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  “Deal. See you at home.”

  THE SUN WAS going down behind the storm clouds as I sat on the window ledge and watched the waves crash against the rocks of the cove. I thought about the story I could write. I knew I had more than pages’ worth of material. I had books’ worth. I just didn’t know if I could ever put the words to paper.

  Cara came barreling through the door with a Barnes and Noble bag.

  “They have Chinese food at Barnes and Noble now?” I joked.

  “Our date is off! I went and got that book we were talking about, read twenty pages in the store, and could not put it down. I have to know what happens. Emiline, I’m in love with this author. I’m going to find him and make him marry me.”

  “How will Henry feel about that?” I teased.

  She threw the bag on the counter and poured herself a glass of wine as I watched her from the window ledge. “He’ll understand,” she said, giggling.

  “So you’re bailing on me to read in your room?”

  “You know how I am when I get into a book. I can’t be stopped.”

  I understood exactly how she felt—I was the same way. “Fine, you’re off the hook. But you owe me.”

  “Maybe Trevor can swing by with Chinese?”

  I laughed. “You’re ditching me but you want my boyfriend to bring us food?”

  She leaned over the couch and smiled. “Are you mad?”

  “No, I’m kidding. Go, read, enjoy!”

  An hour later, when Trevor showed up with Chinese, Cara came out, got a plate, and darted back into her room.

  “What’s her deal?” he asked.

  “She’s really into her new book.”

  “Well, I guess it gives us time to talk.” We sat down side by side at the breakfast bar, opening cartons silently, waiting for someone to go first.

  After a few bites, I put my chopsticks down. “You want to talk? Fine? Why don’t you ever tell me you love me?”

  “I’ve told you I love you before,” he said, astonished. “And this isn’t what I wanted to talk about.”

  “Well, I do. You have said it but you don’t say it often. Don’t you feel like you can say it to me?”

  “You never say it to me either.”

  Fair point. “I don’t think we even know what it means,” I said through a mouthful of sesame chicken.

  “Whatever it is you’re going through has nothing to do with me,” he said. Trevor had this way of shifting responsibility away from himself in every argument. It drove me crazy.

  “People are in relationships so they can share things with each other.”

  “This, coming from you? Emi, after seven years, I still barely know you. I only know what you share with me, which doesn’t include anything from your past.”

  I could feel myself getting defensive. “Since we’re playing the blame game, you haven’t made much of an effort to get to know me, or to commit to me in any real way.”

  Trevor’s face fell, and I could tell I’d struck a nerve.

  “Are you serious? You keep saying you don’t know where you’ll end up a year from now. What does that even mean? How do you think that makes me feel?”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked, simply. I didn’t want to sound callous, but I could tell that I’d gone too far. That I was cutting him too deep.

  “I moved down here for you, Emi. I built my life around our relationship.” He got up from his stool. “We’re not kids anymore. I can’t deal with your fickle shit and listen to you say I won’t make a commitment to you. You’re the one who won’t commit to me.”

  I felt all kinds of retorts bubbling inside of me. The only job offer you got was at San Diego State. You didn’t move here for me. I’m just the girl you’re passing time with. We both know it. Why else would you have a hard time saying I love you? Why else can’t I see our future?

  I got up and headed toward my room, and Trevor followed right behind me. I turned around to face him and rested my hand on the door for a moment as he waited silently in the doorway. And then I pulled him toward me and kissed him, pressing my body against his. I didn’t want to talk anymore.

  THE NEXT MORNING, as I drank coffee at the breakfast bar, Cara came skipping by. “What’s eating you?” she asked. I didn’t know how she could tell these things just by looking at the back of my head, but she could intuit moods like no one else. She poured herself a mug of coffee and leaned against the counter, facing me, waiting for my response.

  “Trevor.”

  “Trevor eating you?” She smirked.

  “Not in a good way, pervert.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Are you guys fighting again? Sounds like you made up last night.”

  “We’re always fighting. Even when we’re making up.”

  She straightened, as if something had just occurred to her, and then rushed off. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  When she came back into the kitchen, she set a book down in front of me. I glanced at the jacket. All the Roads Between. “You’re finished already?” I asked.

  “Stayed up all night. I loved it. You said I owed you one for bailing on you last night, and this is my repayment. I think you could use the escape.”

  “Oh yeah?” I ran my hand over the cover. It was a faint image of two kids holding hands on a road. There was something familiar about the scene, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “Maybe you can escape your own slightly flawed love story for a bit and get lost in something more satisfying—even if it is fiction.”

  I sighed and picked it up. Maybe she was right. I grabbed my mug of coffee with my other hand and headed toward my bedroom. “Thanks, Care Bear,” I called back.

  “Anytime.”

  Once inside, I plopped down on my bed and cracked open the book to the first page. From the moment I read the second line in the first paragraph, my heart rate tripled. Instantly, I was sweating. By the end of the first page, I was almost hysterical.

