I pictured her in her cozy room upstairs, surrounded by notes and textbooks, scrolling on a laptop for hours.
No one else could even stand to have me talk about it, but she’d done term-paper-level digging into the topic. For me—someone she barely knew and had no cause to help.
I closed the folder and picked it up. “Thank you,” I said, my voice thick with emotion.
Thera flashed a smile that lit up her face. “You’re welcome.”
I stood there for a second, dazzled by her and wanting more. It was a strange, deep yearning that seemed to well up from the same place as the emptiness I normally felt. But I couldn’t do anything about it, not after that impulsive but stupid kiss.
“So, okay, thanks,” I said again lamely. I turned to go.
“Jace.”
I faced her.
Thera hesitated, tucking her hair behind her ear. “About last night. You surprised me, that’s all.” She focused on the stapler, shifting it so that it would be perfectly parallel with the tape dispenser, pink rising in her pale skin. “But I was thinking, if you have time after school, there’s this place I go sometimes when I need to clear my head.” She raised her gaze, and I could read the vulnerability and uncertainty there. “We could go together.”
A stupid grin threatened to spread across my face, and I wanted to shout, Yes! But suddenly, all I could think about was how many people might see us. Thera and me talking now, walking out after school together, getting in her rusted-out car with its distinctive patches of gray primer. And then, wherever this place was, if there were other people around . . .
Someone is always watching.
If my parents found out that I’d been seen with her again, I doubted any explanation would matter. Not after last night.
My silence stretched on for a fraction of a second too long, and Thera’s expression shuttered. “You know what, never mind.”
“Thera, no, I want to. But everything’s really—”
“Complicated.” Her cheeks turned a brick red. “Yeah. Like I said, forget it.” She turned away from me.
“Wait.” I reached over the edge of the desk and caught the sleeve of her hoodie. She seemed to have an endless supply of oversized hoodies.
She pulled free, focusing her attention on rearranging books on a cart.
“It’s not like that,” I said, trying to find the words to explain. “Someone saw me going to your house last night. And my family is going through some stuff right now. My dad thinks any kind of controversy . . .” I clamped my mouth shut, belatedly realizing I’d called her controversial.
“You don’t need to explain,” she said dully. “Trust me.”
A catcall came from behind me, followed by a burst of laughter.
I looked over my shoulder to see Caleb and Matt at a table in the far corner. They were watching us. Or, rather, Thera. Matt had his chair tipped back on two legs and was grinning like an idiot, while Caleb waggled his tongue in the V between his index and middle finger.
Assholes.
As I turned to face Thera again, my mouth open to continue trying to explain, it dawned on me. That could have been me. No, that would have been me. If the accident hadn’t happened, I would have been sitting right next to Matt and Caleb. Laughing.
And they knew nothing about Thera—the real Thera, the science nerd who covered her walls with the bridges she wanted to build, if she could ever get out of this town.
Not that they cared.
But I did. This new version of me did, anyway.
My dad didn’t know Thera, nor did he want to know her. All that mattered to him was what other people thought of her and her mom, and I was beginning to think he felt the same about me and our family. What was left of it.
But Thera wasn’t her mother, any more than I was my dad.
Plus, if I said no to Thera right now, I’d be walking away from the one person who’d helped me, who’d cared even though she was angry with me. And for what? For who? People who didn’t care enough to bother knowing either of us or what we were struggling with.
Forget it.
I leaned on the desk, waiting until Thera looked up from the book cart. “Where do you want to meet?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
* * *
“SO WHERE ARE WE going exactly?” I asked Thera. The interior of her car was immaculate—not so much as a stray receipt or straw wrapper on the worn and stained gray mat beneath my feet. With the heater running full blast, it was warm in here and smelled of old dust, flowery air-freshener, and, faintly, her mint shampoo.
Thera grinned, keeping her focus on the road in front of her. “You’ll see. You’ll like it, I promise.”
“Okay,” I said. “But if we’re making a run for the Canadian border, we’re going to need more snacks.” I held up the plastic baggie that had once contained a half dozen sugar cookies she’d evidently picked up at home. Now only a few small crumbs remained in one corner. She’d had one, and I’d demolished the rest. They were really good.
“Hmm.” She pretended to consider that. “How do you feel about the Wisconsin border instead?”
I lowered the bag. “Seriously?”
I’d called my mom at lunch and told her that I was getting a ride home from Zach. Expecting a barrage of questions, I’d prepared an entire story about staying after school to work on Eli’s memorial page for the yearbook, which was half true. The yearbook advisor, Mrs. Rafferty, had asked me about it on Monday, and it was something I would need to do eventually. But I didn’t feel ready yet.
But when my mom answered, she’d sounded distracted.
“Okay, that’s fine,” she’d said once I’d finished explaining. “Just be home before dark, please.” Then she’d hung up before I’d had a chance to reassure her that I would.
Her distraction was to my advantage today.
