Now it’s my turn to be hurt. When I imagine my mother in Tempe or Tampa or wherever it is she currently calls home, it’s usually in some sort of dire situation. I imagine it looking a lot like my childhood, the months at a time I would spend with my mother, when we thought things were finally turning around; past-due rent notices tacked to the door, a sparsely furnished apartment. Late nights working odd jobs, while she tries to find herself. Thinking that she’s just off living a normal life, somewhere that’s not here—that she’s taking photos of other kids my age, chatting with them and getting to know them, while she captures this pivotal time in their lives—that stings a lot more.

Chapter

Nine

OLIVIA

Today we’re going to ArtPrize, a big annual art contest in Grand Rapids, ninety minutes north of Riverton. At work, Aiden rambled on about how the whole city is filled with art—soaring murals painted on the sides of ordinary buildings, giant statues rising up out of the river that runs through the city, and pencil drawings as big as a wall of our gym. I didn’t realize he was wanting to go so soon, but it’s the last weekend of the three-week event, so it’s now or never. And we were both magically removed from the work schedule for the weekend after Aiden asked me to come with him. A perk of being the owner’s kid (and the owner’s kid’s driver), I guess. What did he do to lose his license?

Aiden is standing against his garage door, looking at his phone, when I come up the driveway on my bike Saturday morning. Aiden’s car isn’t fancy—it’s just a plain black Honda Civic with some rust around the fender and a Riverton Baseball decal across the back window. We’re only five minutes from Aiden’s house, riding in silence, when he turns down the music. Ever since I told him I’m a writer, he has been obsessed with the idea that I must have some sort of latent artistic talent. “Writers have artistic eyes,” he’d said to me in the dunes, as we walked and talked on our way back to the beach. He’s going to be so disappointed.

By the time we reach the tall gray parking garage in the center of downtown Grand Rapids, Aiden has managed to get me to share a lot of random personal stuff. We don’t know each other well enough to sit in silence for a ninety-minute drive, and at first it made my palms sweaty on the steering wheel, but mostly it was fun and easy.

“Seriously. Not one?” Aiden was floored that I don’t follow any sports teams.

“Overrated.”

He shakes his head, his eyes on me. “But you come to the baseball games.”