“It’s scary, Weston. Even if you go to Dallas, you’ll be five hours away. We’ll live separate lives. No one stays together when they go to different colleges.”

“You don’t know that.” He frowned. “Why do you have to be so negative? We’re going to see each other as much as we can. We’ll talk on the phone every night. We’ll stay together, and then you’ll come visit me and fall in love with Dallas, and you’ll move there after you graduate.”

“Is that so?”

He sat up against the headboard. “Yes.”

“I’m not being negative. I’m being realistic. I don’t want either of us to get hurt.”

“If we don’t stay together, it’ll hurt. It’ll tear me up. I don’t want anyone else.”

“Weston, you’re eighteen. You don’t know what you want.”

He stood up and slipped on his jeans. “You definitely don’t know what I want.”

I finished dressing and tied my shoes. “It’s just common sense. We live in a fishbowl here, but there are thousands of young, beautiful women in Dallas.”

“There’s only one you.” We were standing on opposite sides of his bed, staring at each other. He shifted his weight, nervous. “Are you…are you saying this because you plan on meeting someone new in Stillwater?”

“No!”

“Sounds to me like you’re keeping your options open.”

“God, Weston, that’s not it at all.”

His breathing faltered, and he looked around on his floor, then saw his inhaler on his nightstand and grabbed it. He shook it, then took a puff.

“Why are you getting so upset? Why do we even have to talk about this now?”

“I’d kind of like to know if the girl I love sees me as temporary.”

“Blackwell is temporary.”

“I’m not even staying here!”

“I know! I’m just not making any promises I can’t keep.”

“Well, that’s just great. Thanks, babe.”

My shoulders fell. He was fighting dirty. “I have to go home.” I walked around his bed to his door, but he stood in my way. He took a deep breath, touched my arms, and pressed his forehead against mine.

“Homework?”

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

“I want to read Alder’s earlier journals. I want to know why they quit talking to me.”

He stiffened. “I thought you weren’t going to read them anymore.”

“I changed my mind. Julianne kind of doesn’t care.”

“What?” he yelled.

I leaned away from him, stunned by his explosive response.

“They’re none of your damn business, Erin. It’s wrong, and you know it!”

I blinked and then gritted my teeth. “Move.”

“Fine.” He stepped to the side, and I stormed out, passing Veronica on my way.

“Erin?” she said.

“Sorry, I have to go.”

When I got to my car, Weston caught up to me, breathing hard. “Don’t read them, Erin. Just don’t do it.”

“Why not? What are you afraid I’ll find?”

His jaws worked under his skin, and he swallowed. After a few seconds without an answer, I got in my car and drove home.

I parked and ran up the stairs, straight to Alder’s room.

“Erin?” Julianne called after me.

I shut the door and leaned against it, out of breath. Alder’s closet door was shut, and I glared at it, knowing now that whether it was right or wrong, I had to read them. I had to know what was so terrible that Weston didn’t want me to continue.

I marched over and swung open the door, dragged the tub out of the closet and into the middle of her room. I pulled all of them out, one by one, until I got to the plastic diary, skimming over the descriptions of dreams and boys she liked. Once I finished reading that diary, I moved on to the binders. I wanted to skip over to her journal from our fifth-grade year. That was when they’d stopped talking to me, but I forced myself to read one at a time.

Fatigue began to set in when I opened the yellow, plastic, covered binder titled 5TH GRADE. Any mention of me was like before. We were still friends. She still liked me. On a few occasions, she talked about asking her parents if Sonny and I could join them on their family vacation, and Sam and Julianne were considering it. I flipped the page to the entry I’d been searching for.

Most of the entries after that were about how much they hated me, and what mean things they did and said to me. Sonny’s parents had never gotten a divorce, so I assumed they had worked it out, but it wasn’t until I got to the binders that I fully understood. Sonny’s father and Gina had an affair. Harry had gotten Gina pregnant. I shut the binder. The Erins were half sisters.

That’s why they hated me. They thought Gina and I had nearly caused Sonny’s parents to divorce.

“Gina,” I whispered, flipping the pages.

That was what Carolyn was talking about at the restaurant. Gina’s daughter had been a reminder, an object at which Carolyn could direct her anger. After the accident Carolyn figured out that she had welcomed Harry’s illegitimate child into their home, taken her on vacations, and bought her Christmas and birthday presents. In a strange twist of fate, Harry helped raise his own daughter, even when he thought he was ignoring her to save his marriage.

My thoughts drifted to Gina. Sonny’s parents were quite a bit older than her. He was part owner of a prosperous fabrication plant just outside town. He would have to have been in his early thirties when Sonny was born—when we were all born. Gina wasn’t even old enough to buy alcohol when she got pregnant, and she never spoke about the man we both thought was my father.

A sudden sympathy weighed me down, making me feel so heavy, I felt stuck to the floor. I’d been so angry with her, but the truth was, we both knew what it felt like to be hated by everyone. To have no one. To learn early that the best defense was to shut everyone out, even those who try to help. She was too broken to be my mother; it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be.

As the dates on the entries wore on, Alder wrote less about Gina and more about how much they hated me. The older Alder was, the better she explained Sonny’s reports of Harry and Carolyn’s periodic fights about Gina—usually around our birthday—and by middle school, it was clear to Carolyn that Gina’s daughter would always be a reminder of her husband’s infidelity, and she hated me for it—and so did the Erins.