over, and I shove Peter out of the way to get to her. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” she yells.
Connor grasps her upper arms, holding them steady, and I should warn him… should tell him that it’s a trigger. “Miss D. It’s me.” He tracks her eyes with his. “Look at me!”
She drops her head, her cries wracking her entire body.
“It’s Connor. Remember me?” He peeks over at me before focusing on her again. “Connor, six-five, but is hoping—”
Mom grunts, using all her strength to free her good arm. In my mind, it plays out in slow motion, in reality… it can’t be more than a second. She reaches for a broken shard of glass, pools of blood forming around her knuckles when she holds it tight in her grasp.
“Mama, no!”
Connor’s quick to switch on, and he grasps her arm again, shaking her entire body until he’s practically lifting her off the floor. “The fireflies,” he cries, his desperation making his words weak. “The fireflies are back, Miss D.” He keeps shaking her arm to try to get her to release the glass, and the blood… there’s so much blood. “They’re back, and they’re right outside your window! We can go out there now! We can go anywhere you want!”
Mom’s movements slow, as if his words get through to her. She lowers her hand, finally releasing the shard, and Connor holds her to him, his shoulders bouncing. “I don’t want to be here,” she whispers, grasping on to his shirt.
I don’t want to be here, either, I don’t say.
Connor kisses the top of her head like he’s done with me so many times before. “But I need you here, Miss D.” He takes a breath. “I need you here.”
Chapter 38
Connor
The windows of Ava’s house are boarded up now. I can’t see into their house, nor am I invited to step foot in it.
Ava stays home.
Dad forces me to go to school and act as if nothing has happened.
According to Ava, her mom doesn’t want to be around anyone.
Not even Krystal.
But Amy is there.
And so is Peter.
It’s been a few days now, and every day I get home from school, there’s another form of vandalism done to their house.
The neighbor who caused all this shit has gone.
Disappeared.
And nobody knows where.
I lie on my bed, my eyes on the ceiling, my phone resting on my chest. Every call to Ava I’ve made has gone unanswered, and every response to a text seems like she’s giving me just enough to stay within arm’s length.
Dad knocks on my door, enters without waiting for a response. He looks at me, pity laced in his stare. “How are you feeling, son?”
I shrug. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel.
He sits on the edge of my bed, his body half turned to me. “Have you heard from her?”
“Not really. I sent her a text earlier, but she hasn’t responded,” I lie. Because she did respond; she just didn’t give me what I needed. “I feel like I’ve done something wrong,” I admit.
“No, Connor, you can’t think like that. You can’t take it personally.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.” I sigh. “But I don’t know how not to. I get that she’s going through a lot, but all I’m doing is trying to be there for her, for them, and she just keeps pushing me away.”
“Yeah,” Dad mumbles, and I can see his mind working. “She’s going through a lot, Connor. And sometimes our problems are greater than the need to express them.”
I stare at him, right into his eyes, and hope that he can somehow see that I’m going through something, too. But I don’t have the heart to tell him. “I guess.”
Dad gets up to leave, and I pick up my phone, look at the last message I sent her. I told her I love her. She wrote back: Ok.
Dad stops in the doorway, his hand on the knob as he turns to me. “Just give her the time and the space she’s asking for. When she’s ready, she’ll come back to you.”
If she comes back at all.
I wake up to loud knocking on my window, and I rush out of bed, knowing there’s only one person in the entire world who would be there. Under a starlit sky, Ava stands with her head down and her arms crossed. Her hair’s loose, wet, as if she’d just gotten out of the shower. I’d been so worried and had gotten so worked up about us that