  From All the Roads Between

  By the time our school bus would get to El Monte Road, Jax and I would be the only kids left. We’d bounce along past the open fields, past Carter’s egg ranch, past a whole lot of run-down houses, dust clouds, and weeds. We lived right off El Monte, at the five–point-five-mile marker, at the end of a long, rutted, dirt road, our houses preceded by two battered mailboxes askew on their dilapidated wood posts. It was a bone-shaking journey by car and almost impossible by bus, so Ms. Beels would pick us up and drop us off at the mailboxes every school day, rain or shine. Those mailboxes were where Jax and I would start and end our long journey.

  Ms. Beels, a short, plump woman who wore mismatched socks and silly sweaters, was our bus driver from the time we were in first grade all the way until high school. She was the only constant and reliable person in my life. That is, besides Jax.

  Every morning she would greet me with a smile and every afternoon, just before closing the doors and pulling away, she’d say, “Get on home, kids, and eat your veggies,” as if our parents could afford such luxuries. Her life was exactly the same, day in and day out, but she still put a smile on and did her job well.

  When your family is reduced to nothing, you look at people like Ms. Beels with envy. Even though driving a bus in a rural, crackpot town isn’t exactly reaching for the stars, at the age of ten I still looked up to her. She had more than most people I knew back then. She had a job.

  We lived in Neeble, Ohio, population eight thousand on a good day, home to ex-employees of the American Paper Mill factory, based in New Clayton. Most of the workers moved out of New Clayton just after the factory closed and brought their families to the rural, less populated towns where rent was cheap and the odd job less scarce.

  My family had always lived in Neeble. My dad had grown up there, and his dad too. They would commute to New Clayton together when the factory was still running, starting and ending their days together the same as Jax and me. They were good friends and good men—at least that’s how I r
emember them. And we had a nice life for a while. My father called what we had at the end of that road a little slice of heaven. And it was . . . for a long time. But if there’s a real heaven here on earth, then there has to be a hell too. Jax and I learned that the hard way.

  He and I weren’t always friends. In the beginning he was just a smelly boy with dirty fingernails and shaggy hair covering his eyes. In the early years, I barely heard him utter a word except for “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” He’d shuffle behind me all the way down that dusty road to where Ms. Beels would greet us. We’d climb onto the yellow Fern County school bus and hunker down for the long hour-and-a-half drive to school. I always sat in the very first seat, and he’d walk straight to the back.

  As we passed through town, we’d pick up a whole bunch of kids, at least thirty of all ages, but the two I remember well, besides Jax, were world-class assholes. I was convinced that Mikey McDonald, with his blond crew cut and baggy pants, wanted to make my life hell.

  “Emerson? What kind of name is that? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

  I would roll my eyes and try to ignore him. I never got a chance to ask my parents what kind of crack they were smoking when they named me.

  By the third grade, Mikey had a crony: Alex Duncan. Whatever I was carrying, they would walk by and try to slap it out of my hands, and then they would sit in the seat behind me on the bus and torture me all the way home. “Maybe you can marry a book someday, Emerson Booknerd. Haha, Booknerd. That could be your last name.”

  Alex had a big birthmark right on the end of his nose, like he had been sniffing shit. For so long I kept my insults to myself, but everything changed in the fourth grade. The factory had been closed for almost a year, the money was running out, and my father wasn’t doing anything but drinking and listening to talk radio. Rush Limbaugh’s Oxy-laced voice was more familiar to me than my own father’s. He was shutting down. He had stopped talking. He got mean and so . . . my mom left. She left me alone with him, without even a brother or sister to help shoulder the burden.

  Everything changes when a man can’t afford to put food on the table. Some men rise to the occasion and find a way to make ends meet, no matter what it takes. Other men have too much pride to see that their life is crumbling down around them. My dad was a third-generation American Paper Mill worker, and Jax’s dad was the same. It was all they knew.

  After years of torment from Mikey and Alex, I hit my breaking point when quiet, reserved Jax decided to join in on their juvenile idiocy.

  I always took care to make sure my clothes were clean and my face washed. After my mom left, my dad started hanging around with Susan, a woman who worked as a maid at a nearby motel. She didn’t dress like a maid, but she always brought us those little soaps from the motel bathroom, so I guessed she was probably a maid. I had to use cheap motel soap for everything, including washing my hair, so naturally, after a few weeks of that, my bouncy brown curls became a frizzy mess. The kids on the bus called me Medusa. If only I had been that scary.

  On a typically humid day in June, Jax followed me down the road and took his usual seat at the back. Halfway through the route, Mikey and Alex called Jax to come up and sit with them. They started giggling behind me.

  “What, did you stick your finger in a light socket, Medusa?” Alex said.

  “If I touch it, will it bite me?” Mikey taunted.

  “Yeah, cool hair,” Jax said.

  I turned and shot daggers into his eyes. “Oh, nice one, Fisher. Real original. You better watch it or I’ll tell your father.” I didn’t care about the other boys, but I wasn’t about to take that shit from the neighbor kid. He didn’t respond—he just stared right at me and then squinted slightly. He didn’t come back with another insult; it even seemed like he felt bad. He wouldn’t take his eyes off of mine, which was quite the statement for a fourth grader.

  “Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” I said. He blushed and then looked away.

