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
“Until I see you making a fool of yourself at school again.”
“So until tomorrow, then?”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
We stared out the windshield together toward the lake below.
“I wish I were better at advice,” he said. “I’ve been trying to think of something cool or comforting to say for the last half an hour and all I can come up with are stupid jokes.”
“Jokes? I’m surprised. That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I have some advice for you,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. Run away from the mess that I am right now. Nobody needs all this drama in their lives.” I flipped down the visor, looking for a mirror but there wasn’t one.
“Huh. You’re not very good at advice either, it sounds like. But I can’t even come up with bad advice right now.”
I stretched toward the rearview mirror instead and worked at the mascara beneath my eyes. “It’s okay. There’s really nothing to say. I need to get over this weird competition I have with my brother. It’s not like I can confront him. And I should talk to my parents about how I feel. It’s not that I think they don’t love me or anything. I know they do. Maybe they just don’t realize how what they do makes me feel sometimes.”
“Your parents seem really cool. They both couldn’t stop bragging about you. I mean, neither of them mentioned your brother once at the swim meet the other day. That has to count for something.”
I leaned back against the seat. “Did you let them talk?”
He laughed.
“You’re right, my parents are cool. But we all live in the past.”
“So are you going to talk to them?”
“I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“I’m scared that even if I talk to them about how I feel, they’ll still choose him.”
“You need to talk to them. You have to give them the opportunity to prove you wrong.”
I closed my eyes and smiled. “And you said you were bad at advice.”
His hand closed over mine and he twined our fingers together. “I’m even worse at taking it.”
Twenty-Two
It was two days later and I swore I could still feel the pressure of Jackson’s fingers between mine. He had held my hand in the car that day until I was ready to leave. He’d then driven me home, not once asking if I wanted to go back to school. And that made it seem perfectly acceptable that I didn’t.