Authors: Tess Sharpe
I’d gotten him to wait, called Trev to drive him home, and
Matt had gripped his sober chip and my hand like a lifeline
until he arrived.
There’s this long road ahead. It’s never-ending, because
you don’t get over losing someone. Not completely. Not
when she was a part of you. Not when loving her broke
you as much as it changed you.
I fear it, that long road, just as Matt must. For months,
the urge to use has been buried beneath my need to fi nd
Mina’s killer. Now I need to be strong for myself.
“Change is good, right?” I ask Rachel.
“Right,” she agrees.
Mom and I still don’t talk much—though we never have, so
it’s not a big deal. Sometimes we sit together at the kitchen
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table, her working on legal briefs, me going through seed
catalogs for plants suited to Portland’s weather. But it’s
always quiet, the fl ip of pages, the scratch of her pen the
only sound.
One night she folds her hands over her briefcase and
waits until I raise my eyes to meet hers, and I know, with
more than a little dread, that she’s fi nally ready to talk.
“I should have stopped and listened to you when you
told me you were clean.” It sounds like she’s rehearsed this
in the mirror, like she’d written it down and crossed things
out, painstakingly trying to get the words right, like it’s a
speech instead of a confession.
I’m quiet for a long time. It’s hard to even think about
what to say. Her words can’t change what she did; they
can’t erase those months I spent trapped at Seaside, forced
to fi gure out how to grieve on my own. But I can’t change
that no matter how wrong it was. She did it only because
she was trying to save me.
She will always try to save me.
That, more than anything else, is what makes me
apologize.
“Look, I get it. I do. I lied and I kept everything from
everyone and I just . . . I wasn’t very good, and I’m sorry—”
“Honey.” Mom’s face, always so composed, crumples,
worry lines appearing out of nowhere. “You’ve been
through so much.”
“That can’t be an excuse,” I say. “There can’t be any
excuses. Every single therapist you’ve sent me to will tell
you that. I’m an addict. I’ll always be an addict. Just like
I’ll always be crippled. And you’ve never been okay with
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F A R F R O M Y O U
either. I am. It took me a long time, but I am. You need to
be, too.”
“I’m okay with who you are, Sophie,” she says. “I prom-
ise. I love who you are. I love you no matter what.”
I want to believe her.
Mom reaches out and takes my hand, tilting it so the
rings—Mina’s and mine—shine in the lamplight. She
doesn’t touch them, seems to understand that she shouldn’t,
and I’m grateful for that small gesture. For the strength of
her fi ngers, smooth and comforting, wrapped around mine.
“When you were in Oregon, Mina would come by. I
used to fi nd her up in the tree house. Or she’d sneak into
your bedroom to do homework. We’d talk sometimes. She
was scared you wouldn’t forgive her for telling us about the
drugs. I told her that she shouldn’t worry. That you were
the type of girl who didn’t let anything stand in the way of
loving someone. Especially her.”
I look up at her, surprised at the warmth in her eyes
that’s almost encouragement. Mom smiles and brushes her
cheek against mine. “It’s a good thing, Sophie,” she says
softly. “Being able to love someone that much. It makes you
brave.”
I squeeze her hand tightly and I choose to believe.
“You sure you want to do this?”
I stare down at the black notebook in my hands. When
T E S S S H A R P E
335
Trev brought her diary to me, turned up by the police dur-
ing a second search of the house, I didn’t even want to
touch it. I could barely stand to keep it in the house. So
a week later we drove to the lake and built a fi re on the
beach, waiting for night to fall and delaying the inevitable.
“Do you want to read it?” I ask him.
He shakes his head.
My fi ngers stroke the smooth black cover, tracing the
ridges of the binding, the edges of the paper. It’s like touch-
ing a part of her, the core, the heart and breath and blood of
her in purple ink and cream-colored paper.
I could read it. Finally know her through all her layers
and secrets.
Part of me wants that. To know. To be sure.
But more than anything, I want to keep my memory of
her untainted, not polished by death nor shredded to pieces
by words she meant only for herself. I want her to stay with
me as she always was: strong and sure in everything but
the one that mattered most, beautifully cruel and wonder-
fully sweet, too smart and inquisitive for her own good,
and loving me like she didn’t want to believe it was a sin.
I drop the diary into the fi re. The pages curl and blacken,
her words disappearing into smoke.
The two of us stand silently and close until the fi re dies
out. Our shoulders brush as the wind carries away the last
of her secrets.
It’s Trev who fi nally breaks the silence. “Rachel told
me you got your GED. That means you’re going back to
Portland.”
“Yeah. Right after my birthday.”
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F A R F R O M Y O U
“Know what you’re gonna do yet?”
“I don’t,” I say, and it’s wonderful, not to know anything
without dreading the feeling. To not have a suspect list in
my head. To not think about what’s next except for an open
road and a little house with a yoga studio and a vegetable
garden in the backyard. “College, I guess, eventually. But I
think I’ll take a year off, get a job, fi gure some things out
fi rst.”
He smiles, all lopsided. His eyes go bright.
“What?” I ask.
“She would’ve loved you like this,” he says.
