I was just about to go, pivoting in the soft sand beneath my feet, when I saw him standing there, near the entrance to the park.
“What are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” Tyler offered, taking an uncertain step back. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I saw you take off this way and thought that maybe you shouldn’t be out here alone. I don’t want to intrude or anything, but . . .” He cocked his head to the side as a slow smile slid over his face. “I can’t in good conscience leave you out here by yourself.”
I glanced around at the deserted playground. “You afraid some bully might push me down or something?” I grinned, and it felt like the first time I’d really smiled since I’d been back. I sat down again on the swing, keeping my eyes on Tyler, disappointed that he’d decided to wear a shirt this time.
He came closer, his feet sinking in the soft sand. “Or something.” He took the swing next to mine.
We stayed like that, moving back and forth on the swings, not in a hurry, not racing or trying to swing higher or matching each other’s rhythm, just swaying as I tried not to look at him too much or too often. It was hard, though. My gaze kept shifting in his direction, and I didn’t want to stare, but I did want to at the same time.
He was of course older now than I remembered, but different too. More so than anyone else.
“What do you remember? About me, I mean?”
I grinned again when he asked the question, because it was so close to what I’d just been thinking. “I remember you liked chalk. That you always did these cool chalk drawings all over the sidewalks,” I said, twisting in my swing to face him.
He made a face. “Ouch. Really? That’s what you think of when you think of me? Chalk?”
“That’s not bad, is it?” I laughed at his reaction, pushing off again and letting the swing drift. “Why? What do you remember about me?”
He stopped moving, stopped swinging as he inhaled, his eyes—those green eyes—following mine. “I remember thinking Austin was the luckiest guy I knew.”
My breath caught in the back of my throat, and my feet hit the ground, stopping me.
“What?” Tyler insisted, swinging sideways until his shoulder nudged me. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know I had the hugest crush on you, Kyra. It wasn’t my fault I was only in the seventh grade and you barely noticed me.”
He was right; I’d barely noticed him back then. Most of my memories of Tyler were fragments, held together by Austin.
“See how you went and made things all awkward?” I accused, getting up from my swing and dusting off the back of my borrowed yoga pants.
Undeterred, Tyler fell into step beside me as we made our way toward the park entrance. “Awkward or not, you should know I’m glad you’re back.” He flashed me a sheepish smile as he added, “And now that I’m older, I’ll try to be a little more memorable.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER FOUR
Day Two
I BARELY SLEPT, IF AT ALL; MY BRAIN JUST KEPT tripping over facts and nonfacts, memories and illusions, trying to sort through what was and wasn’t and might have been. Considering I didn’t remember sleeping, I felt fine by the time the sun started coming up and the smell of coffee brewing found its way down the hall to my fake-bedroom.
I’d almost forgotten about The Husband—which is what I’d silently dubbed Grant, since it made me physically ill to even think his name—but he was the one I stumbled into in the kitchen. He was already dressed in a suit and on his way out the door, thank God, because, like I’d mentioned, that whole stomach-wrenching, physically ill thing.
I checked the clock over the microwave—it was 7:42.
The Husband poked his head back inside a minute later—I knew because my eyes automatically flicked to check. “You might want to see this.”
I was still in my mom’s clothes from the night before, and I grudgingly trailed after him, keeping enough distance so he didn’t get the wrong impression or anything. No matter what he had to show me, there was no way this was a truce.
I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what it was he’d come back in to share with me. And then I smiled, because how could I not?
The illustrations were detailed and elaborate. And even though they were created with chalk, they were vibrant and lifelike.
Tyler had drawn a cobblestone pathway that stretched all the way from one side of our street to the other, bridging our two houses, practically from my front door to his. And running across the top of the pathway was a saying, written in beautiful, scrawling script. It said:
I’ll remember you always.
It took my breath away. I couldn’t believe he’d gone to all this trouble for me. He must’ve stayed up half the night to finish it.
I glanced over to his house, but he was probably already at school.
The Husband made a whistling sound. “Pretty impressive.”
I’d almost forgotten he was there, and I wiped the smile from my face, not wanting him to get the tiniest glimpse into what I might be thinking, and then I stalked back inside. Once I’d locked the door and leaned against it and was sure The Husband could no longer see me, the grin slipped back to my lips.
My mom was at the coffeemaker, pouring herself a cup just as my dad shuffled into the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” he told her, nodding at the pot in her hand as he sat down at the table, taking the same spot he’d always sat in when we’d all lived there together.
She rolled her eyes at him but reached for another mug anyway. She didn’t ask if he wanted cream or sugar, even though he always did; she just handed his coffee to him black.
He grumbled, but he got up and went to the fridge. After a minute he peered around the door at my mom. “Don’t you have anything that isn’t soy? Something that comes from, oh, I don’t know, a cow? I’ll even take goat.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged, not at all apologetically, plucking the carton of soy milk from his hands and settling down at the table.
I sat down, too, taking my old seat. The familiarity of it should have been comfortable, but it so wasn’t. My dad sitting across from me, my mom between us, like we were still a family.
