I’d meant to tell him the latest about Mr. Barrett. That my father had succeeded in convening a meeting of the school board, to talk about getting him dismissed. That he’d already spoken with two people on the board, friends of his, and convinced them of the truth of what he was saying. So he wasn’t going in there alone. So something might happen.

But also, nothing might happen. Mr. Barrett had a lot of friends. He could brush it off, deny the allegations, bring a suit against my father for slander. We could be the ones whose lives got ruined.

I didn’t say any of that. I sat down on the rocks beside him and grabbed his arm in both hands and squeezed.

“Thanks, Ash. Some days are better than others.”

“You’re still seeing the therapist they assigned over at CPS?”

“Yeah. She’s nice. I don’t think she really gets me, but she doesn’t put up with any of my bullshit and I appreciate that.”

“That’s amazing.”

We were in touch, sometimes. Messages, voice mails. Whenever his phone was on and charged, which wasn’t often. I knew he was trying his hardest to get help. Some days he was more successful than others.

Solomon looked at his mittened hands. “I just . . . will I always feel like this?”

“No,” I said. “You absolutely won’t.”

“Lots of survivors of sexual assault spend their whole lives dealing with the aftermath.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll always be . . . whatever you’re feeling now.”

Solomon shrugged.

“Look at you and Sheffield. Mr. Barrett hurt you both, but look how differently you responded to it. He started hurting others. You didn’t. And he was able to choose to stop. We are not our trauma. We are not our brain chemistry. That’s part of who we are, but we’re so much more than that.”

Six weeks later Solomon turned eighteen, and then he left town. I could see it, then, even though it hadn’t happened yet. Who knows how. A vision of the future; a gift from the Ash on the other side. He would leave. Forever.

“I mean, look at Helen Keller,” I said, feeling like my throat was starting to close up. “Everyone just assumed that with all her challenges, she’d never do anything with her life. Even the people who loved her just wanted to keep her in the house like a shameful secret. But she got the help she needed, to figure out how to live and thrive with her disabilities.”

“Don’t you use Helen Keller against me,” he said, his face opening up into a big beautiful grin.

“I read that book you gave me,” I said. “Her autobiography.”

“Amazing, right?”