Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Welcome to Summer, Summer

As soon as the sun went down, the walls closed in. My own heartbeat and my own circling thoughts were all I heard. All I was allowed to hear.

My father, who only wanted me to exist and not live, his logic went something like this: when he has to move us to another new town, he should make sure this new house has a second story to move me in so I won’t sneak out. It was another disagreement of what he says goes when he wouldn’t let me go to a movie some girls, who could’ve become friends, invited me to at our last house—it was just a movie —and he overheard one of them giving me the idea to sneak out.

But I never made it out my window.

His memory worked, but his logic didn’t tell him to take down the trellis.

This night, this balmy night in picturesque Rosalee Bay, North Carolina, was the one my isolation decided there was only so much reading and watching television—witnessing others living their life, having the kinds of experiences I should’ve been having—that I could do anymore.

Fictional people had it better than me. And I was starting to hate them for it.

And, in a couple months, I was going to be the new girl again, ripped from my old high school to start my senior year here. I couldn’t be another fish out of water with no bearings, flopping around until I died under the pressure of this unfamiliar outside world.

I needed to explore this new land.

My logic reminded me there wasn’t a lot of exploring I could do at night, with things being closed, but it was the only chance I got. And without my dad’s terms and conditions.

I needed out of these walls. I needed out of my skin .

They—whoever they were—said the body replaces its cells every seven years. I didn’t do my research to prove it true or false, but from having gone through two and a half cycles of sevens, I’d say it was a bunch of fluff. My only living grandmother, on my mom’s side, who had a falling out with my dad, and so with me, after my mom’s death, would’ve called it hogwash .

I still wore the same fatigue from my underwhelming and on-edge existence, still carried around the same yearnings, still stood in the same old skin that hadn’t been gazed at or touched by anyone in any way I wanted.

I stalled a pulse-pounding moment once both my hands and feet were clinging to the rungs of the trellis. Dad’s bedroom window was two over from mine, the bathroom in the center like an island between our different life perspectives.

I still needed to discover mine. I needed to discover me before I was too late. Seventeen, almost labeled a woman before I had time to be a girl. And now, a proper teenager.

Time that was stolen from me the day my mom’s ran out.

But my clock was still ticking, my own time running out, too, this tip to the cusp of adulthood putting me on the chase.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t get how my dad wanted to protect me, but he was also depriving me of air, then frowning and sighing me from his sight when I tried to breathe.

I took a big breath and started the climb down. Slow and steady wins the race to freedom.

But my heart was in its own race, and I realized quick that my flip flops weren’t the best shoe choice for this. The bottoms wouldn’t grip and they were hanging too far from my heels.

They thumped to the ground as I kicked them off, and the pain in my toes moved me down faster—too fast, and I lost my footing, thumping myself to the ground.

My ass and hands, now covered in dirt, throbbed, but…I was out.

I lay on the grass for another pulse-pounding moment, listening and waiting and watching, for movement from inside, for my dad’s window to glow, for his curtains to part. For the downward tilt of his mouth that I’d have to pay for putting there later. I set the shake in my jaw at the burned image of disappointment in his eyes, to not let just the thought of him rope me back up the trellis in regret.

He’d never have to know.

And when the world didn’t end right then and there, everything still dark, the only sound still the thudding in my chest, I scrambled to my feet and for my flip flops, sprinting on tiptoes toward the street with adrenaline-rushed giggles.

I’m out!

I felt like I was breaking the law. A law. Dad’s Law.

And while my heart refused to calm down, my lungs didn’t ache, and that bit of lightness alone told me there was no consequence imaginable that would make me regret this.

The street’s left and right ends led to two different parts of town.

I wiped at my ass, though the small amount of dirt I’d gotten on my shorts was already gone, and pressed the soles of my shoes into the gravel at the end of the driveway, scanning the neighbors’ dark windows as I glanced back and forth down the line.

Left or right.

To the right was the bay, and my entire body lifted to get a better peek through the trees, at the section of the cliff and the top of the lighthouse.

I wouldn’t know what they were like up close.

My foot shifted to the right before I did, like an arrow on a compass, and I followed its pointing toward the water.

Welcome to another summer, Summer. Let’s give no bothers now, and maybe this one won’t be as lonely.

****

Not a single house I passed had a light on inside. It was late into the night, but it was the weekend, and school was out, and no one was even pulling in late after a night of…partying, maybe? Were there party spots around here? For sure, somebody had a party house, some popular guy who invited everyone over when his parents were out of town. They did in the fiction I lived vicariously through.

