The Way Back to You (7 page)

“Yeah.”

It comes out exactly how I didn’t want it to: sulky.

“What’s wrong? You’re not letting him get to you, are you?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t care about Jacob. It just sucks that Matty was complaining about me to him.”

“He didn’t. Matty would never do that.”

Cloudy doesn’t even know what happened, but she sure is quick to defend him.

“I know he did. I was supposed to meet the guys at the bowling alley last night. I wasn’t up for it, so Matty busted into my room, yelling about how I’m always freaking him out and
letting him down. And now today, Jacob’s talking about me not leaving my cave. Gee, I wonder where he heard that from.”

“I think Matty told him the truth. You decided to stay home. And Jacob came up with the rest on his own. Because Matty wouldn’t have complained about you or tried to make you sound—”

“Depressed?” The seminar link he texted pops into my head. “Miserable? Pathetic? I think he might.”

She lets out a loud breath. “Kyle, no. He just . . . he worries about you.”

I side-eye her. She’s biting her bottom lip and staring at her lap.

That’s when it hits me: she knows. Cloudy knows exactly what Matty said about me because she heard it. From Matty. And suddenly her out-of-the-blue invitation to California isn’t so out of the blue.

Anger pulses through me. “This trip today. It was his idea, wasn’t it? He filled you in about our argument last night. He asked you to get me out of the house and cheer me up or whatever.”

“This has nothing to do with him,” she says, shaking her head. “Unless
you
told him, he doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Look. I’m not stupid. Before yesterday, you hadn’t really talked to me since, when? A few days after WinterFest? That’s, like, fifty-one weeks. Why do you suddenly want to hang out with me now?”

“Like I told you”—her voice gets sharper with every word—“my car wouldn’t make it. And you said at Target you wanted to get away, so I figured it was win-win.”

I don’t respond. I can’t. I’d let myself believe she asked me to do this because she actually wanted to. What an
idiot
.

After several seconds of silence, Cloudy says, “Fine. Believe whatever you want, but I’m not lying.”

“Right. Because you never lie.”

She turns, glaring at me. “And what is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Come on. The whole thing at last year’s WinterFest. You lied to Matty. You lied to Ashlyn.”

“So did you.”

“You’re right. And what did I get out of it? You stayed friends with both of them, and treated me like what happened was my fault.” Words are bursting out of me now. Words I never thought I’d be saying to her. “But the fact is,
you
kissed
me
and—”

“I would have kissed
anyone
that night!”

“I know!” My heart is hammering now. “It was a complete accident. It had nothing to do with me. You’ve said it all before. And I
get
it. So why—”

“Kyle, stop. Please. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Haven’t we not talked about it for long enough? We kept it a secret because it meant nothing, right? And it wouldn’t have done Ashlyn and Matty any good to know. But then you stopped speaking to me. Why? And what’s changed all of a sudden? If you needed a ride to California, why not ask one of your actual friends? Like, you know,
Matty
.”

Instead of answering my question, she reaches over, cranks up the music, crosses her arms over her chest, and turns to face the window.

Clamping my mouth shut, I stay focused straight ahead as we pass a sign for La Pine.

I could turn the car around. I
should
turn around. But Dad wants me out of the house, I’m definitely not ready to deal with Matty, and I need to experience some warm California weather now more than ever. So I keep driving south even as these four words repeat in my brain:

This

Is

A

Mistake.

Dear Paige,

My name is Ethan. I am ten years old. My mom said I can write to you and she will write to you.

I was sick so I got a new liver. I am getting better. It was part of Ashlyns liver that I got. She sounds nice and I like animals to. I like dogs and I like wolfs the best. I also like drawing and comics.

I want to say thank you to you and your family for my new liver and I hope you will not be sad.

From Ethan

W
e’d wanted to get drunk, and WinterFest was as good a time as any.

It’s always in February; the first outdoor festival after a long, frigid few months, and the whole town comes out for it. There’s this eagerness to everyone, like we’re ready to burst, and I felt it, too, especially last year. After wallowing over the cheer team not qualifying for Nationals—which had been a couple of weeks earlier—not to mention everything else, I needed to have fun and forget for a while. So when Lita and Izzy proposed the idea, I went with it. Enthusiastically.

