Tess Sharpe - Far From You

When I kiss him, a quiet meeting of lips that’s there and gone, it feels like good-bye.

TEN YEARS AGO (SEVEN YEARS OLD)

At lunch on the first day of second grade, I’m eating with Amber and Kyle when I notice the new girl at the far end of the courtyard, sitting alone at a picnic table in her purple dress. Mrs. Durbin had put her next to me in class, but she hasn’t said a word all day. She’d kept her head down even when she was called on.

She still seems sad, so I grab the rest of my lunch and walk over to her.

“I’m fine,” she says when I get to her table, before I can even say anything.

Her face is wet. She scrubs at her cheeks with a fist and glares at me.

“I’m Sophie,” I say. “Can I sit?”

“I guess.”

I slide onto the bench next to her, setting my lunch down. “You’re Mina, right?”

She nods.

“You’re new.”

“We moved,” Mina says. “My daddy went to heaven.”

“Oh.” I bite my lip. I don’t know what to say to that. “Sorry.”

“Do you like horses?” Mina asks, pointing to my sticker-covered lunch box.

“Yeah. My grandpa takes me riding on his land.”

Mina looks impressed. “My brother, Trev, says that sometimes they bite you if you don’t give them sugar.”

I giggle. “They have big teeth. But I give them carrots. You have to make your hand flat.” I hold my hand out, palm up, to show her. “Then they won’t bite.”

Mina does the same with her hand, and our fingertips bump. She looks up and smiles at me.

“Do you have brothers?” she asks. “Or sisters?”

“No, it’s just me.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I wouldn’t like that. Trev’s the best.”

“Sophie!” Amber waves at me. The bell’s about to ring.

I get up, and there’s something about Mina, about the way she’s been crying and how she looks like she’s lost, that makes me hold my hand out to her again. “Come with me?”

She smiles, reaches out, and takes my hand.

We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it’ll end before it’s truly started.

On my eighteenth birthday, I drive to the cemetery at dusk. It takes me a while to find her; I trek across wet grass, weaving between headstones and angel statues to a shady, secluded spot.

It’s plain, polished gray marble with white engraved letters:

Mina Elizabeth Bishop

Beloved Daughter and Sister

I wish this could be like in the movies. That I was the type of person who could reach out and trace the letters of her name and feel peaceful. I wish I could speak to this hunk of marble like it was her, feel comforted that her body is six feet below, believe that her spirit is watching from above.

But I’m not that girl. I never was. Not before or after or now. I can live with this knowledge—a simple gift to myself, quiet acceptance of who I’m becoming from the pieces that remain.

I kneel down next to her and pull the string of solar ­Christmas lights out of my bag. I drape them on her headstone, trailing the strands down both sides of her grave.

I stay until nightfall, watching the lights begin to twinkle. My hand rests on the ground above her. When I get up, my fingers linger in the grass.

I walk to my car and never once do I look back.

Mina’s night-lights will endure. Year after year, Trev will replace them when they dim. And I know that someday, when I’m ready to come home, they’ll light my way.

This book would not be possible without so many people’s support and faith that carried me through its creation. Writing can be a solitary thing until the village it takes to publish a novel welcomes you into their fold. And I was lucky enough to be welcomed by the best village of all.

Thank you to my agent, Sarah Davies, for everything. You changed my entire life, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to thank you properly for what you’ve taught me.

For my editor, Lisa Yoskowitz, thank you for your understanding of the characters and the love story I wanted to tell. You raised me and my work to new heights.

Thanks to Amber Caraveo, whose patience and instincts helped the book blossom in such lovely, deadly ways.

Thanks to the wonderful team at Hyperion, who put so much care and creative spark into all aspects of the book. Special thanks to Kate Hurley, my copy editor, whose sharp eye I am indebted to, and Whitney Manger, who designed me an absolutely beautiful cover.

For my parents and the rest of my amazing family. But especially for my mother, Laurie. Thank you, Mom, for reading every single thing I’ve ever written like it mattered, even my second grade opus “Two Fast Doctors.”

So much gratitude must go to my dedicated, brutally honest critique partners: Elizabeth May and Allison Estry, who make my manuscripts bleed in the best ways. And thanks to Kate Bassett, for beta-reading and cheerleading.

Thanks to the Fourteenery, for hand holding, hilarity, and always blaming it on Melvin.

For Franny Gaede, who is truly the Walter to my Hildy.

A shout-out to the girls of the Crazy Chat. You ladies know who you are. Thank you from the bottom of my broken teen girl heart.

To those who helped shape me: Georgie Cook, Ellen Southard, Arnie Erickson, Carol ­Calvert, Ted Carlson, Antonio Beecroft, John Dembski, Michael Uhlenkott, Peggy S., Lynn P., and the entire crew over at SSHS circa 2001–2004.

And to my gramz, Marguerite O’Connell, who told me when I was little that I must always start my stories with something attention-grabbing. Hopefully I lived up to her advice.

Born in a backwoods cabin to a pair of punk rockers, TESS SHARPE grew up in rural California. Following an internship with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she studied theater at Southern Oregon University before abandoning the stage for the professional kitchen. She lives, bakes, and writes near the Oregon border. This is her first novel. Visit her online at www.tess-sharpe.com.