The neighborhoods were almost too quiet. I could hear the low hum from the streetlights, and my flip flops sounded like they were echoing from every direction. I was smiling with each step, my lungs even lighter feeling, but I looked behind me whenever I heard the slightest rustle or crack of something . But nothing was as scary as my dad creeping at my back all the time, so nothing could make me turn around. And he had bragged about this being a crime free town. He did his research. Rosalee Bay was as safe as could be for a newborn wanderer like me.

But I still wished I hadn’t forgotten my phone. I couldn’t play my music or finish my audiobook.

I now sighed over that second idea, this wash of indifference for something I loved—and I still did—that put a jerky shrug in my shoulders, a bit of shame making my breezed skin warmer.

I shifted the sensation to my forgotten phone. It wasn’t smart, but my head was overruled by my heart, and I’d remember to bring it next time.

One house caught my attention, because it had a garden out front, outlined by small glowing bulbs sticking up from the ground, and I stopped to stare. The squeezing feeling in my throat was sudden, the lights from those bulbs streaking out and blending together.

My mom had talked about having a garden. She loved squash. That was to be her cream of the crop.

I thought, she would’ve loved this . Maybe I would’ve too.

I took another big breath and let my focus drift to the birdbath, then the dog statue, my imagination taking off. . .

I already had a life here. A best friend—who wasn’t just at school and whose house I could visit—and this is where she lived. Clara was her name. And Clara’s mom could have never replaced my mom, but she treated me like I was her daughter too. She planted squash and the three of us chopped and ate them every summer.

This was the home where I felt safe to express myself and talk through any thoughts I had. To be someone I could get to know, and to be able to surprise myself. Like I did tonight. And that was all I really wanted.

Those two chairs on the porch had the softest cushions, and Clara and I spent a lot of time sitting there, gossiping, laughing, crying over nothing serious, but still thinking it was the end of the world. So many breakups. A couple Cs on tests. Our first night getting sick on the wine her dad forgot to put back up after dinner. So many dinners.

So simple and normal that we never once realized how good we had it.

The squeeze squeezed more as all the ghosts I let haunt this yard dissolved away.

I was tired of being in my imagination, but I held to it, because it was what I had. My brain was built for fantasy. You wouldn’t catch me reading the fantasy genre , though. My brain capacity there was limited to the paranormal.

I wasn’t able to get close enough to a girl any of my ages to call her a best friend. Boyfriend was the word that should never be said. It helped him that boys didn’t even look at me. I wasn’t unattractive—at least I didn’t think I was—I just didn’t look like what all the boys I liked were attracted to. And I didn’t act like them. My head was in the books, being a prized pet for most of my teachers. And we moved around too much for me to keep or become attached for any school friends I did manage to have. It seemed like when I’d start getting comfortable, we’d relocate again.

A window on the side of the house lit up so bright, I jumped.

A silhouette approached the curtains, and I shot off down the street with more adrenaline-rushed giggles, my flip flops slapping my heels in my next escape.

Once I comforted myself with the thought I hadn’t been caught, the few extra thuds in my still thudding heart slowing down, I stopped at the fenced-in fairground, sliding my fingers between the chain-links.

It would shut down soon, until next year.

I wasn’t waiting another year.

I chewed the shake in my lip as both stretched to a smile with my newborn determination, my other hand slipping between the chain-links and tugging the fence toward my chest, the wires there, too, now being tugged away one at a time.

The Ferris wheel caught my attention first, as it was the show-off, sitting high in the sky, appearing to be touching the stars.

In my imagination, this was where I had my first kiss. I owed it to Clara, because if she hadn’t had a sudden pee attack from the lemonade she consumed at rapid speed and ran off at the last second to find a toilet, the kiss wouldn’t have happened.

The guy who took her place was cute. I recognized him from a couple of my classes, and I wondered as we were taken up if he recognized me too.

My stomach turned, as I underestimated how high it was, and when our chair stopped at the top, I covered my face. He pulled my hands away and told me to look at him— me , he repeated, when I hesitated opening my eyes. And when I did, he kissed me. Out of nowhere, but he told me he liked me and had been wanting to do that for a while.

He then became my first boyfriend. But it didn’t last, as young love in real life usually didn’t.

I sighed my head against my hand, blinking around at the darkened shapes of the other rides and booths, before shifting my feet forward to keep exploring.

Despite everything in my head not being real life, I was still hopeful and dewy-eyed enough then to believe it would be.