Wonderful isn’t what I would have called it that afternoon. Or even the next day or the next. I wouldn’t even really call it wonderful right this very second, but here I am on a one-way bus trip to Meridien with plans to be at Ms. Jackson’s house this evening.

School was sorted out with a few phone calls. Football, too. Coach Marcus agreed to let me come to practice and work out with the team as a sort of tryout, but he hinted that it was mostly a formality. I haven’t touched a football in three years, and I suspect I’m going to get a ton of mileage riding the bench, but it doesn’t matter. Being part of the team might be the thing I’m looking forward to the most about going back to Meridien. Or maybe the only thing; I don’t know. Some days it felt like a fantastic idea. And some days it felt like this was quite possibly the worst idea Ma has ever had, and that’s saying something.

“You okay with all of this?” Frankie asked me one night while I helped her give Coley a bath.

“Yes? No. Definitely maybe,” I told her.

“It will probably only be for a few weeks,” she said. “Ma can’t quit her job here until the first of the month,” she reminded me.

“I know. It’s just… Julian.”

Frankie lowered her head. “I get it. Maybe… maybe you could just walk in there and be your usual Elijah self and act like none of that ever happened? A clean slate is what you need,” she said.

I don’t necessarily agree that forgetting any and all bits of the past is the best plan for a new start, but I haven’t come up with anything better in the few days I’ve had to pack everything important into my biggest duffel bag.

I thought about Julian all the time. From that early morning three years ago when Frankie and Ma and I disappeared from Meridien until this moment right now as I sit on this bus, I’ve thought about him.

“Listen, don’t say anything about me and Coley while you’re in Meridien, okay?” Frankie told me right before I left.

“How come?”

She pursed her lips, and her eyebrows squinched up in the middle of her forehead. “I just don’t want people gossiping about me before I’m even there. It’ll be my story to tell when I get there, okay? Promise?”

“Yeah, okay. I promise,” I told her, even though I didn’t completely agree. Being a teenage mom shouldn’t make someone a pariah. “But God help anyone who’s got something to say about you,” I said, my hands balling into fists at my side.

“Hey, fresh start. Remember?” she said, grabbing my wrist and shaking my hand out of its fist.