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Maybe it was because she found me that night. Because she

was there when no one else was, and I needed that when

everything had been taken away. But that’s only part of it.

There’s a determination in Rachel that I’ve never seen

before. She has conviction. In herself, in what she wants,

in what she believes. I want to be like that. To be sure of

myself, to trust myself, to love myself.

Rachel had stuck around when she didn’t have to. When

everyone else, everyone who’s known me forever, had

turned their backs. That means more to me than anything.

“Was Seaside bad?” she asks.

“No, not really. Just lots of therapy and talking. It was

hard. To be in there and have to put everything on hold.”

I pause, stirring my coffee unnecessarily. “How’s the

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F A R F R O M Y O U

telescope going?” I ask, remembering a letter mentioning

some experiments.

“The refractor? Slowly but surely. I have it out at my

dad’s, so I’m only working on it when I’m up there. But

I’ve got a few more projects fi xing some stuff up. There’s a

tractor from the twenties in the backyard that my neighbor

traded me. Trying to get it to work’s been a pain in the ass,

in that good way.” With a shower of cinnamon, she takes a

bite out of one of the palm-sized snickerdoodles. “I guess

we should talk about what you’ve decided to do,” she says.

“I saw Kyle yesterday.”

“Run into him, did you?” Rachel asks sarcastically.

I stare at my coffee instead of her. “I might have locked

him in the men’s room and threatened him with bear repel-

lant,” I mumble.

“Sophie!” Rachel says, the word dissolving in a fi t of

laughter. “I can’t believe you. You can’t go around threaten-

ing people you suspect. You’ve gotta be subtle about this.”

“I know. But he lied about me. There has to be a reason.”

“Do you really think he could have had something to do

with Mina’s murder?”

I shrug. I’ve known Kyle as long as I’ve known most of

my friends. He was my fi eld trip buddy in fi rst grade. It’s

hard to think that the boy who held my hand during the

gross fi sh-gutting part of the hatchery fi eld trip could be

a murderer. “Anything’s possible. The guy who killed her

planned it out. The killer had a reason for wanting Mina

gone. I just don’t know what that is.”

“And Kyle lied.”

T E S S S H A R P E

61

“And Kyle lied,” I echo. “There has to be a reason for

that. Either he’s covering for himself—or someone else.”

“Did he and Mina fi ght a lot?” Rachel asks.

“No,” I say. “That’s why I don’t get this. They got along.

Kyle’s kind of a Neanderthal, but he’s sweet. He treated her

like she walked on water. But even if he didn’t have any-

thing to do with her murder, he’s hindering an entire police

investigation. You don’t just randomly lie to the police.

Especially Kyle. His Dad’s all about the rules. If Mr. Miller

found out Kyle was lying to a bunch of cops? Big trouble.

His restaurant does the annual fi sh fry for the force every

year. He’s friends with a lot of them.”

Rachel sighs. “I don’t think you can get someone who

doesn’t mind lying to the police to just tell you the truth. So

what’s the contingency plan?”

I look down into my cup of coffee. “It might seem kind

of weird, but I did have one idea.”

“What is it?”

“I want to go back,” I say. “To where you found me that

night.”

Rachel’s eyes widen. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s probably a horrible idea,” I concede. “But I need

someone to walk me through it. Maybe it’ll spur something.

And you’re kind of the only person who can.”

Rachel presses her lips together tight, and it makes her

freckles stand out even more. “Sophie . . .”

“Please.” I look her straight in the eye, trying to seem

confi dent. But I’m afraid of going. Just the idea of being

there again makes my knees shake.

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F A R F R O M Y O U

She sighs. “Okay.” She gets up and grabs her keys from

the hook on the wall. “Let’s go.”

Rachel’s quiet as she pulls her old Chevy out onto the

road, reluctance practically vibrating off her.

“I’m not gonna freak,” I tell her.

“I’m not worried about that,” Rachel says, and we drive

in silence for a while. But twenty minutes out, she’s pulling

off the highway onto Burnt Oak Road and I feel like freak-

ing a little, even though I just promised her I wouldn’t.

We’re not even close yet, at least a mile and a half from

the Point, but suddenly everything outside the truck—the

trees, the hills, even the cows in the fi elds—seems terri-

fying. Potentially fatal. My heart fl utters in my chest, and

I press my fi ngers against my scar, trace the ridges of it

through my shirt, trying to calm down.

Nine months. Three weeks. Eight hours.

I don’t realize I’ve closed my eyes until I feel the truck

stop. I open them slowly.

We’re here. I avoid looking at the road. I don’t want to go

there. I have to go there.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Rachel says. “Are

you sure you want to do this?”

I’m positive this is the last thing I want to do.

I nod anyway.

Rachel’s side-eye is epic, but she shuts the engine off.

I get out of the Chevy slowly, and she follows, shading

her eyes against the sun. This time of day, this far out of

town, the roads are empty, no cars in sight for miles. Just

long sweeps of yellowing brush, barbed wire fences, and

clusters of scrub oaks and digger pines.

T E S S S H A R P E

63

“You ready?”

I nod again.

Rachel locks the truck and steps out onto the empty road,

looking from side to side. Her pigtails sway every time she

rocks back on her heels, and I focus on them instead of

where she’s standing—where she’d found me that night.

“It was a little past nine,” she says. “I’d just called my

mom to let her know I was almost back from my dad’s. I

looked away to toss my phone into my purse, and when

I glanced back at the road, you were right in front of me,

standing in the middle, right about . . . here.”

She takes a few steps and scuffs her sneaker across the

cracked asphalt, toeing the yellow line. I look at it . . . can’t

stop looking at it. Was it right there? I remember the frozen

feeling. I remember wanting the truck to run me over.

