CHAPTER ONE
“Oh my God, look at this,” I squealed, and held up a huge salamander that had been buried in the mud of the creek.
“Jesus, he’s huge. I can’t believe you can just… pick him up like that.” Tim shivered. “I think he’s cool and all, but I don’t want to touch him.”
I cocked an eyebrow and got a smile on my face.
“Nat. No. Please tell me you’re not…” he broke off, turned and ran as I dashed after him with the salamander.
I used to be faster than Tim. Then, as time went on, we sort of equaled out. But now? He was much faster than I was. Over the past year, Tim had grown several inches, gained muscle, and had started looking like a high school kid even though we were still in middle school.
I… hadn’t changed a bit. I was still the same skinny, short, awkward girl I’d always been.
Tim was far away from me now, and the salamander wriggled in my hands.
I didn’t want to hurt him or cause him to have a heart attack or something, so I hurried back to the creek and put him back where I’d found him.
I made sure to cover him back up with the thick, watery mud he liked so his skin wouldn’t dry out in the sun.
“There you go, little guy,” I whispered. I rinsed my hands in the muddy water, getting most of the dirt off until I could get to a sink with a bar of soap, and headed back towards the Summers’ house.
Tim Summers had been my best friend since before I could remember. That was partly because our mothers had been best friends growing up here in Indigo Falls, Georgia. That friendship had continued through their entire lives.
The only thing that had ended it, I thought, as I stared up at a thick gray cloud passing over the sun, was my mother’s death.
Memories suddenly washed over me; the sounds of metal bending and breaking blending in with my and my mother’s screams, the way my stomach dropped as we went airborne over the guardrail—like we were on a psychotic roller coaster—the rolling and crashing as the car was upended over and over again…
and then the absolute stillness as we came to a slow, sickening stop on the forest floor.
Then the only sounds had been me crying as I listened to the ever-slowing gasps of my mother as she tried to keep breathing.
And then the gasps had stopped, and it was just me, screaming and crying for Mom and knowing, deep down, that I’d never hear her voice again.
“Nat? Baby, are you okay?”
I startled, then smiled at Lynne Summers. She was basically a second mother to me and always had been. “Yes,” I said, but I could tell she’d known what I was thinking about.
“Is your dad still taking you to that therapist in Halliwell, honey?” she asked softly.
I shook my head. “No. He… he said I was fine; that I didn’t need it anymore.”
Her lips thinned and she got a little furrow between her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s true, do you?”
I looked at her for a moment and started to lie. But she’d always seen through me, just like Mom used to be able to do. “It’s not true,” I agreed. “I need to go, but he doesn’t want to take me.” Halliwell was the next town over, and it was about a twenty-minute drive.
“I don’t think that’s what it is. I think he’d rather pretend it didn’t happen, and if he takes you there it’s a reminder to him that it did.”
She was totally right. I nodded. When Mom died, I lost two parents.
I lost her in the car wreck, and I’d lost my dad to grief.
He’d just… stopped. The only thing he did anymore was work.
He didn’t cook, he didn’t work out, he didn’t play with me or help with my homework.
He just barely existed at all. And that had been going on since the accident.
“I’ll handle it. Don’t worry, okay?” she ruffled my hair and smiled kindly at me. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up?”
I nodded, even though I was worried. I hoped she didn’t mean that she would pay for it and take me.
The Summers didn’t have much money. Mr. Summers, Pete, was a fireman, and Lynne was the attendance clerk at the high school.
And they had four children. There was Sadie, Tim, Alexis, Wynter.
Wynter went by Wyn because she hated her full name.
I couldn’t say I blamed her; Wynter Summers was just… a bit much.
Hopefully, Lynne would just work her magic on my dad. He’d do almost anything she said. If she told him to pay for therapy for me, he would. But I knew he wouldn’t take me. Lynne or Pete would get stuck with that, and it made my face burn with embarrassment to think about it.
I knew that in many ways the Summers saw me as another member of the family. I even had my own bed. It was a twin set up in Alexis’ room. She was just a couple of years younger than Tim and me, and we got along well.
But everyone knew it was Tim and me who were inseparable. We went everywhere together and did everything together.
And I knew it would always be that way.
***
I pulled my dark hair back in a ponytail and applied the lip gloss just how Sadie had shown me.
I put on the delicate gold chain with the fleur de lis charm on it.
Then I put on the matching earrings. My mother, who was French, gave it to me just months before the car wreck that took her from me. It was the only jewelry I ever wore.
I smoothed down the lines of the faded blue dress I was wearing and bit my lip.
It was too short. I should have tried it on sooner.
Lynne Summers had offered to take me shopping, but I knew she’d spend her on own money on me.
Dad wouldn’t take me shopping himself, and he probably wouldn’t give me money for it, either.
We weren’t anywhere near poor; he was just very tight with money.
When Mom was alive, she balanced him out, made him reasonable.
Without her… well, in a lot of ways he’d become impossible to deal with.
Not only was my dress faded and too short, but it was also wrinkled.
It was a material I was scared to iron. I stepped back and looked at myself in the mirror.
I’d always liked this dress because it was the exact color of my eyes, which I thought were my one good feature.
They were an unusual shade of blue; almost teal.
They were just like my mom’s, and it was like having a piece of her with me when I saw them in the mirror.
It was like having Mom’s eyes looking back at me.
Not in a creepy, ghostly way. It was comforting. Like she was a part of me.
“Natalie!” my dad yelled from downstairs. “The Summers are here to pick you up.”
Shit. It was too late to change now. “Coming,” I called. I grabbed my purse, stuffed my feet into some old, scuffed black ballet flats, and hurried down the stairs.
I stopped and looked at my father. He was on the couch, his eyes glued to a baseball game on TV.
He wasn’t coming to my eighth-grade graduation.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. Mom died when I was ten.
Before it happened, my parents were at every event of mine.
I always had my hair styled perfectly, and my clothes were neat, clean, and stylish.
Everything in my life had changed the day she died. I didn’t just bury my mother. I buried my entire way of life.
“You sure you don’t want to come, Dad?” I asked hesitantly.
He didn’t even take his eyes off the screen. “The Braves are on.”
I winced. I loved the Braves, too. I grew up going to games because we had season tickets…
well, we used to have season tickets. I might only be fourteen, but I knew where to draw the line.
I knew it wasn’t okay to watch Atlanta play an early season game that barely mattered rather than attend your daughter’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony.
It wouldn’t have been okay even if it was a play-off game in September or October.
But at least it would make more sense. I hadn’t even bothered to tell him about my speech or all the awards I was getting; I knew it wouldn’t matter.
I didn’t say anything else. I just walked out the door and got in the Summers’ late model minivan.
The difference was immediate.
It was loud and chaotic in the car. Everyone was dressed up and excited. They were all talking and joking around with each other. I felt such a sense of relief to be back with them. It felt like I belonged more with these wonderful people I shared no blood relation with than my own father.
“Nat! Sit back here with me.” Tim motioned to me while Alexis and Wyn clamored for me to sit near them. Sadie was texting Harrison like a madwoman, but she paused long enough to look up at me and give me a grin.
As if Tim needed to ask. I said hello to everyone then climbed to the very back to sit next to him. I pushed my glasses up on my nose as I plopped down beside him. “Hey.”
He was holding a large bouquet of flowers. He set them down long enough for us to run through our complicated high five sequence. We’d started doing it years ago; neither of us could remember when. We’d added to it every year since.
When we were done, I swept my ponytail back over my shoulder. “Who are the flowers for?”