Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
I race down dirt roads, through puddles, and bounce over the tracks. I watch her in my rearview mirror, looking off to the side, her hair flying. We lost my brothers behind us a few minutes ago.
I kick it into the next gear, lurch forward, and charge way over the speed limit, the bike rumbling underneath us. She laughs. I go faster. She holds tighter.
I lean to the right, her body following mine as we round a soft turn too fast, but she doesn’t tell me to stop. I race and race farther and farther, homes and palm trees and people zooming past. We rush past cars, my heart lodging in my throat, and I laugh to myself.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a bike.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a girl on one. It’s scarier. I love how she holds me, lets me carry her. She’s trusting. Why?
Before I know it, we arrive at Garden Isle, the pristine white beach the Saints love to keep for themselves even when they prefer to invade ours because we have a lighthouse and no rules. I skid to a halt, hearing screams and laughter from the carnival a hundred yards away on the other side of the parking lot. I don’t realize how fast my heart is beating until I feel the ache in my chest.
She starts to climb off, but I reach back and grab her leg, stopping her.
The sun beats down as a breeze carries the scent of their bake sale. Bake sales are beautiful. Not at all lazy.
I look ahead but keep holding her leg. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
Army is probably angry at how fast I was going. Macon, too. Liv would’ve yelled at me to slow down. I put Krisjen in danger, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Pain,” she finally says. “I’m afraid of dying in pain.”
We’re all afraid of that.
“You can’t think straight when something hurts,” she tells me, “and I want to be there in my last minutes.”
I dig under my fingernail with my thumb.
“What are you afraid of?” she asks.
I pause just a moment. “You.”
She sits there.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “The last woman to live in our house, other than our sister, was our mom.”
We’ve been like this a long time. Liv was never one to fuss with the house the way my mom did. Baking, decorating …
Krisjen’s not like Liv, though. Krisjen is someone they’ll start to depend on, but she’s not family. She can ditch us anytime.
“She knew I was in the house that day,” I say, and then clarify. “My mom. She knew I was the only one in the house. She didn’t even lock her door.”
I was thirteen. The same age Macon was when he confronted our father about continuing to get her pregnant. I was alone with her that day. I heard something fall on the floor upstairs. I knew. I didn’t go upstairs.
“I want you to leave,” I tell Krisjen.
The longer she stays, the harder it will be when she goes.
I expect her to argue, but she doesn’t. She simply says, “Okay.”
My stomach sinks. She moves to climb off again, but I curl my fingers around her thigh tighter. “You’re not afraid of anything else?”
I feel her looking around me, trying to meet my eyes, but I can’t let her.
“My second-grade teacher had a sister,” she tells me. “She was shot in a parking lot coming out of a store one night. The killer didn’t know her. She was sixteen.”
I listen.
“Life isn’t about what happens to us, Dallas, because things are going to happen. Rich, poor, good parents, bad parents, no matter what, we can’t predict other people. If I can’t change it or prevent it, then I don’t think about it. Just adapt when it happens, and remember how lucky I am to breathe at all.”
I blink, my eyes burning. That’s what I fear. A world where so much is at the mercy of chance. “And if I can control what’s going to happen?”
“Then please don’t get arrested,” she says.
And to my surprise, I start laughing. A woman who just might understand me.
I release her, letting her climb off, but I stay on the bike. “I still want you to leave.” I meet her eyes. “For your sake as much as ours. Macon doesn’t let us love Saints. And he’s right. You’ll never want a life in the Bay. Money always wins over the heart.”
“But you have money,” she says. “Don’t you?”
I turn my gaze away, feeling another smile pull at the corners of my mouth. “Probably more than I know about.”
Macon doesn’t tell us everything.
So, no. She wouldn’t be giving up much security if she was with one of us, but she’d be giving up status. Luxury. We have money, but we’ll never have servants. Or fancy dinners. Or world travel.