We’d camped beside the amphitheater, waiting for the bands to start playing. There was already a huge crowd on the main lawn, and farther behind us, booths were set up with fire pits, local shop owners selling food, and people showing off their boarding skills on the snow imported from Mount Bachelor. The moon was a shiny silver and the wind was whipping off the Deschutes River. The alcohol was helping with the cold, though. That was the one and only part of the plan: to sneak it in, mixed with juice, in our travel thermoses—and
not get so hammered that we got caught.

Izzy mentioned Ashlyn once, to see if she was joining us, and I quickly waved it off. Ashlyn was somewhere at WinterFest with Kyle, I’d told her. They’d casually dated up until Formal, and a few days after, Kyle had asked Ashlyn to be his girlfriend. So Ashlyn was occupied that night. Ashlyn didn’t need to forget.

My eyes went heavy and pinched, like I would cry right there. I didn’t want to be that person, someone who wished her best friend away, whose muscles clenched at the thought of her best friend’s happiness. It felt like a turning point, a place I could never come back from. So I took another gulp to get the bitter taste out of my mouth, and hoped I wouldn’t remember feeling that way the next morning. But then I got hungry—and annoyed that my teammate Danielle had shown up and been a total sober downer.

It was while I was waiting in line for homemade pretzels that I lazily glanced to my right and saw Kyle. He was only a few feet from me, around the corner of a large canvas tent and out of the crowd, staring down at his phone. His other hand was in his pocket, and it was probably warm. I thought if I held it, I’d be able to touch the tiny scar on his knuckle, and he could—

My brain yelled at me to ignore him.

Except the rum had snipped any connection between my body and my brain—and the truth was, I really, really wanted to talk to him. We hadn’t done much of that since our teacher switched up our class’s lab partner assignments at the beginning
of January. Standing there, it felt right to go to him, like I had the power to be okay near him. So I scurried over, swerving around a small group until I stood opposite him in the shadow of the tent.

“HEY!”

Kyle started at the noise. “Cloudy,” he said sharply. “Where did you come from?”

“I’ve been waiting in the looooooongest—” I gasped. “Oh, shit, I got out of my line.”

He barked a laugh. “I guess so.”

I sighed, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “I was standing in the pretzel line and then I saw you and . . . now I’m not standing in the pretzel line.”

He was watching me, his eyes narrowed. “Have you been drinking?” he whispered.

Cupping my hands around my mouth, I said in a perfect—at least I’d thought so—impersonation of our biology teacher, “A-plus for observation, Mr. Ocie.”

He held up his phone, smiling. “That explains why you never answered your boyfriend’s texts.”

“Oops.” By then, Matty and I had been together for over a month. And it’s not like he was a consolation. Matty was fun and hot and actually into me.

I spotted a row of folding chairs lined up against the tent and hopped on top of one, the seat shaking under my feet. “I left my phone with Lita.”

“Well, he’s been attempting to tell you he’s running late. And Ashlyn’s in this never-ending bathroom line,” he said, glancing
down at his phone again. “We’re supposed to meet up near the ice sculptures. If she gets out before spring.”

We’re
, I’d thought. Ten days as a couple, and he and Ashlyn were already, officially, a We. My stomach curdled, but the sensation passed quickly, and I was back to being fine. Why didn’t people drink rum all the time?

“Yeah, this place,” I said. “More like LineFest, right?”

I paused, absorbing my joke, then giggled. A lot. So much my face hurt, even though it didn’t register as pain. It made me bobble on the chair, and the toe of my boot slipped off the seat.

Kyle swooped in as I fell, his hands ready to spot me. He was the one looking up at me then, and it was borderline obnoxious that he was almost cuter from this angle. No, it
was
obnoxious, and I was abruptly enraged. This was
his
fault. If he’d only just liked me back. How difficult was it? To like me? It’s all hormones and firing neurons, so what the hell were wrong with his? Life would have been so much simpler, and not even all that different. This is how I imagined it: the Earth would continue to spin on its axis, and I wouldn’t be lying to my best friend, or dating someone I didn’t totally want to, or feeling guilty for noticing Kyle’s stupid, cute face.

