to ignore Knight than my stepmother, and not because I didn’t love Edie. I did. I loved her with the ferocity only a non-biological child could feel—hungry, visceral love, only better, because it was dipped in gratitude and awe.
Knight wasn’t exactly like a brother, but he didn’t feel like less than family, either. He put Band-Aids on my scraped knees and shooed the bullies away when they taunted me, even if they were twice his size. He’d given me pep talks before I’d known what they were and that I needed them.
The only bad thing about Knight was it felt like he held a piece of my heart hostage. So I always wondered where he was. His wellbeing was tangled with mine. As I rolled down the hill on my bike, toward the black, wrought-iron gate enclosing our lush neighborhood, I wondered if he felt that invisible thread attaching us, too, if he chased me because I tugged at it. Because it hurt when one of us got too far away.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Knight screamed behind my back.
Edie had caught up with him. It sounded like they were arguing.
“I’ll calm her down.”
“But Knight…”
“I know what she needs.”
“You don’t, honey. You’re just a kid.”
“You’re just an adult. Now go!”
Knight wasn’t afraid to get confrontational with adults. Me, I followed rules. As long as I wasn’t expected to utter actual words, I did everything by the book—from being a straight-A student to helping strangers. I picked up trash on the street, even when it wasn’t mine, and donated a selection of my gifts every Christmas to those who really needed them.
But my motives weren’t pure. I always felt less-than, so I tried to be more. Daria Followhill, another neighbor my age, called me Saint Luna.
She wasn’t wrong. I played the role of a saint, because Val had made me feel like a sinner.
I pedaled faster. The rain slushed in sheets, turning to hail, pelting my skin with its icy fury. I squinted, passing through the gates of the neighborhood.
Everything happened fast: Yellow lights flashing in my face. Hot metal grazing my leg as the vehicle tried to swerve in the other direction. A deafening honk.
I felt something hurling me back by the collar of my tweed jacket with a force that almost choked me, and before I knew what was going on, I’d collapsed into a puddle on the side of the road.
Just then, the sound of my bike exploding rang in my ears. The assaulting car shattered it to pieces. The seat flew inches from my head, and the frame glided in the other direction. My face hit the concrete. Dust, wet dirt, and blood coated my mouth. I coughed, rolling around and fighting what felt like the weight of the entire world to find Knight straddling my waist with his legs. The car careened to the end of the road, taking a sharp U-turn and zinging back past the gates of the neighborhood. The hail was so bad I couldn’t even see the shape of the vehicle, let alone its license plate.
“Butthole!” Knight screamed at the car with ferocity that made my lungs burn on his behalf. “Rot in hell!”
I blinked, trying to decipher Knight’s expression. I’d never seen him like this before—a storm within a storm. Although Knight was a year younger, he looked older. Especially now. His forehead was wrinkled, his pink, pillowy lips parted, and his soot-black lashes were clustered like a heavy curtain, damp from the rain. A drop ran its way down his lower lip, disappearing inside the dimple in his chin, and that simple image sent fire tearing through my heart.
It was the first time I’d realized my best friend was…well, beautiful.
Stupid, I knew, especially considering the circumstances. He’d saved me from certain death, pounced on top of me so I wouldn’t get hit by a speeding car, and all I could think of was not Val, or Edie, or Depeche Mode, or how fragile life was, but the fact that the boy I’d grown up with was about to burst and bloom into a teenager. A handsome teenager. A handsome teenager who would have better things to do with his time than saving his awkward childhood friend or teaching her how to say douchebag in sign language.
I’d thought the memories of Valenciana nicked my heart, but that was nothing compared to the violent rip of it when I looked at Knight, realizing for the first time that he was going to break that