I watched as houses grew farther and farther apart and fields and horses took their place. Holy shit, maybe Thera wasn’t kidding about the Wisconsin thing.
“So how do you know about this place, wherever it is?” I asked.
“Do you remember the hardware store that used to be on Main?” she asked. “A couple blocks from my house?”
“Sort of.” My parents tended to go to the Home Depot on the other side of town. “It closed, right? Like years ago.”
“That was my grandpa’s.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “He used to take me places with him, local vendors and random errands, during the summer, just to get me outside.” She paused. “My mom doesn’t really go out. Ever.”
That wasn’t news to me. There’d been rumors for years, ranging from ridiculously stupid to kind of plausible, about why that was. Psychic Mary was a werewolf. A serial killer. Horribly disfigured. Cursed. In a wheelchair.
But now it occurred to me there might be another reason. “Because of the whole psychic thing? Like she gets vibrations or . . .”
“Technically, she’s a psychic medium, so it would be more like seeing ghosts, if it was anything.” Thera shook her head, and I wasn’t sure if it was a denial of the idea or of her mother’s ability. “But it’s not that, or at least, not just that,” she said flatly.
Before I could decide if pushing further was wise, she pulled to the side of the road and parked in the ditch, next to an unmarked gravel entrance. A low metal gate blocked the opening, with a bent NO TRESPASSING sign in faded red and white hanging in the center.
“We’re here,” she said.
I had no idea where “here” was and whether our presence was allowed, but Thera was climbing out of the car.
By the time I’d gotten out and made my way up, she was waiting at the gate.
“Come on. They’re closed for the day.”
That was . . . reassuring?
She ducked under the metal gate with the ease and practice of someone who’d done it many times. I followed a little more awkwardly.
It was only a short walk up the dusty makeshift road to
what was apparently our destination. And I stopped dead at the top of the incline at the sight of it.
Enormous mountains of loose rock and gravel ringed an open area below, where tire tracks marred the dusty surface. And with the sun low in the sky, the gravel and rock piles were turned into shadows limned in red and orange. It was alien and desolate, but also beautiful in a creepy way.
Thera kept going, walking down to the open area in the middle, where the wind whipped up small dust cyclones.
“What is this place?” I asked when I reached her.
“It’s a quarry,” she said, her hair flying out around her in the wind. “My grandpa used to buy landscaping materials from them.” She pointed to a sign in the distance, a painted piece of plywood hanging crookedly on a metal pole: H&G GRAVEL AND SAND. “The main entrance and business office are on the other side. This is where the trucks pick up.” She grinned at me. “It’s weird, right?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“It’s best at sunrise and sunset,” she said. “Like visiting the surface of Mars, you know?”
I couldn’t argue with that. “But why? Why come here?”
She moved to stand next to me, so we were both staring out at the same strange vista. “Because sometimes it helps me to feel small,” she said. “Reminds me that the world, the universe even, is a lot bigger than whatever shit is going on in my life at the moment.” The back of her hand bumped mine; then her fingers curled against my palm loosely. “And that it won’t be this bad forever.” She sounded determined, tired, and sad, all at the same time.
I squeezed her hand gently.
“I read the papers you gave me. On the near-death experiences,” I said.
Without letting go of my hand, she faced me. “Yeah? What did you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just because other people found a way to justify what they didn’t see doesn’t mean that they’re right. Quantum theory or whatever. They’re guessing.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong, either,” Thera said.
“There’s no proof.” I tucked both of our hands in my pocket; her fingers were freezing.
She smiled at me. “Did you think there was going to be?” The wind caught her hair, whipping it across her mouth, until she was forced to reach up with her free hand and pull it away.
My gaze was drawn to the glimpse of pale skin beneath the corner of her jaw, at the curve of her neck. She revealed so little of herself. I caught myself imagining what it would be like to touch her there, one finger against that smooth, warm expanse. She was beautiful. And smart in unexpected ways.
“No one’s going to convince you. For every argument on one side, there are equal and opposing ones on the other,” Thera said.
“So what am I supposed to—”
“There aren’t any easy answers. You have to figure it out.” She nudged me with her elbow. “You know, think for yourself,” she said with a smile that took the sting out of the words.
“I don’t . . . I mean, I know how to think for myself.” Except as soon as I said the words, I suddenly wasn’t so sure. “This is different.”
“Because you’ve always been told what to believe,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was, too. Spirits, crystals, energies, all of that stuff.” She flashed me a sad smile. “One of my earliest memories is of my mother burning sage in my room to make sure it was cleansed.”
It had never occurred to me how similar we were, beneath the obvious differences. Her mother and my father both had enormous stakes in convincing the world that they knew what they were talking about.
“So what did you do?”
“I think you have to take the pieces that ring true to you, even if they don’t all come from the same place. Sage smells pretty good, whether it works or not.” She shrugged. “Loving your enemies as well as your friends is a pretty good one, even if it’s tough to live up to sometimes. So is acknowledging that suffering is part of life.” She grinned at me. “That’s Buddhist, by the way.”
