I’ve paid for Jason’s sins and mine, and now I’m not the same Brynn anymore.

I can’t find those signs I’m looking for.

Nothing tells me this nightmare is over. That when I show up at school today, Ellie and Diana will hug me. Tell me they’re sorry for not believing in me and that they want to be best friends again. That Ian will tell me I didn’t deserve what Jason did to me, and that even though we have a past together, he wants to be friends, too.

We can’t go back and I know that. I don’t even want to, because I will never trust another boy with my heart or my body again, but I want back as many parts of my “before” life as I can have. Selfish, maybe, but true.

“Knock, knock,” Dad says from my open doorway. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” I shrug.

“How are you doing?” He’s studying the white metal of my armoire, picking at the peeling paint as though he’s never noticed it before. He’s all dressed up in his suit for work. His black hair is thinning, and I can’t help but wonder what Mom would say if she could see it. If she’d tease him like they loved to do or if she’d keep quiet because she’d have a little gray in hers. Or a couple wrinkles around her mouth. She probably wouldn’t, though. It hasn’t been very long, and I know Dad’s aging is because she’s gone.

“Okay.” Picking up my brush, I run it through my hair, wishing my answer were true. I’m scared to death to show my face at school. Scared to see the looks from everyone else. Hear the stories of summer parties I missed. See my group of five that used to be six.

I have no doubt everyone knows. I can’t help but wonder if even after a summer, it’s just as fresh for them as it is for me.

“Are you sure?”

My eyes catch his in the mirror. He holds them, and it’s like a time machine, briefly making me feel like nothing has changed. Maybe if we keep looking at each other like this it will make things easier.

“Yes.”

Dad gives me his ten billionth sad sigh. “Brynn…do you want to do this? Maybe we can look into online school or something. I know they have programs like that now. You’d just have to go in once a week or so. That might be…easier.”

Wow. It sounds like he already looked into this. The thought makes my palms sweat. If Dad’s worried it’ll be this bad, it’ll probably be worse than I thought.

My first instinct is to jump at the opportunity—scream “Yes!” because I don’t ever want to face my friends again. I don’t want to see the accusation in their eyes. Watch as they run my lies through their heads and turn them into something more than they were.

My only other option is to keep wandering around here, though. To have to look at Dad through a mirror because it somehow gives him the distance he needs to really be able to do it. To see Brynn and not the daughter who got pregnant and lost a baby at sixteen.

No, thank you.

“I have to go back to school, Dad. Maybe it won’t be that bad.”

His eyes dart away from mine. “Okay. Call me if you need anything. I love you.” And I know he does. He might not be good with words, even worse so with Mom gone, but Dad loves me. He loved us both. If all this didn’t change how he feels. If this didn’t make him think choosing me turned into more hassle than I’m worth.

With a kiss to the top of my head, he walks out. Love me or not, it’s the first time he’s kissed me since before.

…

Eyes follow me all day.

Whispers, but no one actually speaks to me. There’s an invisible force field around me, keeping anyone from getting too close when I walk down the hallways. All my female teachers hug me. All the male teachers look at me awkwardly.

It’s not like it is in the movies. People don’t put signs on my back or shove mean notes in my puke-green locker. They don’t cough while muttering “slut” under their breath or trip me in the hallway or anything like that. Mean girls and bullies would almost be better, because right now, it’s like I don’t matter enough for anything. I’m not worth the time to pick on, but I’m still the black widow no one wants to get close to. Silence sometimes hurts more than anything.

For the first time in my life, I’m an outcast.

I used to be Ellie and Diana’s best friend—the girl who kicked ass at pottery. I was Ian’s girlfriend. Runner-up to Diana for sophomore winter formal princess. I had friends. Tons of them, and now, just like with Dad, people struggle to look me in the eyes. No one knows what to make of the girl who got knocked up by the small-town baseball star, only to lose it all. Lose my baby. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the pain.

Unlike with Jason, it was always a real baby to me. I lost my baby… The thought makes my heart hurt but I struggle to ignore it.

I spend lunch in the bathroom. Yes, the bathroom. Only in southern Oregon would it rain the first day back at school. We usually have more time before the deluge starts, but I guess it’s fitting. Since we have a closed campus, the whole student body packs into the cafeteria. There’s no way I can be in there. Feel that many eyes on me at once.

Because I’m not desperate enough to actually eat in here, I shove my lunch into the trash. Like this morning, I look in the mirror, waiting, hoping to see something that isn’t there. When I hear the door creak, I push away from the sink, scramble into a stall, and close the door. It’s ridiculous, but I can’t help it. It’s easier to be ignored in a classroom of people than by one or two girls in the restroom who will be scared to talk to me, but unable not to look at me.

“I can’t believe summer is over already!” Diana’s voice mixes with the sound of the door opening.

“Right? I’m so not ready to be back in school,” Ellie replies.

I listen as they talk and laugh, probably while putting on their makeup. We used to do it all the time. I started telling the boys it was our time to rejuvenate, and soon Ellie and Diana began calling it that, too.

A smile pulls at my lips with the memory.