  I heard Mikey say to Jax, “Will she really tell your father?”

  Jax shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  Alex turned his attention back to me. “We’re so scared—Poodle Head is going to tattle on us. Ruff, ruff.”

  The boys continued their taunting without Jax’s help. He just kept his head down and waited until it was just the two of us on the bus and we were speeding past the mile markers on El Monte once again. I wasn’t sure if Jax was frightened of my threat or if he realized what a bunch of twerps they were being, so I turned in my seat and peered over the bus bench at him. He was looking out the window. “I wasn’t kidding, Jackson Fisher, I will tell your father.”

  “That might be kind of hard, Emerson. My dad’s gone. He left.” It was the first time I had ever heard him speak my name. He enunciated it so clearly, like an adult would do.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Who knows? Where’d your mom go?”

  I didn’t think he even knew about my mom—I thought it was the big family secret. But then again, there’s no such thing in a small town.

  “They’re not . . . you don’t think . . .” I hesitated, embarrassed. Jesus, did my mother take off with Jackson’s dad?

  “No, they’re not together. I just meant they went to the same place: away from us.” He looked back out the window and stared straight ahead.

  I felt sad and confused. I wanted to pinch his nose and tug on his ears for making fun of me, but I also wanted to hug him. I knew what he was feeling, and it hurt so bad it made my teeth ache. At least Jax had an older brother at home. I had no one but my books.

  We didn’t talk for the rest of the ride, but we did walk shoulder to shoulder in our amiable silence down the long dirt road. Something felt different, like a truce had been made. At the end of the road, I went into my dark house and he into his. I walked past my snoring father on the couch, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I went into my room, found a pair of scissors, plopped down in front of the mirror, and slowly and methodically cut off all of my hair. I dozed off without eating dinner and woke up at three a.m. to the sound of my father’s drunken babbling. He was crashing into walls and cursing at no one. I cowered under the covers until he came stumbling through my bedroom door, my dark room filling with light from the hallway. I was terrified.

  “What are you doing, Emerson?”

  “I was sleeping. It’s late, Dad. I have school tomorrow.” I tried to make my voice sound small and penitent. He had food bits stuck in his mustache, and I wondered what he’d been eating. My fear was strong, but I was hungry enough in that moment to zero in on that detail.

  His eyes narrowed as they adjusted to the darkness. “What in the hell did you do to your hair?”

  “Nothing . . .” I reached up automatically to twirl my hair, but there wasn’t much left of it. I cursed myself for destroying the one thing I used as a coping mechanism.

  “Nothing?” he screamed. “Doesn’t look like nothing!” He towered over me like a cartoonish, belligerent giant. I stood up weakly in his shadow and combed my fingers through my boyish cut. “I . . . I . . .”

  “Shut up, you stupid, stupid girl. You’re just like your stupid mother.” He shook his head with such disappointment and disgust. “Get to bed.”

  I didn’t know what version of my father I would get from one day to the next. At that age, it was hard for me to understand what he had gone through, losing the only job he knew how to do, and then his wife, all in rapid succession. Still, his alcoholism and rage couldn’t be justified by his bad luck.

  Curling up in a pile of blankets on the floor, I closed my eyes and prayed that one of us would disappear. Him or me—it didn’t matter. When I heard him in the kitchen pouring another drink, I relaxed. He would drink until he passed out, I knew that. It was his routine, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be there when he woke up with the mother of all hangovers. I stayed awake for a while longer and listened to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Before I dozed off, I put a hardcover copy of The Lio
n, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the back of my pajama pants and fell asleep with my face buried in a pillow. Sometimes he would come in to spank me in the middle of the night, oftentimes for no reason. I wondered if all parents did that. I was ten, after all. I didn’t exactly go around asking people these things.

  By morning, I was so tired that my bones felt dense and my brain hazy. I didn’t know how I would get through a whole school day. But the fear was too much to keep me home. School was my refuge, and books were my friends, so I got ready and headed toward the door. I tiptoed out of the house and went to sit on the short, brown fence in the front yard until Jax came out. I cried as I waited, sad that I didn’t have a mother and that I didn’t have any friends.

  He came up behind me and flicked my hair. “We were joking. You shouldn’t have cut it all off.” I looked up at Jax and watched as understanding spread over his face. He knew I had been crying. That moment of sympathy was the exact moment that Jackson Fisher became my one and only friend.

  “What’s wrong, Emerson?”

  “I got in trouble for cutting my hair. My dad was really mean about it.”

  “So you’re crying because of your dad, not what I said to you, right?”

  I nodded. “I don’t want to cry anymore.” My voice was hoarse.

  “I’m really sorry.” He said the words like he meant it: pained, remorseful . . . gentle. His eyes were sincere. There was unfeigned honesty in his expression, even at that age. It was a look I would never forget. “It’s not your fault your dad’s an asshole,” he said. He dug into his backpack and pulled out a Pop-Tart package. He took one pastry out for himself and then held out the other one toward me. “Hungry?” I grabbed at it like a feral animal and began chomping away. “Geez, slow down, Emerson. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Come on, we better get going.”