Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,118
loses himself. He enables them to the point that he breaks. That’s the reason he jumps and the next time he jumps, it will be because of you.”
Lightning strikes the beach and the explosion causes me to jump. Arms tighten around me as my heart picks up speed. Mom starts to fade and I reach out to her. “Mom? Don’t go!”
“It’s okay,” Sawyer whispers in my ear. “Everything is going to be okay.”
SAWYER
Wednesday October 23: It was a beautiful day today. I just cured all day long. I loved it out. Hated to come in.
Went over to see Bray today about my throat. He told me to keep sort of quiet. Guess it must be worse. Gee, I can’t help it. I can’t be keeping quiet forever.
I’ve been silent a long time, but I don’t think I can keep quiet forever, either.
Veronica didn’t come to school on Monday. I don’t know why I was disappointed when it was to be expected. When I left her apartment around two, she was in a deep sleep. No longer talking to me, no longer talking to the air, no longer restless as if she was being tormented in her dreams, just sleep.
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay, but Jesse told me he’d seen my mom’s car pull in. I expected to walk into the living room and be berated for not being home, for her to be frantic that Lucy wasn’t asleep in her room, but she wasn’t waiting for me.
Instead she had gone straight to her room. Her bedroom door was closed and light seeped from underneath the crack. She was ignoring me. Ignoring Lucy. We had seen Dad, and even though that was because she pushed us, for the next forty-eight hours, we were traitors.
That crap got old a month after the divorce.
Twenty minutes into first period, my mind had checked out. Ten minutes later, I watched the clock tick on the wall and did a countdown to the bell. My grades were still teetering, I had a swim meet this coming weekend and skipping was the last thing I should do, but staying was no longer an option. I had to see her. I had to see Veronica.
She said she’s dying.
She said she loves me.
The bell rang, I left and didn’t find her at her house. I texted. No response. Feeling like a caged animal, I tried the only other place I could think she would be. About a twenty-minute ride out of town, I parked in front of Jesse Lachlin’s trailer. No answer at the door, but then I followed the sound of an engine.
The walk wasn’t far, the fall morning brisk. Dew lay like a blanket in the valleys of the land. In the distance is a tractor with a hay baler attached and every so often a huge, rolled-up bale of hay plops out.
I stop walking when I spot Nazareth Kravitz leaning against a tree trunk. He looks at me with that same impassive boredom, but I learned a lot about this kid—there’s more to him lurking underneath. Maybe he and I aren’t so different after all.
As the tractor comes closer, I notice that the door to the tractor is open and that Jesse Lachlin is standing half in the cab of the tractor, half out as he’s laughing and talking with whoever is doing the driving. I’m sure that’s against OSHA regulations.
When the tractor is an acceptable distance from us, Jesse leans into the tractor pointing at things and the tractor comes to a stop and the engine dies. The world becomes oddly quiet as Jesse grimly glances at me, at Nazareth, and then back at me. He hops off and Veronica emerges from the cab of the tractor. She has a breathtaking smile on her face as she mumbles something to Jesse. In a blink of an eye, his glum expression is gone and he lights up as he laughs with her.
She and Jesse talk and then he tips his head in my direction. Veronica looks over at me and her posture falls. That’s a nice kick in the gut. Jesse jumps off the tractor and Veronica follows. He doesn’t join her as she heads in my direction.
“Nazareth,” he calls, “can you help me move a limb that fell from a tree? It’s heavy and I don’t feel like chopping it up. I figure we can move it out of the way.”
Nazareth heads his way, and the two of them disappear into