Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,28

me the worms from Lewis Tractor Repair, Bait, and Booze each day so I didn’t get caught, and by that weekend, I was gainfully employed again.

My first day back at the creek was rough. I kept waiting for him to pop up. Any time I’d hear a rustle of the leaves or a breeze blew through the grass, an unwelcome pang of hope would spike my pulse.

I did everything I could to erase Camden from the creek. I swept away the piles of stripped leaf stems he’d left scattered around, and I switched to a different bank on the other side, where the memories of him weren’t as strong. I buried a new worm-holding area in the dirt using a metal box I’d found in the garage and threw away the bug spray he’d left hidden between two rocks. I would have rather had a beetle build a colony inside my ear than ever use anything of Camden Cole’s again.

I wasn’t always strong. A girl could only pretend that her heart wasn’t breaking for so long. One afternoon, in a moment of weakness, I wrote him a note and included my address and Thea’s phone number. I stuffed it into a Ziploc bag, tucking it into our old plastic worm-holding area where I knew he’d find it if he ever came back.

He never did though, but then again, hope had never been my friend.

By the end of October, Mr. Leonard had hung up his fishing rod for the year, but Ramsey and I had saved up enough money to get through the holidays.

Winter came with cold temperatures and even a few flurries of snow. I’d almost gotten to the point where I hardly thought about Camden at all. His drawer in my head was still there, and every now and then, it would slide open, bombarding me with an avalanche of conflicting emotions. Like a teacher calling roll call, all the familiar feelings were accounted for. Anger. Present. Resentment. Present. Betrayal. Present.

And I hated him that much more because he’d made it so easy to let my guard down that I’d ultimately failed myself.

As green leaves filled the trees and the azaleas began to bloom again, I turned twelve and my body started changing. With boobs came attention from boys. Camden didn’t want me, but plenty of other boys did. Desperate for the high their attention gave me, I started sneaking out and going to the freshman and sophomore bonfires. Being Ramsey’s little sister came in handy; nobody questioned why I was there, even when he wasn’t.

Cue Josh Caskey—ninth-grade high school quarterback with all his straight, blonde hair and blue eyes. They weren’t as nice as Camden’s, but unlike somebody else, Josh had actually chosen me. That was all I really needed back then: to feel special and important.

As the mayor’s son and one of the few rich kids in town, Josh could have had any girl he wanted.

But he wanted me and that filled my lonely soul in ways nothing else could.

We started hanging out after school, and because I was still in middle school, he made me swear not to tell Ramsey. My brother was so wrapped up in making out with Thea any chance he got, keeping a secret wasn’t all that hard.

Besides, he knew Josh. They’d been in school together for years. It wasn’t a big deal.

At first, my time with Josh was innocent enough. We’d meet up in the empty dugouts after his baseball practice and talk and get to know each other until it got dark.

He loved taking pictures of us together on his cell phone. I thought it was so cool that he had a cell phone—and that he wanted to fill it with pictures of me.

One Friday about two weeks before the end of school, he got brave and stole a kiss. Like most girls my age, I’d dreamed about my first kiss for years. Wondered what it would be like or how it would feel. My heart stopped when he roughly shoved me against the wall, a board from the dugout digging into my back, and jabbed his tongue into my mouth.

It should have been a red flag.

I should have told my brother.

I should have kicked him in the balls and run as far away from Josh Caskey as I could get.

Yet I went back the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

A few days before school let out, Mr. Leonard tracked me down and asked if I wanted my summer job