s all. She said kissing was fun, but she couldn’t imagine sleeping with a boy. The way she talked about it made me wonder if I’d ever want to. But I like looking at Faron.
All of him.
“Come on, Lucy,” he says, climbing in the back of the truck.
When I slide under the quilt, he doesn’t move. He’s right there, looking up at the stars. I listen to the rise and fall of his breath, wishing he’d turn over and hold me.
I reach under the folds of the quilt and find his hand. He squeezes my fingers and I squeeze back. If I were Old Order, I’d wear a “night dress.” Alice used to talk about bundling. When a boy likes somebody special, they stay awake in bed, holding each other until sunrise. The girls wear fancy clothes—long, colorful “night dresses.”
Well, I’m not wearing anything fancy tonight. Just my plain old cotton dress. It’s strange, feeling the warmth of Faron’s body next to mine, his warmth so close.
Strange in a good way.
“Everything’s so quiet,” I whisper.
“That’s why I couldn’t sleep when I left home,” he says. “All that noise inside my head.”
“What do you mean?”
“You hear the cars, right? City noise. Back home, it’s noisy too. Never had any space to myself. Now I’m free. Nobody bossing me around. But it’s kind of empty without my mom and dad.”
“You miss them.”
“A lot.”
Faron tells me about Maine. The ice on the river, the way it shudders when it thaws. The mossy smell of the fields. In Pinecraft, I never saw the seasons change. He makes it sound like a new beginning, a fresh start.
“But you still wanted to leave home.”
“I spent my whole life hearing no,” he tells me. “All I wanted was a yes. Once I got down to Florida, it felt like I had to hurry up and try everything. Looking back, it’s pretty obvious I was going nowhere.”
“I wanted to leave home too,” I whisper. “But I was too scared.”
“You?” He laughs. “Lucy Zimmer, you’re the bravest girl I ever met.”
Maybe I am brave.
“But not like Alice. She’s the brave one.”
“That’s because you’re her friend,” he says.
I never saw it that way before.
Did Alice look up to me, the way I’d always looked up to her?
Maybe we looked up to each other.
I want to ask Faron more questions, but it feels like we’ve already gone too far. “Is it weird, being up north again?”
“This ain’t north.” He kisses my forehead.
“Alice said it got so cold in winter, her eyelashes froze. She used to wash her hair in a bucket.”
“Yeah, it’s hard, growing up Old Order,” he says. “One time, my dad killed a chicken right in front of me. Just swung it over his head, real fast, and snapped its neck. Then he made me yank out the feathers. The whole time I’m in the barn, thinking, What if there’s nothing else? We die and go into the ground. That’s it.”
At night, I close my eyes and try to picture it. The emptiness. It scares me more than any hell I can imagine.
“I was just a little kid,” says Faron.
When his voice cracks, I know he’s fighting back tears. I reach for him under the quilt and we’re kissing again. His mouth is warm against mine. All the space between us has closed up.
For now, it’s enough.
chapter twenty
blackwoods
I’m shivering in the truck, huddled under a blank sky at dawn. It’s so cold, my breath is steaming. The trees take on a hazy shimmer, like my backyard after it rains. In the field, there’s a goose staring back at me.
“Look.” I nudge Faron. The grass is swarming with them. “What are they thinking?”
“Breakfast. Same thing I’m thinking.”
“Why haven’t they left yet?”
“You mean south?” he says. “They’ll fly when they’re ready. I always wondered how they know where to go.”
The geese are travelers, too. Every year, they head south along an invisible path in the sky.
“They see things we can’t see.”
That’s how they know.
When we pull onto the highway, the sun’s coming up. The air inside the truck is thick. I lean back against the seat and roll down the window. I didn’t sleep much last night. I felt the road unwinding, the way you can still feel the ocean long after it pushes against your skin.
After a while, we stop at a gas station. I’m starting to wonder if we can reach Blackwoods tonight. What if Tobias isn’t at the games? Maybe we’re driving all this way for nothing. But it’s a chance I’m willing to take.
“Want to stretch your legs?” says Faron, climbing out of the truck. “I could use a Coke.”
“Okay.” My dad never let me drink soda.
We walk to the vending machines, where a boy in a puffy jacket is slumped on a bench, smoking a cigarette. He seems nervous for some reason, bouncing his leg and looking around, like he’s not sure what to do.
“See that kid? He’s on Rumspringa,” Faron says.