But we weren’t.
“Pretty cool, what that Tyler kid did,” my dad said, breaking the tense silence.
I cringed. “You . . . saw that?”
“Saw him do it. Right after you snuck back in.” He raised his bushy eyebrows at me, folding his arms across the belly he’d never had before.
“You snuck out?” my mom demanded, glowering at me and then turning her glare on my dad, probably for not cluing her in sooner. “How could you . . . do you have any idea . . .” She stammered, unable to come up with the right argument. And then seemed to deflate all at once. “Kyra, you can’t do that. We . . . just got you back.”
And that was it. That was the right one, and even though I was technically an adult, her words were like a knife through my heart.
“Sorry,” my sixteen-year-old self mumbled, feeling properly scolded.
“She was fine.” My dad assured, reaching over and patting my hand, maybe because he couldn’t pat hers anymore. “They went to the park and came right back. They were gone less than half an hour.”
My eyes widened. “You knew? The whole time?”
He lifted his still-black coffee to his lips, and his mouth turned downward evasively. “I might’a followed you, might’a didn’t.” He winked then, and I shook my head, thinking of the way I’d heard something in the trees. Had he seriously been spying on us?
“That’s weird. You’re weird.” But it felt better, joking with him like that, like nothing had changed. Well, not as much at least.
My mom cut in. “I think we should get you some clothes today.” She eyed my outfit skeptically, and I was tempted to remind her it was hers. “And maybe a new
cell phone.”
A loud wail erupted from down the hall, and I felt myself blanch as she jumped up from the table. I’d practically erased the kid from my memory, almost as effectively as I’d forgotten the past five years. If only.
With my mom gone, my dad leaned in, and I could smell his breath. I wondered if he wasn’t still a little drunk from the day before. “I’m not much of a shopper. I think I’ll leave you all to it. I should probably get home and see how Nancy’s holding up.”
Nancy. I let this new name sink in, even as my world tilted sideways once more. Suddenly there was a Nancy too. What was that all about? Now I had two new parents to deal with?
I no longer had a bedroom, or parents who could stand each other, or even a real home of my own.
My vision blurred, and when I couldn’t stand to look at him for another second, I let my eyes slip to the digital clock on the microwave. It was 8:31.
After a moment he got up from the table, his chair scraping along the tile floor. He kissed me on the top my head, his beard catching strands of my hair as he did. “I’ll come back later, kiddo. We can talk more then.” My mom came back into the kitchen carrying her new kid, and my dad smiled, but it never really reached his eyes. “Maybe I’ll even bring Nancy so you can meet her.”
Shopping with my mom and the new kid was less like shopping and more like wrangling an errant steer. The kid had to be herded and restrained at every turn. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to hear my mom call him “my brother” again.
She kept saying that. “Your brother holds a spoon just fine, Kyra. He’s only two.” “Can you hold your brother’s hand while we cross the street?” “Your brother has a name; it’s Logan.”
It was as though, if she said it enough, she’d somehow force some nonexistent bond between us. Make me feel something for him.
Fine, whatever. He might be my brother by blood, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a virtual stranger.
Worse, he was the brat who’d stolen my mom.
By the time we reached Target, which was only our second stop after the cell phone store, my mom managed to secure the mangy little beast into a shopping cart with a strap that was surely meant to contain monkeys. She got him to shut up for five whole minutes with a bag of popcorn that he threw around like it was confetti and the New Year’s Eve ball was dropping in Times Square. He was the most embarrassing thing ever, and I couldn’t believe she thought I’d ever lay claim to him.
He didn’t start screaming until he realized he couldn’t wiggle out of the shoulder harness he was strapped into.
After about fifteen minutes of that I covered my ears. “Forget it.” I glanced at what was in the cart: a couple of T-shirts and one pair of jeans I’d already picked out. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” I glanced meaningfully at the kid writhing in the seat and held out my hand for the keys. “I’m going to the car. Pay for this stuff, or don’t. I could care less.”
I stayed in my fake bedroom the rest of the afternoon; at least there it was quiet. And away from the kid.
My mom tried to come talk to me, but everything was so different now—even with her. It was like chatting with a stranger.
When The Husband came home, which was earlier than I expected, she asked if I wanted to try again with the whole shopping thing. I refused, deciding I’d rather have my fingernails ripped off one by one than suffer through more of her painful attempts at small talk. I worried that letting her go by herself to “bring me back some things” would mean my closet would soon be overflowing with mom jeans and cardigans in every color of the rainbow. I’d be the youngest forty-year-old on the block. But it was worth it since all I wanted to do was scream at her for not being my old mom, the one who could talk to me about anything, and everything, and nothing at all.
I remembered one time, when I was thirteen and I’d first gotten my period, that my mom and I had stayed up well after midnight watching chick flicks and eating ice cream straight out of the carton while she’d explained to me all the important girl-stuff, like tampons and condoms, and boys and kissing.
