“Well, you want my advice?” Mitchell asks.

I don’t really want the advice of a former meth-head-slash-asshole, but he is a good friend on the mend, so I accept it anyway.

“Tell that warped sister of hers to go fuck herself and you drag Bray’s ass home with you. That’s my opinion.” He nods sharply and takes a big gulp of soda.

Yeah, thanks for the advice, Mitch, but as much as I’d love to take it, I think I’ll go the adult route. I don’t respond to him out loud.

“So, when did you say she’s getting out?” Mitchell asks.

“Two more days,” I answer. “They pushed the date back four days, or she’d already be out.”

Mitchell purses his lips contemplatively. “That’s weird they’d do that.”

“Not really,” I say, but I don’t know my reasoning for believing that.

“Well, sure,” Mitchell says, “they might extend someone’s sentence for fuckin’ up in there or something, but usually it’s longer than four days for something like that. It just seems odd to me.”

I think about what he said, and, I admit, I agree with him for the most part. But over the years I’ve learned not to put too much stock in what Mitchell says.

I leave Mitchell’s house and head home just before dark, and all I can think about is Bray. I park my car in the front of my apartment and turn off the engine. It’s a hot July night, so I turn the key and slide the windows down. The lights in the dashboard fade after I pull the key out and drop it on my lap. The back of my head falls against the headrest, and I close my eyes and let the warm breeze filter through the opened windows and brush against my face. The crickets and frogs start to come alive as the night falls, their song all around me is clamorous yet relaxing. Nothing can beat a Southern summer. Bray and I grew up in them together, loving the heat and humidity, the noisy nature at night and the birds that always woke up before the sun in the morning. We loved fishing and wading in the creeks catching crawdads and chasing the fireflies in the pasture.

Always the fireflies.

Two more days and Bray will be free. She’ll be free to live her life, to start over with me and to find the happiness she’s always sought, always fought for. The happiness she deserves. I picture her face, that bright smile that I’ve always seen in everything good. And for a long time, sitting with my back pressed against the seat in my car, my shirt beginning to soak with sweat, I get lost in the memory of her face, that bright smile she always charmed me with. The way the wind always blew her hair across the softness of her cheeks, the glistening of her blue eyes, the innocence of them. Every moment of our life together drifts through my mind like an old film with little imperfections and tiny blips and discolorations on the screen. I hear the constant clicking of the reel, but no voices. Bray runs ahead of me through the pasture, her dark hair whipping up behind her in the wind. She looks back with her bright smiling face and laughs and shrieks as I close in on her from behind.

I catch up to her and grab her around the waist. We fall to the ground amid the tall, prickling yellowed grass. I’m on top of her, staring down into her big beautiful blue eyes. Her chest rises and falls beneath mine as she tries to catch her breath.

And we just stare at each other, not saying a word. I want to kiss her and deep down I know she wants me to. We were fourteen and fifteen when this happened. Maybe if I had kissed her that day, the time when I knew more than anything that I wanted her for myself and the day when I was going to tell her that. But we were both dating other people. Maybe if I had given in, everything would’ve turned out differently. If I had just given in…

So I do. This time I do it. I wash everything else out of my mind. I push out the song of the crickets and the frogs, the feel of the wind on my face, and I make this moment real.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Bray asks, staring up at me with her long hair spread behind her against the grass.

I study the shape of her lips, the softness of them, and I imagine what they must taste like. Because it’s been so long since I tasted them, when we shared our very first French kiss ever. I feel her fingers curling gently around the fabric of my shirt as her arms are bent upward, tucked between our bodies.

“Because I love you,” I say and she blushes.

“You love me?”

I nod.

“I love you and I want us to be together forever,” I say and study her lips again, forcing myself not to kiss her yet.

Her fingers move from my shirt and come up to my cheeks. She traces a finger along my cheekbone and then over my eyebrows and down the bridge of my nose.

“I love you too, Elias,” she whispers and her thumb rests on my bottom lip. “And I want to be with you forever.”