Decide to be friends with me again! Decide I’ve suffered enough. Decide to talk to me. To believe me when I tell you the truth. Or, at least, say you miss me. Please, just miss me…

More laughing and talking and then another creak of the door and I’m alone again. Anger rushes through me. I’m not even sure where it comes from, but it’s there, building higher and higher.

I miss them. Miss them so much it hurts. I know I told Dad I could do it, but I can’t. Not today.

The second I stumble out of the room, I run into a cloth-covered wall. A pair of hands grabs my elbows as I fall.

“Whoa, speed racer. I’m pretty sure you just ran a red light there.”

I freeze, ridiculously wishing I could stay in this moment because it’s the first time someone has spoken to me normally in months. No accusation. No questions. No pity. No anger.

And it’s beautiful.

With no mirror, no roadblock, his eyes meet mine, crisp and clean, the bluest blue in the whole wide world. A cloudless sky. The ocean in Corpus Christi where we went on vacation one year. Like a fresh coat of blue paint on a newly fired piece of pottery. And familiar…somehow familiar, though I can’t place him.

Burnt-brown hair, a couple shades darker than his creamed-coffee brown skin. It’s kind of long. Long enough that it curls behind his ears so it doesn’t get in his face. For some reason, I want his hair to fall forward. For those too-blue eyes to look at me through the silky strands instead of dead-on. I’m not sure I’m good enough to be looked at with nothing between us. Maybe everyone else has it right and this boy who doesn’t put a buffer between us has it wrong.

“You good? If I let you go, you’re not going to bulldoze through me, are you?”

Normal. He’s talking to me so normally. His voice rattles me a little, squeezing inside me and passing barriers, like it’s a road traveled before.

I smell something slightly sweet…sugary but twined with a light scent of Irish Spring soap. Jason used to smell good, too. I’m sure that was part of his plan, just another way to lure me in. Though I guess I can’t really blame him when I let him do it.

“Can you speak?”

I jerk away from the guy when the bell rings. As though the sound opens the dam, a flood of students automatically fills the hall around us. I can imagine what everyone is thinking: Oh, now Brynn’s going to try to hook up with the new guy. Does he know she’s been pregnant? That she screwed an older guy? I’m sure they’ll tell him soon enough.

I can’t handle it. Without a word, I turn and rush away. I don’t even have to push through the crowd because it parts for me, everyone sitting back to enjoy the show.

Chapter Eight

Now

For as long as I can remember, we’ve always eaten dinner as a family at the dinner table. We’re not one of those fancy families with a long table, decorative lighting hanging in the middle of it and forks on each side of the plate or anything. Our dining room is small. The table could fit six if we put the leaf in it, but we never do.

Four chairs, used to be three people, and we’d laugh and eat either whatever experiment Mom came up with that night, or once a week, on Sunday, Dad made sauce. The De Luca family recipe, he’d call it. And I’d be the next person to learn it. I loved being a De Luca. I always knew it, but Sunday’s sauce was a reminder. It used to be the only time we made it, but you could always count on it on Sundays.

He would get up early and start it, making meatballs and throwing in pork and Italian sausage, too. Mom loved Dad’s homemade meatballs. It was always her favorite part. Dad went for the pork, saying it mixed well with the tomatoes. I liked the Italian sausage. We’d each grab our favorite parts, except once in a while, Mom would tease Dad and try to steal his pork. When she did that, he’d follow suit and hijack my sausage, which left me to pretend I was taking Mom’s meatballs from her.

The pot was huge, so of course any one of us could get up and grab more off the stove, but we never did. It was always a game. Maybe a silly one, but it was ours.

We still eat at the table every night, only two of the four chairs filled now. Dad doesn’t make sauce on Sundays anymore. At first he was too depressed, then we talked about it and both decided it didn’t make sense to do it every week. What was the point of making that much food for two people? Maybe once a month would be better. But it’s been months and the only time we had sauce was when we went to Grandma De Luca’s for Christmas. Now we either have takeout, or Dad and I take turns cooking hamburgers or steak.

Never, ever sauce.

Tonight it’s Dad’s turn to cook, but I go ahead and make pork chops and mashed potatoes so it’s ready when he gets home. I have no doubt he knows I skipped the second half of my day today. Maybe the food will soften the blow.

My heart jumps when my cell rings. It hasn’t really done that in so long. I mean, Dad calls, but that’s about it. After letting it ring again, I pull it from my pocket. Not recognizing the number, I answer the call. “Hello?”

“I was right, Red. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to listen to me? We still could have been together, you know. And now you’re alone, aren’t you? That’s what you get for betraying me.”

Before I can dislodge the fist in my throat, Jason hangs up. Dropping the phone on the counter, I lean over it, my arms on the granite surface. Heat and cold somehow battle each other inside me, both trying to take hold.

The cold makes me shiver. The mocking sound of his voice, and the fact that he just called to be hateful. To be an ass because he knows he was right. He knows me enough to realize how much being alone makes me feel like I’m disappearing.

But then that heat starts extinguishing the cold. Jason feels invincible. Like he can call and torment me, and I won’t do anything about it. I let the anger wash through me, hold it in, because I’m where it belongs.