Chapter Eleven. Clara
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CLARA
THEN
IN THE MONTH AFTER homecoming, Reid and I texted every day, all day long.
But despite getting closer, we hadn’t actually seen each other much outside of school since the cross-country season was over.
He was either training for track, having meetings with coaches, visiting college campuses, or catching up on homework he’d gotten behind on because of all the other stuff.
But he was finally coming over.
I kept checking my texts while I frenzy-cleaned my room. He’d been on the East Coast for nearly a week. I couldn’t even keep track of which schools he visited—there were so many that wanted him.
Mom knocked on my door and leaned against the doorframe. “You’ve been working hard on that application. Going to bed soon?” she asked.
I had a pile of clothes in my arms. “Yeah. Soon.”
She heard the lie in my voice and leveled her gaze at me. “What is it?”
I dropped the pile into my closet and closed the door. “Reid is coming over to help me with my CAFA sample.”
It was almost ready, but despite hours of editing and combing through footage, I still didn’t feel like I had nailed it yet. Which was why I needed someone to watch it before I submitted it to CAFA or the Legacy Program.
I had never let him see any of my footage. Like he had never told me what he was always writing in his notebooks. They were the sides of ourselves we hadn’t yet revealed to each other. But for the first time I actually wanted to show someone what I had done. I wanted to show him.
Mom’s eyebrows sprang up. “Does this mean the Golden Boy is your boyfriend?”
“No. And don’t call him that.”
Her eyes narrowed at the protectiveness in my tone. “Remember that you have your whole life for boys, mija. You need to stay focused on your own goals right now.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “I am. He’s helping me.”
Mom was quiet a moment as she studied me closely. “I’m just asking you to be careful. I know his parents, and they have big plans for him. I wouldn’t want you to get swallowed up in a relationship—changing your direction for him. Men force you to bend yourself for them until you break.”
A frustrated scream lodged in my throat. She’d been telling me this my entire life, but still taking my dad back every chance she got.
I squared my shoulders, jutting my chin up defiantly. “He’s different.”
“I’m sure you think he is.” The soft sympathy in her voice made my face flame. She held up her hands. “I’m not trying to upset you, I just want you to be smart. Find your own feet. Don’t follow his.”
Headlights streamed through my window as a truck pulled into our driveway, mercifully cutting off this conversation.
Mom sighed. “Keep your door open; he’s gone by eleven. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I waited for her to go into her bedroom, then I ran. I flung open the front door, cold seeping into my socked feet as I jogged across the frosty driveway. Reid was barely out of his truck before I threw my arms around him and sighed against his skin.
He laughed in my hair as he held me tight. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I breathed him in, a deep calm coming over me in his embrace. That was new.
A violent shiver passed through me that was definitely from the brisk night air and not at all from the sensation that just coursed between us. It was early winter, and in my excitement, I hadn’t even bothered to throw on a jacket. Reid drew back to rub my arms, trying to warm me up.
When we got inside, he shed his jacket and boots in the entry and followed me to my room.
Glancing across the hall to ensure my mom’s door was closed, I closed my own behind us.
Despite what she thought, and all the ways we’d gotten closer, Reid and I hadn’t kissed since the truth-or-dare party.
Maybe because we’d been so busy, or maybe because of what he’d said.
When you kiss me again, I want you to mean it.
I watched Reid as he took in my room. The pictures, my camera equipment—my tripod and the big round light reflectors in the corner I borrowed from school—and the messy, open story-map notebooks that covered my small desk.
We talked about his trip, what he’d missed around the mountain and at school while he was gone—most notably that Anderson Beck had been expelled after getting caught selling the answers to Mr. Garcia’s notoriously impossible AP Calculus final.
“Kenji said everyone in that class has to retake the final,” I said.
“That’s why he sent that text about not playing Magic: The Gathering for a while.”
I nodded, trying not to laugh. “Yeah, all recreational math is canceled for the foreseeable future.”
He plopped in my desk chair and emptied his pockets, setting his keys and notebook in a small pile. It felt strangely right to have him in my space. Cozy.
“What are you always writing in there?” I asked, gesturing with my chin toward the notebook. The black cover was worn, the edges looked soft from constant thumbing.
He hesitated. Drew his eyes slowly to me. “Poetry, mostly.”