Maybe I was drunker than I thought.

I pressed my heels into the metal seat to re-steady myself and studied his eyes. They were a deeper blue—not the in-between-blue-and-green color they normally were—as if they were reflecting off the night sky.

“You sure it’s safe to stay up there?” he said, surveying the chair.

I let my head drop; it weighed a thousand pounds. “Kyle, please. I stand on other people’s hands and get launched twenty feet into the air on a weekly basis. This is . . .
pie
.”

“Not that you’re bragging.”

“No, I was definitely bragging.”

“In that case, I think you mean it’s ‘cake.’ Not ‘pie.’ Unless you were going for ‘easy as pie.’”

I groaned. “Keep that up and your new lab partner will, for sure, stab you with a scalpel.”

“Sam was pretty enthusiastic with that crayfish last week.” He gave me a pointed look. “He believes dissecting on a computer isn’t as educational as the real thing.”

“Said every future serial killer ever.”

“Or maybe future surgeon.”

I scoffed, my head rearing back. “Like I believe anyone in our class could be a surgeon.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Kyle said, “So your theory is everyone in first-period bio will turn out to be a serial killer—including me.”

“I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

“But
excluding
you, since you do the virtual dissection thing. That’s pretty convenient.”

“I don’t make the rules, Kyle!” I said, flinging my arms out wide, and when I did, my entire foot slid out from beneath me. This time, I reached out for Kyle’s shoulders just as he placed his hands on my waist.

“You okay?” he breathed, spooked.

I dug my nails into his coat. I didn’t want him to go—and
what scared me most was that I dreaded Ashlyn ever showing up. “Uh-huh.”

My teeth stung from the cold, which meant I hadn’t stopped grinning the whole time, but Kyle was smiling, too. At me. He was so close; suddenly eye level when only a few seconds ago, I could see the top of his head.

That rightness wrapped me up again like a warm blanket, and I felt myself tipping forward, to him, a houseplant arcing toward a sunny window. And I kissed him, breathing in his Junior Mint-y exhale. I kissed him until I realized he wasn’t kissing me back. He was pulling away, his eyes panicked, checking if anyone had spotted what I’d done.

My arms dropped; my lungs shriveled up. “Don’t tell anyone” was all I said.

Then I bolted. Jumped right off the chair before he could give an apology or a rejection. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want either of us to even acknowledge how I’d massively wrecked this. So I’d avoided him and Ashlyn after that—and the only reason I hadn’t completely avoided Matty was so I could dump him.

Six days after I kissed him, Kyle rang my doorbell. He’d come over to talk about how worried Ashlyn was about me, and what was worse, he wanted to know if I was
okay
after what happened at WinterFest. I couldn’t let him believe that the kiss had meant anything, not when it could be erased if we ignored it.

We
. Kyle and I were a We—and this was why. Because We had a secret.

So while we froze solid on my front porch, I told him to stay out of my business, that as far as I was concerned, the kiss never
happened, and he was taking it all way too personally, anyway. He didn’t have to play peacemaker because there was nothing for him to come and fix. Everything was fine. And I was determined to keep it that way. I’d be a better friend; the kind Ashlyn deserved. Matty would get over the breakup soon enough, and Kyle would forget what happened.

Except Kyle clearly hasn’t forgotten. And now here we are.

Five hours in the somber-mobile.

Five hours of Kyle’s “Mood Disorders for Beginners” playlist. Except for one song that he purposely skips every time; one that opens with these earnest, twinkly piano chords. How he finds it any more unbearable than the rest is a mystery, but it’s not like I’m asking.

Five hours of basically no talking, aside from the occasional necessary “I need the bathroom” or “I have to stretch my legs before they shrivel.”

Five hours of those words bouncing around in my head, wondering how long they’ve been in his.

Because you never lie.

