Chapters (47)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- 2 Months Later
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Kasie West
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
Now I needed to back it up just a few inches. As I started to shift the truck in reverse, a set of headlights swept across the yard and a car pulled up to the front of the house. Amelia. Her eyes were wide as she climbed out of her car and saw me, the headlights of my brother’s truck like a beacon across the lawn. I held up my finger, telling her to wait a minute, then looked over my right shoulder to back up. I lifted my foot off the brake pedal, but instead of moving backward, the truck jumped forward. The wheel jerked and the left front tire was off the platform and on the ground before I could step on the brake. The right tire was now suspended in midair in front of the ramp. I slid to the left, my body slamming into the door, my head hitting the window.
No. This couldn’t be happening. I applied the gas, slowly trying to ease the truck forward, hoping to just get it all on the ground and start again. The left tire spun and spun, obviously not fully on the ground, which meant the platform must’ve been holding up some of the center of the truck. No.
Amelia knocked on the driver’s-side window. I rolled it down with the cranking handle.
“What are you doing? Your parents are going to kill you.”
“Not helping. How do I move it?”
She backed up, assessing the position of the truck. “One of the back wheels isn’t fully grounded. You’re stuck.”
“Thanks. I caught that.”
“Your parents are going to kill you.”
“You already said that.” I turned off the engine and opened the door. I fell out, barely catching myself before hitting the ground. Then I, too, backed up to assess the position of the truck. “What if I moved one of those ramps so it’s facing backward under the left front tire and then drove forward a little?”
“Then what?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I grabbed a fistful of my hair and a pain shot through my right shoulder. I pinched it hard. “Then put the other ramp forward under the right tire?”
“Then you’d just have this same situation but in reverse.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know. We can try it.”
At two o’clock in the morning we gave up. The truck hadn’t moved from its original lopsided position and I was pretty sure the only thing we’d managed to do was tear up a section of grass under the left tire. “It’s fine. We’ll fix this. We have all day tomorrow.”
“Is it time to tell me yet what you were doing?”
“I was facing my fear. Being Heath Hall.”
“What?”