“Okay,” I said, my tone borderline acerbic at how unexpectedly hot that was. “I’m going to need a minute to process that.”
He chuckled. “It’s not good, but it does help me.”
“How?”
His eyebrows came together. “My thoughts move really fast. Sometimes too fast and I can’t sleep. For, like, days. It was worse when I was a kid. After my mom left. Poetry makes me slow down, considering each word.”
He shot me a self-conscious look, worried he’d revealed too much. Watching him unfold himself even in small ways felt like a gift. I sank onto my bed directly across from where he was seated. “It always messes me up when my dad leaves, too.”
He pointed to a photo on my desk that I usually put in a drawer before anyone came over.
“Your parents?” he asked.
I nodded.
It was their high school prom picture. It was so embarrassing. My dad had a dyed jet-black shaggy emo haircut that made his white skin paler, and my mom wore a truly alarming amount of eyeliner. But they looked happy. Which I’d rarely seen.
“Yep. They’ve been on and off since then.
Classic nerd-jock situation. My mom won some science award and my dad was a football Legacy.
But my mom had to drop out of college and move back here when she had me.
My dad couldn’t be bothered to do the same, even though he sat on the bench most of the time.
‘Woodhurst remarkable is real-world mediocre’—that’s what my mom always says.
Not that it matters if Legacy actually gets you out of here. ”
I smoothed the comforter of my bed for something to do with my hands. Reid was quiet. So quiet it made me nervous. He turned toward me then, his brown eyes piercing in the small space.
“Why do you want to leave so badly?” he asked.
It was my turn to hesitate. Normally, I’d dodge the question with a joke or change the subject altogether. But as his brow furrowed with intent interest, I realized he had somehow made me feel safe enough to talk about the one thing that made me feel impossibly small.
“My mom gets depressed.” It felt almost like a betrayal saying it aloud, my heart beating at a rapid rate.
But I kept going. “And not, like, low-key depressed. Like … bad. She can get stuck in it for weeks—months. Sometimes she doesn’t go to work, and then it’s on me to take care of everything—” I exhaled, squeezed my eyes shut. “It’s hard to explain.”
I wasn’t ashamed of my mom or the home she painstakingly built for me. I just hated feeling helpless. Hated that I related to my dad being so … restless. Hated that I was either caught in the explosion of them being together, or the implosion of my mom being alone.
Reid’s deep voice went so soft when he said, “You don’t have to.”
Like instead of judging, he understood.
My traitorous eyeballs began to sting, and he crossed the room to sit next to me.
He didn’t fill the silence or try to fix it. It was the first time in my life I didn’t feel alone with it.
“I feel guilty sometimes for wanting to leave so badly, but it’s what she wants for me, too. And it’s not only about her. I spend all my time imagining other lives once I’m out of here.”
“Other lives?”
Heat worked its way up my face. “Yeah. Okay, like, in one, I live at the beach and surf every day—like, it becomes my entire personality. I’m one with the waves.”
“If you’re in a bathing suit that’s the one I vote for,” he said.
I smacked him playfully and kept going. “In another, I live in Italy or France. I obviously become multilingual and buy pastries and flowers at outdoor markets and film the countryside while riding bikes through fields.”
His smile widened as he listened.
“In another, I don’t live anywhere—I live everywhere. After I go to CAFA, I make documentaries that let me travel the world, learning new things, meeting new people. Answering every question I could possibly think of. Making films that matter.” I sighed. “The dream.”
Reid studied me like he was really seeing me for the first time. I pulled on a loose thread of the comforter and asked, “What about you? Any other lives?”
That adorable line of concentration formed between his eyebrows as he considered the question. Finally, he said, “You know how sometimes in movies everything stops for a second?”
“Like a freeze-frame?”
He brightened. “Exactly. Everything’s moving at a normal speed until suddenly the music, the action, the talking—it all just stops.” He held up a hand, suspended in the air between us in a pause. “And you realize just how fast normal had gotten.”
Our eyes met, and he slowly lowered his arm.
“That pause? That moment of complete stillness … I wouldn’t mind living in that sometimes.”
I rested my head against the headboard, taking in just how sweet he looked in the golden light. “You really are a poet.”
His expression grew self-conscious and he joked, “Nah, that didn’t even rhyme.”
As our laughter faded, his eyes drifted back to the picture.
“Do you talk to him a lot? Your dad?”