Buddhism. I could see my dad’s head exploding right now.
“For me, though, it’s the big bang theory. A couple of years ago, they found evidence that suggests the universe is still expanding.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
She laughed. “It’s like ripples in a pond after you throw a rock in. It means something kicked off the start of the universe, something outside of the universe itself.” She lifted her shoulder. “I don’t think some old guy in robes was out there pushing dirt and rock into a ball to make planets, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a benevolent force out there somewhere. It seems pretty improbable that the universe came together randomly.”
My head was spinning. “So we just pick what we believe. It’s that simple.”
“No, I don’t think it’s simple at all. And it’s not just a single choice. I think as things happen, you have to keep choosing.”
The weight of that seemed overwhelming and frightening. “You aren’t supposed to choose, though. Are you? It’s supposed to be . . .” I struggled to find the right words. “Like a lightning bolt. Saul by the side of the road or whatever. Or it’s just something you have from the beginning.” Active choice didn’t play a role in any of the stories I knew, not like that.
“I mean, if a burning bush shows up and starts giving instructions, claiming to be God, then yeah, okay, maybe,” I went on. “You have to decide if that’s actually God or the result of using some serious drugs.”
Thera snorted.
I shook my head. “But that’s not the same thing as deciding to believe in God.” It was such a foreign concept that I felt weird just saying the words.
“Choice matters,” Thera said. “It defines us, more than what we’re told to believe or told to do. If you believe that you’ll see Eli again, in heaven or whatever comes after this, then believe that. Choose it.”
I thought about the dream I’d had last night. It had felt so real. I could still hear that muffled murmur of Eli’s voice behind those endless doors. He hadn’t seemed gone, not then. “But what if I’m wrong?”
She lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “What if you are? You won’t know it,” she pointed out. “If you’re wrong, then once you’re gone, you’re gone.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can do that, just . . . choose.” It seemed crazy that it was both that easy and complicated. It had been so much easier when I didn’t have to think about it.
She edged closer. “Look, to believe in anything—God, other people, yourself—it’s an act of defiance.” Her expression was fierce. “We’re small and fragile, and control relatively little of our existence.” She waved a hand at the gravel mountains surrounding us. “Asteroids, cancer, sucky economy, someone cutting you off in traffic. The world will obliterate you as soon as look at you.”
“That is . . . remarkably depressing.”
“But we’re here. We’re alive against all those odds. And believing is a shout in the dark,” Thera said, moving to stand directly in front of me. Her hand was tight on mine in my pocket. When she looked up at me, my breath caught in my throat and I went still.
She offered me a shaky smile, her gaze flicking between my eyes and my mouth. “And sometimes you have to shout.”
I leaned forward to kiss her, letting go of her hand to sink my fingers into the warmth and heaviness of her hair.
When I teased her lower lip with my tongue, her mouth opened beneath mine. I groaned, pulling her closer and mentally cursing my not-quite-functional left arm.
The heat and weight of her pressed against me, sending a heady rush through me. I hadn’t felt this alive in months, and suddenly, I needed more. It was like I’d been living beneath a haze, a heavy coating covering me from head to toe, and it had been stripped away without notice.
My thumb traced her jawline and just below, exactly where I’d wanted to touch earlier, and she made a soft sound of pleasure against my mouth, tilting her head away so I’d have mor
e access.
Thera fumbled with my coat, sliding her hands inside and around my waist, but my shirt rode up beneath her palms.
I sucked in a sharp breath. “So cold!”
She lurched back, clapping her hand over her mouth with a laugh. “Sorry!”
“It’s okay.” I moved to kiss her again, but instead she caught my hand and led me away, back over the hill and to the car.
Once inside, we were out of the wind, which helped.
The break and the silence in the car might have been awkward, self-consciousness catching up with us, except that Thera didn’t let it.
She reached across the center console to trace the line of the scar on my face with her fingertips, her expression troubled.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I said softly. “Not anymore.”
Thera pressed her mouth gently across the end of the scar, near my cheek.
I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the absurd urge to cry.
She pushed herself up on her knees and laid a series of soft kisses along the length of the scar.
I opened my eyes, moving my hands to her hips to steady her.
But that same need pressed down on me, and I slid my palm beneath her coat and the hem of her hoodie to the bare warm skin of her stomach.
The move was awkward and not nearly as smooth as it would have been if I’d been able to use my left hand, but that didn’t seem to bother her.
She exhaled a shaky breath, air fluttering against my cheek. Then she grabbed my hand and tugged it past the soft satin of her bra to rest on her chest.
I looked up at her, and she nodded at me.
My fingers were beneath her bra strap, and I could feel the swell of her breast and the rapid thump of her heart against my palm. Like confirmation of life and being alive. The world hadn’t gotten us yet.
Her mouth closed over mine again, and I was dizzy with the need to feel more—to feel her skin against mine in larger quantities, to feel alive in that unique way that came with ignoring the world to move together.