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Back Never Look Back
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
  48. About the Author
  49. About the Book
  50. Also by Alison Gaylin
  51. About the Publisher

At first, I was scared that he’d read my letters to you. But when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see the lava—not the slightest sign of it.

It turns out Gabriel’s prom is tonight too, which makes sense. His school is a Catholic boys’ school called St. Xavier and it’s practically walking distance from mine. Our teams play each other all the time and girls from our school can audition for their plays and we can even take certain classes there if we want.

Gabriel had been thinking about his prom just like I’d been thinking about mine. But unlike me, he was imagining us going to it together—and the images in his brain were so beautiful, he said, it made him know that it was meant to be.

If Gabriel ever joked about anything, I would have assumed that was what he was doing. His school is just a few miles away from my house, where Papa Pete’s body was discovered. And obviously, he knows all about the police investigation, the unnamed witness, the search parties. He’s said it himself: we’re fugitives.

But Gabriel doesn’t joke. “I know we can’t go to the actual prom because we don’t have tickets,” he said. “But we can go to the park afterward.” He was talking about Pullman Park, which is a big field on the outskirts of town with a baseball diamond on one end, tennis courts on the other. After prom every year, the seniors from both our schools crowd into that park and stay there till dawn, drinking six-packs and blasting their car radios and fooling around. “We can stay on the outskirts where no one will see us,” he said. “We can watch everybody and it’ll be like we’re there.”

I was worried about Gabriel, and also a little frightened. His baseball cap was pulled low over his forehead and as he spoke, his eyes shone out from under the bill in a strange way I’d never seen before. Had he lost his mind? It sure seemed like it. And the panic I felt right then . . . It made me realize again how much I need him and what a sorry, sad state my life is in that Gabriel is the only person in the world who can keep me safe. I said his name quietly and calmly, as though he had a bomb planted under his skin and if I spoke too loudly, he’d explode and kill us both. “Don’t you think someone might spot us?”