That was all.

I turned and kept walking down the creek bed, forcing myself to keep moving forward, toward the wild green tangle. Staring at my sandals as they sank into the damp pebbly mix of dirt and sand. Trying to avoid stepping on the broken bits of bottle and old rusty cans from the storm drains that fed the creek. Brushing the scratchy kudzu out of the way as I went. Just moving forward, home. My feet got wet.

“Jasper,” I whispered into the kudzu and the mosquitos. “Jasper.”

And that was when I realized—I was very, very lonely.

Totally in Control

I went back to the farm every day after that. Partly because I had nothing else to do . . . but mostly hoping to see Jasper again.

She was never there.

Each time I went, I took a book along and a snack. So that it would look like I just happened to be having a lazy, old-fashioned summer day, roaming the neighborhood, reading, a happy loner. Each time, I sat somewhere different. One day I sat at the splintery picnic table under the big oak tree. Another day I climbed up into the rusty old tractor my mom had never let me sit on when I was littler, as if she was afraid it might suddenly start up and carry me away.

But it didn’t make a bit of difference where I sat. I’d open my book and sit with it in front of me, scanning the pages, pretending to read, but I couldn’t seem to fall into the story, ever. It was like my eyes were reading the words, but my mind was listening for footsteps. So I’d end up scrolling around in my phone instead, but not paying much attention to that either.

Each day I made sure to stop by Jasper’s rock and wait a few minutes. It almost felt like I’d imagined her there, conjured her up. It seemed likelier that she had gone on vacation with her family to Tybee Island, or maybe down to Florida. That was what people did in June.

Then one Sunday night, I got a text from Liv, a few streets over. We hadn’t hung out outside of school in forever. Not since our moms carpooled together when we were in third grade. But now she was telling me that she was going to join the middle school cross-country team, and she had to train over the summer, and she didn’t want to do it by herself, and did I want meet up with her tomorrow morning at the coffee shop and then go for a run before it got too hot?