Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,58

hair hanging over his forehead, a huge grin splitting his mouth. It was Nora on the other side of him that stole my breath though. She didn’t look much different than she did now, so it must have been taken in the last year or so. Which meant it was after Josh had…

But she was smiling—a real, genuine Nora Stewart masterpiece. The world had beaten her down, but I found immeasurable comfort knowing she was still able to smile—at least she could with the right people.

And with that, I added one last stop to my trip before I went home.

Luckily for me, it was only two doors down.

One of my last memories of my mother was when she took Ramsey and me out on a pond in a tiny boat she’d found on the side of the road. It was my sixth birthday, and we were flat broke, but she wanted to do something special. The only problem was, when we got out into the middle of the pond, we realized the boat was only being kept afloat by a piece of failing duct tape across the bottom.

When water started rushing in and panic overtook us all, my mom and Ramsey frantically tried to plug the hole, while I sat there watching in horror.

It was the craziest thing. We all knew how to swim—Ramsey better than me, but I could doggy paddle back to solid ground without issue.

But we were in a boat.

And it was sinking.

So we stayed, desperately trying to fix the impossible.

After Ramsey went to prison, that was how I lived my life—in a sinking boat of guilt, panic, and overwhelming grief. I could easily escape it if I just told the truth, but I sat there, going through the motions of bailing myself out, all the while praying the rising water would eventually overtake me.

And it wasn’t just me going down in that sinking ship anymore.

Ramsey had been right; Thea did take care of me. Within a matter of weeks of my brother’s arrest and subsequent sentencing, Thea and her dad, Joe Hull, officially moved me in with them. Joe was amazing, kind, and soft spoken—nothing like the man I’d grown up with. My dad took off shortly after, and for once in my life, I had a safe and stable home.

One where I was forced to listen to my best friend cry herself to sleep every night because my brother was in prison—for something I’d done.

The three of us had family dinner together every night. We did homework together, laughed, and cried. Each week, Joe drove us to multiple therapy appointments, waiting outside in the car when he wasn’t in a session himself. I couldn’t tell a shrink the whole truth, so I did a lot of avoiding, pretending, and drowning. The lies were worse than not talking about it at all.

One breath at a time, I kept going.

Each year on the anniversary of Josh’s death, his brother, Jonathan, would host a stupid fundraiser for his anti-bullying charity. For a week, the whole town would wear green—a nod to Josh’s St. Patrick’s Day birthday—and the local newspaper would write a completely biased, utterly trash article about the Caskeys’ devastating loss.

Thea was a beast with how she handled herself and her healing process. During the celebration of Josh’s life, she always found ways to keep it real. Once, she took out an entire billboard and covered it in pictures of the bruises Josh had left on her. It read in three-foot-tall letters: The Real Josh Caskey.

I, on the other hand, had never been brave enough to talk about what Josh had done to me.

Well, at least not with anyone other than Camden.

Camden knew all my truths. He became the safe drawer in my head where I could go to feel free of the secrets and lies.

I’d lie in bed at night, tracing his address in Alberton on the back of our ten-dollar bill, playing out hundreds of scenarios where I got to see him again.

His family wanted to burn me at the stake because I was related to Ramsey, but Camden was such a good guy he probably would have greeted me with a smile and a hug.

That would have been all about me though. The comfort I needed. The sense of belonging I felt when we were together. The warmth only he could provide me.

I was a shell of a girl who had absolutely nothing to offer him—short of maybe shame and heartbreak.

So I stayed away—even