My mouth closes around hers and I kiss her deeply. I feel her heart beating against mine.

And then I wake up from the daydream and look out the windshield of my car. Rian is standing on the sidewalk looking in at me, a piece of paper clutched in her right hand. Immediately, I know something’s wrong, and my heart sinks like a hot stone straight down into the balls of my feet.

Chapter Thirty

Elias

I get out of the car. “What’s wrong?” I’m terrified of the answer.

She’s been crying. She reaches up and wipes her nose with the back of her free hand. I hear her sniffle lightly.

“Rian, w-what is it?” I keep glancing at the paper dangling from her fingertips, knowing it’s the bearer of tragic news, and I want to burn it.

The uneasiness in Rian’s voice scares me further. “Brayelle’s been home for two days,” she says.

Maybe I didn’t hear her right. I feel my head move from side to side, as if to shake her words out of my mind and start anew. I put up my hand. “What did you say?”

Rian swallows hard and clutches the paper in her hand more firmly. I’m getting so impatient I feel like grabbing her by the arms and shaking the words out of her.

“She didn’t want me to tell you, but she got out on schedule and came home with me.”

My voice rises almost to a full shout. “Rian! Just say what you came here to say!” I step up closer when really what I want to do is leave her. I don’t want to look at her, but she’s the only way I’m going to get any of the answers that I’m desperately seeking right now.

“I don’t know where she is!” Tears begin to stream down her cheeks. “She’s been acting really strange since she came home. Talking to me with this sincere look in her eyes. I-I felt like she was forgiving me for everything. She wasn’t mad. Sh-She didn’t even want to talk about the past.” Her tears begin to choke her. “She hugged me. She’s hasn’t hugged me since we were in sixth grade.”

My heart is beating so fast I feel it in my fingers and in my toes. My head is on fire, hot from the fear and anger and adrenaline racing through my veins.

Bray has been back for two days. She didn’t want me to know.

No.

Oh God no…

She planned this all along. She made me believe she was getting out late so I couldn’t stop her.

Finally, I grab Rian’s upper arms tightly in my hands and I shake her. “Where is she?!”

“I told you! I don’t know! The last time I saw her was a couple of hours ago!” Tears barrel from her eyes. “She left this on her bed.”

Rian places the crumpled piece of paper into my hand.

I look down at it and I’m terrified to read it, everything in my heart and soul telling me that it’ll kill me if I look into its secrets, like opening Pandora’s box. The light weight of the paper in my hand somehow burns my fingers, right down into the bones.

I open the paper and read the text scribbled in Bray’s handwriting:


I miss the Georgia night sky and the warm summer breeze on my face. I miss running across the prickly grass with my bare feet. I miss the stars and the laughter and the heat. I miss our innocence. I miss the fireflies. I want things to end where they began, the two of us floating around in a jar together, lighting the way for each other through a confined space that could only feel infinite. Because nothing else mattered then. Nothing on the outside could ever touch us, hurt us, or threaten us. Because innocence is bliss. And I want mine back. I just want it back….

The last thing I see are Rian’s teary eyes staring back at me. I let the paper fall from my fingers and I take off running toward Mr. Parson’s land. I leap over the chain-link fence behind Donna Sanders’s house and land on my feet. And I just keep running, past the neighborhood and the church and the old factory at the end of the street. I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life. By car it would take two minutes longer to reach the pasture than running straight through the woods. I can hardly breathe I press on so hard. My heart pounds against my rib cage, trying to burst through it. My calves are as hard as stone, my shoes hitting the ground so fast and so hard that I feel every shock sensation rush into the tips of my toes and up the back of my calf muscles.

I don’t stop running.

Leaping over a small wooden fence, I run past an old shed, and the darkness of the deep woods swallows me whole. I keep on the path, jumping over the same rocks I’ve jumped over since I was a kid. Small low-lying limbs snap me in the face as I run past, not stopping long enough to push them out of my way. The song of the crickets and the frogs and the cicadas rises louder in my ears as if they’re singing to me, urging me on, telling me to hurry.