Something of a Kind - By Miranda Wheeler Page 0,77

with God and fate, trying to open sympathy cards or pick at flower-esque fruit bouquets like they were a final promise, a sweetness with a reassurance to faith it would pass, and go away.

The devastation crept up with constant nausea. Spending day after day sitting crisscross-applesauce, laptop or textbook or Austen classic in hand, she stayed loyally beside her mother’s bed – enduring the howling of an IV when her arm bent, her mother’s tears and breakdowns followed by senseless apologies, the plans for a possible post-mortem that killed Aly but comforted Vanessa.

Even snow-blind with the blackness of an impending end, constantly coming to terms and falling to pieces again, Aly never fathomed missing anyone so much. It never came close to the clenching desire for a father when she was a child, or even the terrible ache she had when her day with Noah no longer made her smile, but instead only want him more, unable to wait for the sun to rise.

Vanessa wouldn’t see her dreams and she wouldn’t see Aly’s. Her mother wouldn’t be there when Noah eventually either broke Aly’s heart or offered vows, and she wasn’t there to offer advice or suggest the perfect words to fix everything and make her laugh again.

Mom’s gone. She always will be.

A wave of agony clenching in her chest, Aly put it back, propped on her bedside table. After a moment, she pushed the face down. Glancing at the boxy alarm clock she always hated, the angry red blinking of 2:35 AM felt like scorn.

Exhaustion heavy in her limbs, she rolled onto her side, in fetal position. The exposed window bathed the room in blue moonlight. Stars, however untouchable, glistened with distinction: the sun thieves, and the thousand souls around them, dancing in place, breathed across the sky.

They were magnified, almost beneath a lens, compared to nights in the middle of Kingsley’s city. Sleeping in Ashland, lying in bed every night felt like a camping trip, like the sunroof after late night car trips, like the window from that one summer in a cabin on Long Lake. Aly didn’t know which star was brightest, but she knew who it belonged to.

She didn’t want to fall asleep. Time was too precious, life too short. She found the most comfort in the stories, a hope of heaven, of rebirth, of the new life she always swore she wanted. Like a lightning strike from divinity, Noah sowed a rift in the relentless burden of six unendurable months. Noah gave her the sun thieves.

She wanted to get up and run to him then, falling into his embrace so seamlessly. Maybe fate would put him outside, standing beneath the stars in Ashland, the town without streetlights.

But as much as she wanted to break down his door and offer a thousand apologies, she knew everything was too fast, too little time to be so engrossed. As much as she wanted to bother him, pull him away from the demands of his family, she knew that it was possible Lee was right. It was possible she belonged on the outside– outside of Noah, outside of Ashland, and outside of Alaska.

Greg Glass, in his predictable narcissism, was dishonest, a liar, not a father. As always, Aly couldn’t deal with it, and refused to accept it. Noah was hurt because she demanded he help her prove the impossible, some unfathomable something of a kind, to Greg, a heart to hardened to hear anyone but himself. She begged him to humor her. She pushed something too new and too good way too far. It shouldn’t be such a shock that Lee’s outburst was so viciously honest.

Did he mean it? Could she not see Noah? If she ignored it, would Noah even want to see her?

Guilty and feeling selfish, Aly swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut. Fear flooded her veins, like blackness and grief, that someone was talking sense somewhere and Noah would see it first. He was worth more than a temporary placement court-ordered into his little town, diving into his life with an uproar, changing his world unapologetically. Aly feared he would leave to make peace with his father, or she would have to.

I’d do it for him.

Maybe Noah never broke the frame. Maybe he just freed the picture.

CHAPTER 22 | NOAH

Sarah came in before dawn with a neon bottle covered with directions, explaining that she’d promised to return the favor. After they bickered about her being out of her neck brace, she reminded him he’d be out of