I don’t think it’ll ever be easy to think about it, about all
the chances Mina and I missed, the beginning, middle, and
end we never had. Maybe we would’ve fi zzled out instantly,
her fear getting the better of her. Maybe we would’ve fi n-
ished with high school, with fi ghts and tears and words that
couldn’t be taken back. Maybe we would’ve lasted through
college, only to end in quiet, strangled silence. Maybe we
would’ve had forever.
“You could stay,” he says, looking down. “I could build
you that greenhouse you always wanted.”
My smile trembles at the edges. “You know I love you,
don’t you?” I ask him. “Because I do, Trev. I really do.”
“I know you do,” he says. “Just . . . not the way I want
you to.”
“I’m sorry.”
And the thing is, I am. In another life, if I had been a
different girl, if my heart had gone traditional instead of
zinging off after the unexpected, I might have loved him
T E S S S H A R P E
337
like he wanted. But my heart isn’t simple or straightfor-
ward. It’s a complicated mess of wants and needs, boys
and girls: soft, rough, and everything in between, an ever-
shifting precipice from which to fall. And when it beats, it’s
still her name that thrums through me. Never his.
When I kiss him, a quiet meeting of lips that’s there and
gone, it feels like good-bye.
66
TEN YEARS AGO (SEVEN YEARS OLD)
At lunch on the fi rst day of second grade, I’m eating with Amber and
Kyle when I notice the new girl at the far end of the courtyard, sitting
alone at a picnic table in her purple dress. Mrs. Durbin had put her
next to me in class, but she hasn’t said a word all day. She’d kept her
head down even when she was called on.
She still seems sad, so I grab the rest of my lunch and walk over
to her.
“I’m fi ne,” she says when I get to her table, before I can even say
anything.
Her face is wet. She scrubs at her cheeks with a fi st and glares
at me.
“I’m Sophie,” I say. “Can I sit?”
“I guess.”
I slide onto the bench next to her, setting my lunch down. “You’re
Mina, right?”
She nods.
“You’re new.”
“We moved,” Mina says. “My daddy went to heaven.”
“Oh.” I bite my lip. I don’t know what to say to that. “Sorry.”
“Do you like horses?” Mina asks, pointing to my sticker-covered
lunch box.
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339
“Yeah. My grandpa takes me riding on his land.”
Mina looks impressed. “My brother Trev says that sometimes they
bite you if you don’t give them sugar.”
I giggle. “They have big teeth. But I give them carrots. You have to
make your hand fl at.” I hold my hand out, palm up, to show her. “Then
they won’t bite.”
Mina does the same with her hand, and our fi ngertips bump. She
looks up and smiles at me.
“Do you have brothers?” she asks. “Or sisters?”
“No, it’s just me.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I wouldn’t like that. Trev’s the best.”
“Sophie!” Amber waves at me. The bell’s about to ring.
I get up, and there’s something about Mina, about the way she’s
been crying and how she looks like she’s lost, that makes me hold my
hand out to her again. “Come with me?”
She smiles, reaches out, and takes my hand.
We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it’ll end
before it’s truly started.
On my eighteenth birthday, I drive to the cemetery at dusk.
It takes me a while to fi nd her; I trek across wet grass, weav-
ing in between headstones and angel statues to a shady,
secluded spot.
It’s plain, polished gray marble with white engraved
letters:
Mina Elizabeth Bishop
Beloved Daughter and Sister
I wish this could be like in the movies. That I were the
type of person who could reach out and trace the letters
of her name and feel peaceful. I wish I could speak to this
hunk of marble like it were her, feel comforted that her
body is six feet below, believe that her spirit is watching
from above.
But I’m not that girl. I never was. Not before or after
or now. I can live with this knowledge—a simple gift to
myself, quiet acceptance of who I’m becoming from the
pieces that remain.
I kneel down next to her and pull the string of solar
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341
Christmas lights out of my bag. I drape them on her head-
stone, trailing the strands down both sides of her grave.
I stay until nightfall, watching the lights begin to twin-
kle. My hand rests on the ground above her. When I get up,
my fi ngers linger in the grass.
I walk to my car and never once do I look back.
Mina’s night-lights will endure. Year after year, Trev will
replace them when they dim. And I know that someday,
when I’m ready to come home, they’ll light my way.
AC KNOW L E D G M ENTS
This book would not be possible without so many people’s
support and faith that carried me through its creation.
Writing can be a solitary thing until the village it takes to
publish a novel welcomes you into their fold. And I was
lucky enough to be welcomed by the best village of all.
Thank you to my agent Sarah Davies, for everything.
You changed my entire life and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able
to thank you properly for what you’ve taught me.
For my editor, Lisa Yoskowitz, thank you for your under-
standing of the characters and the love story I wanted to
tell. You raised me and my work to such heights.
Thanks to the wonderful team at Disney*Hyperion, who
put so much care and creative spark into all aspects of the
book. Special thanks to Kate Hurley, my copy editor, whose
sharp eye I am indebted to and Whitney Manger, who
designed me an absolutely beautiful cover.
For my parents and the rest of my amazing family. But
especially for my mother, Laurie. Thank you, Mom, for
reading every single thing I’ve ever written like it mattered ,
even my second grade opus “Two Fast Doctors”.
So much gratitude must go to my dedicated, brutally
honest critique partners: Elizabeth May and Allison Estry,