“I’m sorry I was so mean.” She started to cry. “Please, Eric. Please, talk to me.”

I kept walking until I was nearly to the edge of the yard.

She yelled after me, “Okay, I’ll leave. You’ll never have to see me again.” She stopped, overcome with emotion. “But I have to say something to you. Please,” she sobbed. “You’re all I have.”

I stopped and turned back. “What do you want?”

Grace climbed out of the clubhouse and scrambled to her feet. It was the first time in more than a month that I’d seen her outside in the daylight. I could see how much her figure had changed.

“I’m the stupid one, not you. I hate myself. I just want to tell you I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry I said you were just a boy. You’re not. You’ve been brave and kind and good. All you’ve done is protect me and take care of me and that makes you more of a man than any man I’ve ever met.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m so sorry. I’d rather face my stepfather than hurt you again.”

I stood looking at her, her nose wet with snot, her eyes red and swollen. I exhaled, then spoke in a normal voice, “Get back inside, someone might see you.”

“I don’t care. You’re the only one in this world I care about. If I don’t have you I don’t care what happens to me anymore.”

I walked back to her. “Don’t say that.”

She shook her head. “I mean it.” Then she said in a lower voice, “I cut myself for you.”

“What?”

“I cut myself for you.” She lifted her arm to show me. There was a mass of blood dried to her forearm.

I gasped. “What happened?”

“I punished myself. I wanted you to see how bad I felt.”

“That was stupid,” I said, crouching down to gather up some snow. “Let me see that.” I rubbed the snow on her arm. It washed away the dried blood, leaving the fresh, deep cuts in her arm exposed. The wounds made me sick to my stomach. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Will you forgive me?”

“Yes. Now get back inside.”

“Will you kiss me?”

“Yes.”

She leaned forward and I met her halfway, pressing my lips against hers. We kissed intensely. Finally I pulled away. “We’ll make plans after school. No one’s going to find you.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

She got on her knees to go back inside. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said.

I walked back to the house. My mother was standing inside the door holding a bottle of maple syrup. She looked at me with a peculiar expression. “Were you talking to someone out there?”

I walked past her. “No.”

CHAPTER Twenty-nine