He thinks I’m a liar, and he said it out loud, so now it feels like a truth.

I was ready to deny it and instead the first thing that came out of my mouth was another lie. That’s what shut me up, smothered the outrage crackling through me. He was right. And something about being in his car, with its freakishly comfortable seats and dumb tree-shaped air freshener, made fighting with him impossible. I have lied. I
am
lying, whenever I don’t tell him why we’re actually on our way to Sacramento.
But I’m hoping it won’t be the kind of lie that breaks everything apart.

The car slows and I check Kyle’s phone, where the GPS app is tracking our progress. We’re a couple-ish hours from Sacramento now—my time is running out. But if I’d come clean when he asked, just twenty minutes outside of Bend, he could have turned us right around. Then I’d go back to my house for the week and he’d go back to his. With the kitten.

Arm.

Like I’m falling for that Armadillo bullshit. There’s no question Kyle named her after Ashlyn. If anything, it proves that he needs to see the recipients for himself. The cat is an enormous sign. We’ve passed smaller billboards on I-5.

I risk a glance at Kyle. His anger—or whatever that was earlier—quickly simmered into that quiet, contemplative thing he does so well. As if he’s running on this hamster wheel inside his own mind. And I’m partially responsible for it. If I hadn’t defended Matty, Kyle wouldn’t have gotten so worked up. He wouldn’t now believe we pity him or swap stories behind his back. Or that we’re ganging up on him.

I slump lower in my seat.

How am I already losing control of this?

“You look the same from this side, you know.” It comes out louder than I want it to. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to use my vocal cords.

Kyle blinks twice at the windshield. “What?”

I clear my throat. “When we were lab partners, I always sat on your left side. I’m not used to seeing you from this angle.”

“Oh.” He places a palm over the heating vents. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“Anything’s possible.”

My heart bumps around my rib cage even as relief settles my nerves. He’s answering back, which hopefully means he hasn’t spent the entire ride counting the ways he hates me. But the silence between us returns in full force, and these few seconds might be worse than the entire five hours that came before them. I’m trying. Can’t he tell I’m trying?

Something hot prickles on my skin, the same aggravation from when he lashed out this morning. So I untie my bun, and coil it back up, and breathe through it. Giving him attitude now will only make things worse.

“Look, isn’t it too long a trip for us not to talk at all?”

Kyle pauses, then reaches over to turn down the music. “I’m not
not
talking to you. I’m just . . . driving. When I drive, I think.”

“About kicking me from a moving car?”

He smiles, but not enough to put me at ease. “Nothing that vicious.”

“Great.”

“I’m kidding.” His fingers curl around the steering wheel tightly before loosening up. “Cloudy, I didn’t mean all that before. I—”

“No, don’t. It’s fine.” I tap my armrest. “Let’s drop it.”

“I can’t drop it,” he says quickly, and it isn’t resentment—it sounds like part of an apology. “I’m not sure I function that way.”

I nod once, afraid of encouraging him to keep going. But he does.

“I was pissed about Matty—and Jacob is
such
an
ass
. But I couldn’t blow up at them, and you were sitting right there, so I blew up at you. I’m sorry; it wasn’t fair. And bringing up that stuff from last year wasn’t fair either.” He sighs again. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

I look out the passenger window as we zip by signs for towns I don’t recognize. Every second means we’re a littler farther away from Bend, and the thought makes something in my chest contract. I can’t tell if it’s a good feeling or not.

“Keeping WinterFest a secret, I did it for her,” I say quietly, my gaze stuck on the California plates of the cars that pass us. “And for Matty, and even for you, I guess. But I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

It’s not enough, but it’s all I have right now. Maybe we’ll go the rest of the way not talking, until I unload the whole story on him, and who knows what’ll happen then.

“Hey.”

When I turn my head to him, Kyle says, “You’re the same from this side, too.” And he’s smiling like that’s a good thing.

WE GET THERE earlier than expected, right around five-thirty. Even more time to come clean.

“Sacramento Children’s Theater?” Kyle asks, though the awning on the building pretty much clears up any confusion.