She told me about her first date with my dad, when he’d forgotten his wallet and she’d had to pay for everything. And their second date, when he forgot it again and how he’d had to beg her to give him a third chance, promising that he’d show her his cash when he picked her up, because he didn’t want her to think he was a total loser and was just trying to get free meals out of her.
She’d wrapped her arms around me then and told me all about the night I was born, and the way my dad cried harder than anyone in the room, including me.
And here we were, strangers in a strange house with nothing to say to each other.
The knocking at my window startled me, and I practically leaped off my bed. I looked at my open curtains and saw Tyler glancing at me from over the edge of my windowsill.
Smiling and shaking my head, I loped toward the window, my socks whispering across the floor as I came to a skidding stop. I slid my window open and leaned out a little, looking toward the front, and then the back, of the house to see if anyone else was around. “Why didn’t you come to the door like a normal person?”
Tyler grinned back at me. “I thought this was our thing.” When I stared at him blankly, he raised his eyebrows. “You know, you came to my window; I come to yours.” He shrugged and pushed his hands into the pockets of his zip-up hoodie.
Letting out a small laugh, I balanced against my elbows. “I’m not sure we have a thing, but okay.” I didn’t tell him that using the windows had been mine and Austin’s thing, because it didn’t matter anymore. Austin and Cat had new things now. Things that had nothing at all to do with me.
“So, how was it? Your first day back and all?”
The fact that he was here, standing outside my window and asking me how my day was, almost made me cry. No one else had bothered to ask how I was. He was the first person who wasn’t pulling me at both ends, like I was a rope in a tug-of-war. “You really don’t want to know,” I answered. “This whole returning thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Yeah? What was it supposed to be like?”
I considered that for a moment, leaning forward against the windowsill as I chewed the side of my lip. “Good question. I feel like people should be showering me with gifts and cakes and shooting confetti cannons in my honor. And maybe someone should carry me on their shoulders. A little less with the crazy dads and the bickering parents and . . .” I stopped short of saying how boyfriends should still be boyfriends and not be hooking up with my best friend the first chance they get.
Ex-best friend, I corrected silently.
“Or making chalk masterpieces for you?” Tyler asked, grinning mischievously as he bit his bottom lip.
“Yeah.” My voice dropped, and I shrugged, trying to act like it was no big deal even though it was a huge deal. I leaned farther out the window so I could get a glimpse of his handiwork. “Like that.”
Tyler was studying me, his green eyes, just a shade darker than Austin’s, never leaving mine. I could’ve sworn his cheeks flushed just a little, but he managed to change the subject effortlessly. “People are talking about you. At school.”
“Talking good or talking bad?” Not that I cared, really, but I couldn’t help being curious about the kind of gossip my reappearance had stirred up. I guess towns like Burlington were that way; news always spread fast.
“Wrong, mostly. A lot of stupid speculation about where you’ve been all this time. Abducted, runaway, sold into white slavery, that kind of shit.” He smiled, and his teeth flashed white and straight, and I wondered if he’d had braces when I was gone or if they were always that perfect. I tore my eyes away from them.
“Hey, check it out.” I left the window and came back with a shiny new phone. Before showing him, I pressed the button to check the time on it. “Look what my mom got me today.”
He leaned back on his heels, that flawless grin lighting up his entire
face. A groove etched its way into his cheek, producing a dimple, something I had no business noticing. “Told you she’d get you a new one. Here.” He held out his hand, and I let him take it from me. His fingers moved expertly over the phone’s slick, flat screen, waking it up and pulling up the Contacts list. I knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t mention the fact that his would be the only name in the list, and I didn’t mention the tiny flutter that erupted in the base of my stomach that I was now in possession of his number.
I watched as he dialed himself then, and the phone in his pocket vibrated. “Now I have your number too.” He handed it back to me and we stood there for a moment, our eyes locked. It was too long, and we both knew it, but neither of us looked away, and then it was way, way too long. I’m not sure if it meant something, or nothing, and I hated how badly I wished I could see inside his head, to read his thoughts. But eventually my cheeks got hot, and I blinked first.
“So, I have this thing . . .” he started, pointing in a general way toward his house or his car but making it clear he had to go.
“Oh yeah. Sure. Go ahead.” I was stammering, and I hated that he was making me stammer at all. “I’ll see you lat—”
“You wanna come?” Our words overlapped, and I stopped talking so I could process what he’d said, to make sure I’d heard him correctly. He stood there rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly and waiting for me to answer.
I lifted my shoulders. “I mean, sure. I guess. It’s not like I have a whole lot goin’ on around here.” I glanced behind me at a room that was sterile and practically begging me to make a break for it. When I turned back, I wrinkled my nose. “Do I have to change?”
He stood on his toes so he could check me out. I was wearing the jeans and one of the T-shirts my mom had gone ahead and paid for during our shopping trip from hell. “Nah. You look good in clothes that fit,” he told me, his eyes sparkling.
“What?” I gasped, feigning surprise. “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure I nailed it with my mom’s high-water yoga pants. Are you saying they’re not in style, because they totally were five years ago?”