“How do you know?”
Faron shrugs. “I just do.”
The boy watches us plunk quarters into the slot. His eyes meet mine, and I quickly look away.
“Are you really going to talk to your dad?” I ask Faron.
“That depends on whether he’ll talk to me.”
Inside, I’m churning. Faron can’t go home. He doesn’t belong with the Old Order.
What’s going to happen if he tries?
We get back in the truck. When I look out the window, the boy is still on the bench, watching us speed onto the highway.
• • •
By the time we reach Maine that night, it’s so dark, I can barely see the farms beside the road. The woods are filled with secret things. Treehouses, no longer hidden by leaves. A swimming pool draped in a blue tarp. Horses leaning over a stream.
“Where are we?” I ask.
Faron tugs up his hood. “North.”
I glance at the mountains, the way they chisel into the horizon. “Tobias was here with Alice last summer.”
“That’s in the past. What makes you think he’s here now?”
“Because it’s his safe house.”
The LARPers have their own secret world, just like the Rumspringa boys. They need somewhere to belong. When they couldn’t find that place, they made one.
We’re following the signs to Acadia National Park. Faron is driving fast, cutting ahead of the trucks on the highway.
“So what kind of game is this anyway?” he asks.
I try to think of how to describe it. “You can make believe you’re somebody else. It’s like pretending.”
“What do they pretend?”
“Battles, mostly.”
“Never heard of a game like that,” he says.
The park is so big, I don’t know where to look for their campsite. Soon we find the sign for Blackwoods, and Faron pulls over. He reaches into his backpack, takes out a heavy wool coat, and slides it over my shoulders. It’s an Old Order–style coat. No buttons. The lining smells like cedar and smoke.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask.
“I never get cold.”
He fumbles with the hooks, latching it tight. “There you go,” he says. “All you need is a pair of boots.”
If somebody looked at me, they wouldn’t know my family’s Amish-Mennonite.
Maybe they wouldn’t know I’m a girl.
• • •
It’s cold when we get out of the truck. Colder than I’ve ever been in my whole life.
Faron grabs my hand. “You ready for this?”
I nod. “More than ready.”
Together we march up the trail. Branches snap against my chest. I stumble along, tripping over things I can’t see. Rocks and fallen logs. I listen to the night noises swirling around us. The crunch of our sneakers. Crick
ets sawing away.
A shout breaks through the quiet. Faron pulls me along the trail, aiming his flashlight at the woods. We run toward the sound, winding our way through the bone-white trees. The clearing ahead is dotted with tents. Flags snap in the breeze.
“This must be their camp,” I tell him.
Somebody darts between the trees. On her back is a pair of glittery wings, reminding me of Alice’s costume. I can’t let her get away. Not after I’ve come so far.
“Lucy,” Faron shouts.
I take off, running after her. The girl races ahead, her wings bouncing as she zigzags through the brush. She swerves off the trail and disappears into the woods.
When Faron catches up with me, he says, “Don’t go running off like that.” He blinks. “Is that how you play the game?”
I aim the flashlight at the ground. The girl is face-down in the dirt, her wings splayed out, as if she fell from the sky.
She lifts her head.
“Do you guys have a healing potion?” She squints into my flashlight. “I really hate being dead.”
“Sorry,” I tell her.
“That’s okay,” she says, standing. She wipes the dirt off her face. “What dimension did you guys come from?”
“Florida.”
The dead girl blinks. “For real? I knew we had a lot of chapters but . . . you came all that way to Blackwoods?”
“We’re not actually here to play,” I explain. “I’m looking for Tobias. Have you seen him?”
She frowns. “You know Toby?”
I don’t know if I should say more. When I mentioned his name, she didn’t look happy. If Tobias got himself in trouble with this girl, she’s not going to talk to us.
“He’s supposed to be here with his girlfriend,” I say.
“You mean Sarah?” she says.
I’m so surprised, I can’t answer.
Who’s Sarah?
Just then, a boy stumbles out of the bushes. He’s wearing a long, black robe decorated with stars. His pointy hat keeps slipping over his glasses.
“Am I too late?” he says, gasping for breath.
“You were supposed to save me, Ben.” She rolls her eyes.
“Sure thing, my lady. Hold on.” He reaches into his knapsack and flings something into the air. “Healing potion,” he yells, as sunflower seeds rain down on us. He pops one in his mouth and chews. “Good thing my magic is environmentally friendly.”
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