Take Me Home

Cassie Mint

Take Me Home

First published by Black Cherry Publishing 2022

Copyright © 2022 by Cassie Mint

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

First edition

ISBN: 978-1-914242-96-0

Cover art by KiWi Cover Design Co

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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One

Josie

This town is exactly how I left it.

What did I expect? I’ve only been gone three years, though sometimes it feels more like three decades. Short of a well-placed sinkhole, nothing could change Maple Creek that much in the meantime.

Still, it’s all so similar as I sputter through the wide streets in my asthmatic car—those faded storefronts with wooden signs twitching in the breeze; the old cinema, with black letters spelling out this week’s single offering; even the drunk cradling his brown paper bag on the pharmacy steps is no different.

It’s all a little older. More tired, too.

Guess I’ll fit right in.

It’s evening, the sky tinting lilac above the rooftops, and the scent of honeysuckle drifts through my open car window. As I drive past the video arcade on the corner of Main Street, a slideshow of memories batters my brain.

So many afternoons spent there after school with my teenage boyfriend Harry, tinny music rattling out of the beat-up machines. The games were ancient even then, but that was all part of it. Part of the charm.

Maple Creek is stuck in a time warp.

Now I’m back here too: part of the town’s set dressing. Driving through these streets is surreal, like waking up from a dream.

Like I was never gone.

We used to rock up to that arcade right after school, backpacks weighing down our shoulders, already chewing on red strawberry laces that turned sticky in the afternoon heat. They’d tint our lips pink, and as we ate our candy and played games, we’d slowly ingest more and more sugar until we were both jittery and sick.

Then we’d spill out onto the Main Street sidewalk, laughing and clutching at our stomach aches, and call Harry’s uncle Everett for a ride home. Then do it all again the next day.

I can remember it all so clearly. Can taste those sickly strawberry laces; can feel the lurch of Everett Bray’s truck as it bounced through the potholes to my parents’ trailer park. Can hear the rumble in his chest when he grunted answers to my questions.