Chapter 27
AMARA
My dad woke me up with mofongo de desayuno, which pretty much meant that they were about to tell me someone died.
I don’t pull that out of nowhere. The dish has only been served with bad news on the side in my family.
I don’t think it’s on purpose. At least, judging by my dad’s face when I ask, “Who died?” I don’t think it is.
“Why do you always think someone died when I make this?” he asks, annoyance clear in his tone as he wipes his eyebrow.
“Because the first time you made it, Grandma died. The second time you made it, my fish had jumped out of the bowl and died, and you couldn’t find one that looked exactly like him.”
He considers this before deciding not to grace it with a response.
My mom comes into the kitchen, grabbing some drinks. We sit at the table in silence for a moment, none of us touching our food.
“So I have some bad news,” my dad starts, and I slam my fist on the table.
“I knew it!” I yell.
He rolls his eyes. “No one has died. But I did end up accepting the job in Baltimore.”
It felt like someone threw an anvil at me. Not ice water. No. A hard, steel thing. Hard, rough, freezing cold object that weighs a ton right to the face. I chuckle. “No, you didn’t.”
My dad has always been a fairly no-nonsense person. But the look in his eyes was something different today.
He felt bad.
Which means he was for sure, beyond a doubt, telling the truth.
My mom stays quiet, watching me.
“Why would we move?” I whisper, feeling myself getting more and more worked up as the seconds go by.
Dad sighs. “It was a really good job I couldn’t turn down, Cielo.”
I shake my head. “Please don’t do this.” The panic is setting in.
I’ve lived here my entire life. All of my friends are here.
I’m a year into high school. There’s no way I’m going to a new one and having to make new friends.
” It’s nearing the end of the school year.
I have no idea who I’ll be spending the summer with.
I could come back here.
“Amara, settle down,” my mom says sternly, her voice melodic. “He only knew about the job from your friend Mila’s dad. You’d be going to school with her.”
“Okay, and?”
“And we aren’t selling the house. It’ll be a summer home, and we’ll rent it out if we have to during the winter.”
Thank god.
I start to settle back down, my heart fluttering in my chest.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the Henrys.
I’m on the outs with Sam. My other friends are always involved in something I don’t want to deal with. But Cooper and Natalia have always been there for me.
Cooper and I have been getting closer and closer, and my crush on him has only grown. What’s going to happen to that?
“We’re only moving two hours away, Cielo.”
I slump in my chair. “I don’t want to be even ten minutes away. This is home.”
“I think you’ll love it,” my dad assures me. But I know I won’t.
I tell Cooper to meet me on the boardwalk.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him through tears, my head buried in my hands.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing my shoulder. “I can’t force your parents not to move, but I can say that as long as I’m here, you have a home to come back to.”
His green eyes are misty, his nose turning a little red. “What even is this?” I ask, not letting his words send butterflies in my stomach. It would be too much. Too much when all I want to do is stay here. How can he say something like that when he knows that I have to leave?
Words I’m going to hang on to forever.
“What?”
“Between us?”
He sucks on his lower lip, his hands digging deep into his pockets. “I don’t know what this is,” he admits shyly. “And I wish we had more time to figure it out while you’re here. But you’re always going to know where to find me.”
“You can come find me, you know.” I sniffle, wanting nothing more than to curl up on the beach with him.
He nods with a sad smile. “I’ll always find you, wherever you are. You know that.”
I blow out a breath, looking around at all the people walking around us, their lives continuing on as if mine isn’t being uprooted. “You know, you and Natalia have always been home to me,” I tell him, watching as his eyes brim with tears.
“I’m serious, Amara. You always have a home here.”
I moved three weeks later. My whole life was packed up in trucks and unloaded into our new house.
It’s a small neighborhood outside of Baltimore, but all I can smell is sweat. Sweat from my family as we unload boxes. Sweat from the movers. Sweat from me.
There’s no ocean breeze. No salt in the air.
No waves hitting the shore as we make dinner in the afternoon, the kitchen windows wide open.
And no Cooper Henry coming over to eat our food just because he can.
When my bedroom is set up, I grab my stationery set, pulling out an envelope and a piece of paper.
And I write.
I could text him, but my parents don’t believe in phones until I start driving and get a job. I could email him, but that seems so… stiff.
So I write to him. I tell him about the move. About how the movers almost broke my dad’s most prized couch. About how we got here to the fridge not working. And I tell him about missing the ocean.
Most importantly, I tell him that I miss him.
When I see you, I see home, I write. And when I’m done sealing it in an envelope, stealing one of my dad’s postage stamps, I finish setting up the picture frames beside my bed.
I want to see home every night when I fall asleep.