“I thought I was going to hit you. I’ve never slammed on

the brakes so hard in my life. And you just stood there. You

didn’t move; you didn’t fl inch. It was almost like you . . .”

She hesitates. “You were in shock,” she fi nishes.

I begin to walk, nervous energy fi lling me. I need to

move, get away.

My body knows where I’m going. It’s always trying to

fi nd traces of her.

Rachel follows me as the road gets steeper. Chicory and

foxtails, knee-high, swish against my jeans. The red clay

sticks to the soles of my shoes. I’d washed it off my feet the

day after, watched it swirl down the drain with the blood

and tears.

“When I got out of the car I saw you were covered in

blood. So I called 91. You were bleeding pretty bad from

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F A R F R O M Y O U

your forehead, I tried to put pressure on it, but you kept

pushing my hands away. I wanted to get you in the car or to

say something, even just your name, but . . .” She hesitates

again. “Do you remember any of this?”

“I remember the ambulance. I remember grabbing your

hand.” I keep walking. I know where I’m going now—brain,

body, and heart fi nally in harmony. It’s only a mile. The

scrub oaks are sparser now as the pines take over. In just a

few minutes, we’ll round the curve, and there we’ll be.

“When the EMTs came, you wouldn’t let go. So they let

me ride in the ambulance with you.”

“I remember the hospital,” I say. And I leave it at that.

I concentrate on my feet.

We’re on the wrong side of the road, and when we reach

the place where it veers off to Booker’s Point, I stop and

look.

The other side of the road is thickly wooded, clusters

of pines jammed close together. Did the killer deliberately

choose this spot? How long did he hide in the pines, wait-

ing for us?

“You sure this is a good idea?” Rachel asks.

I take a deep breath. It’s cooler up here, shaded from the

glare of the sun. It’d been cold that night. I could almost see

my breath in the air.

“Bad ideas are sometimes necessary.” It sounds so much

like an excuse, it’s such an addict thing to say, that my skin

crawls.

Trying to leave the feeling behind, I walk across the road

until pavement cuts off to dirt fl attened by years of truck

T E S S S H A R P E

65

tires. I follow the crude road, disappearing into the thicket

of tall pines, ignoring the way my footing falters as the

ground slants up into a hill.

It’s quiet, just like that night. There’s a pleasant coolness

under the trees. It washes over me, and I shiver.

All I can think about is how cold her skin had been.

The scar tissue around my knee aches as the trail gets

steeper.

Then I turn the last bend of road, and there I am, at the

top of the Point.

Just a few feet away.

Booker’s Point isn’t big, just a clear piece of land that fi ts

a few cars. When I was younger, I’d hear stories about girls

losing their virginity up here, of the wild parties and drug

deals that went on after dark out in the boonies. But until

that night, I’d never ventured out here.

Rachel hangs back, but I keep walking, across the fl at

stretch of road, past the straggly California poppies that

grow in clumps in the dirt, until I’m standing right where

it happened.

I thought it’d take my breath away. That somehow, being

there again where she ended, where I’d sworn to her she’d

be okay, would change something in me.

But I guess I’ve already been changed enough.

I move past the spot until I’m at the very tip of the Point,

where the ground falls off, an endless drop. My toes skirt

the edge, a little cascade of dirt and stones tumbling down

beneath the pressure of my feet.

“Sophie,” Rachel warns.

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F A R F R O M Y O U

I barely hear her.

I’m transfi xed by the air between me and the ground so

far below, by the little spots of green that are bushes and

trees, the tiny pebbles that are fl at, gray boulders, bigger

than me, scattered below.

“Sophie!” A hand grabs the back of my shirt, yanking

me off balance, away from the edge. I fall backward, knock-

ing into Rachel. “Hey.” She frowns at me, all cheer erased

from her face. “Not cool.”

I blink hard. Suddenly, all I want to do is cry. “This was

a bad idea.”

“Yeah, I know. Come on.”

We’re quiet all the way back to the truck, and it’s not

until we’re inside the cab that Rachel speaks.

“I don’t think you should come out here again. Not by

yourself.”

I can’t look at her. I stare out the window.

“What you need is a plan,” Rachel goes on. “Having

a plan makes everything better. If you think about what

you need to solve Mina’s murder, the next step will become

clear. Obviously, talking to Kyle isn’t going to work. So

what’s the next step?”

Forcing my thoughts away from the past and into the

present is exactly what I need. I’ll never fi nd Mina’s killer

if I keep falling apart. Rachel’s right. I need a plan that

involves a lot more than dousing Kyle in bear spray.

“I have to start from scratch,” I say, grateful for Rachel’s

reboot. “From the source. Mina was working on a story.

I need to go to the
Harper Beacon
’s offi ce and talk to her

T E S S S H A R P E

67

supervisor. If anyone knows what she was chasing, it’d be

him.”

“Okay, good. What else?”

“I need to fi nd her notes on the story. The police searched

her computer and didn’t fi nd anything, so that means

they’ve got to be somewhere else. Maybe in a notebook. Her

mom was always going through her room and reading her

diary, so Mina hid stuff. I bet the police missed some of

her hiding places.”

“How are you going to get in her room to look?”

I sigh. This is the part I’ve been avoiding. “I’m going to

have to use Trev.”

Rachel lets out a sympathetic hiss. “Ouch.”

“There’s no other way to get into the house. If I asked him

if I could search her room, he’d slam the door in my face.

He doesn’t want to see me. But I have some of her things. I

can put a box together, use it as my excuse to get in.”

“Has he even talked to you, since you got back?” Rachel

asks. “When you were at Seaside, your letters said he wasn’t

writing back to you.”

I shrug. “He doesn’t believe me.”

“Well, he should,” Rachel says hotly.

“Rachel, why do
you
believe me?” I blurt out.