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  However, the real mystery at the moment wasn’t who he was, but rather how he had gotten up there.

  The tree had been stripped of its branches halfway to the top to allow the tractors to pass beneath it. I knew bears that couldn’t have made that climb. Okay, well, I didn’t know them. We didn’t really have bears in Clovert, Georgia. But I’d seen videos of bears on TV.

  I stood, brushing the dirt off my cutoff shorts. “What are you doing up there?”

  He shook the gum at me one last time in a silent offer before shrugging. Precariously balancing, he released the branch above his head long enough to unwrap a piece and shove it into his mouth then tuck the pack inside his back pocket.

  He smacked his lips as he answered, “Just hanging out.”

  “In a tree?”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve dragged your attention away from Tetris long enough to notice, but it’s hot as Hades today. I swear this was the only shade I could find.” His shaggy, brown hair, which curled at the tips, fell over his forehead. With a subtle twitch of his chin, he shifted it out of his eyes.

  “Have you been up there this whole time?” I accused more than asked. I’d been sitting under that tree for… I looked at my watch.

  Fifty-eight minutes.

  Well, less the three minutes it took for me to sprint over there after the hospice nurse had announced that my mother “had passed.” The word passed implied that there was somewhere else she was going. When in reality, the cancer had finally devoured her from the inside out until her lungs filled with fluid and she’d drown lying in bed.

  Fifty-nine minutes.

  “It wasn’t like I was spying on you or anything,” he defended. “I was going to say something earlier, but then I got curious about what the heck you were doing.”

  What was I doing? Hiding? Avoiding? Clinging to the theory that ignorance was bliss? Knowing she was dead was one thing. After I’d listened for days to her gasp and gurgle, it was honestly a relief. But seeing them wheel her out of our house on a stretcher much like the first time she’d collapsed after chemo had been more than I could take. This time, there was no hope left to cling to. When she left that day, she was never coming back.

  I just had to wait. Soon, it would be over. Soon, her hospital bed in our living room would be empty for the first time in three months. Soon, she would be gone.

  Only then would I go home.

  “How did you get up there?” I asked.

  “I climbed.”

  “Wow, okay. Awesome. Thanks for the details.”

  “What kind of details do you need with that?”

  “Uh, maybe how you did it. There are no branches.”

  He grinned again—big, toothy, and smacking his gum. “I know, right? I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it at first. It took me a solid twenty minutes of scrambling before I remembered I was wearing a belt.”

  I blinked at him like he was an idiot because I was starting to think maybe he was. Who the heck smiled that much anyway? Not me. At least, not anymore.

  “What the heck does a belt have to do with anything?”

  “Have you ever seen one of those lumberjack competitions on TV? They use this belt thing to hook their way up. I didn’t think it was going to work without the spiky shoes. But here I am.”

  Another grin.

  Another chew.

  Another head twitch to keep his hair out of his eyes.

  “Any plans on how you’re going to get down?”

  He shrugged. “None yet. You got any ideas?”

  Considering I still couldn’t wrap my mind around how he had gotten up there, it was safe to say I had no flipping idea how he was going to get down. Not to mention, I wasn’t sure I should help him figure it out. What kind of creeper hid in a tree and watched a person at the bottom for… I looked at my watch.

  Sixty minutes. One hour.

  I could finally stop counting the minutes and move on to counting the hours. Those were longer. There were only twenty-four in a day and I could sleep through at least eight of them. Then there would be days. Months. Years. Before I knew it, I’d barely remember her at all.

  Those were the days I longed for. I loved my mother. I didn’t want her to be dead. I just wanted to stop hurting.

  One hour and one minute.

  I wondered if my dad had noticed I’d taken off yet or if he was still doubled over her bed, holding her as if he could bring her back. Secretly, I was glad he couldn’t.

  “Oh, good. You’re thinking,” he prodded when I didn’t reply.

  I should have left. Leaving the peeping Tom hung out to dry. But where would I have gone? My mother was dead, my father was destroyed, and the world kept turning as people continued on with their lives as if nothing had happened at all. Well, everyone except for that boy in the tree. Because, in a different way, he was just as stuck as I was.

  “Well, I’ve got a few ideas. Though most of them are about how you shouldn’t spy on people or trespass on private property.”

  His thick eyebrows shot up. “Trespassing? Are you kidding me? There’s no fence or signs or anything. It’s a dang tree in the middle of an empty field.”

  “Yeah. A field owned by the Wynns.”

  “Oh, please. The Wynns don’t care if I climb their tree.”

  “You have no idea who they are, do you?”

  “Of course, I do.” His grin had faded into something that I assumed was supposed to be a scowl, but his face was too gentle to pack any heat.

  “So, what are their names then?”

  “Psh.” He cut his gaze off to the side. “George and…um, Betty. Duh.”

  “Errr!” I made the sound of an obnoxious buzzer. “Wrong! It’s Mason and Lacey.”

  He gave me back his chocolaty-brown eyes. “Well, those are their nicknames. Everybody knows their real names are George and Betty Lynn.”

  “Wynn,” I corrected.

  His voice rose, but the sides of his mouth hiked into a wide smile. “That’s what I said!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. You’re probably safe. Mason only carries his gun out to the field on Sundays. Oh, wait, that’s today.”

  “Shut up. That’s not true.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Panic hit his face, and if I’d been able to feel anything over the ache in my chest, I would have laughed. Mason Wynn would have built a playground around that tree if the neighborhood kids asked for it. He didn’t care if people were hanging out in his field. But Tree Boy didn’t need to know that.

  “Back up. I’m coming down.”

  Using my hand to shield the sun from my eyes, I watched as he swept his leg, trying and failing to make purchase on the bark with the tip of his toe. He crouched lower and tried again. Then again. And then one last time before he rose to his full height.

  “Crap. You gotta help me get down. If I get shot my first week in town, my dad will ground me for the rest of my life.”

  “Just to be clear, you’re more worried about being grounded than you are getting shot?”

  “Grounded means I have to sit in my room with nothing but stupid books. Not all of us are lucky enough to have a Tetris watch. Now back up. I’m gonna jump.”

  “You can’t jump from up there. You’ll break your leg.”

  “Then I’ll break my leg. What do you care?”

  That was a really good question. I didn’t even know his name. God knew I had more than enough other stuff to care about without adding him to my list. If he wanted to launch himself from a tree, who was I to stop him?

  Turns out, it wasn’t his leg I should have been worried about.

  No sooner than I took a step away, he shoved off the branch. He hit the ground with two feet and then sprang forward like he’d landed on a trampoline. Horror showed on his face as he crashed into me. Our bodies tangled, and pain exploded in my leg as it buckled under our combined weight, sending us both down to the grass.

  “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed, pushing off me
faster than I’d ever seen a person move. “Are you okay?”

  I wasn’t. Not in any way, shape, or form.

  My mother was dead.

  My father was destroyed.

  And my leg was broken.

  Of course it was. Because when I’d assumed that day couldn’t possibly get any worse, God had clearly seen that as a personal challenge rather than a plea for help.

  A silent scream exploded in my head and agony unlike anything I’d ever felt before radiated through my body. My ankle was on fire. That was the only explanation. Wails tore from my throat as I rolled to the side, holding my knee for fear of tracing the pain any lower.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I’m, oh God!” he yelled, scrambling away from me. He punctuated it with a gag and then that boy—that damn boy who had once been stuck in a tree, spying on me as I mourned—dry-heaved, spitting out his gum, his eyes glued to my ankle. “Your…your…foot. It’s… Oh God. Please tell me you have a fake leg.”

  “Don’t just stand there, you idiot!”

  He drew in a deep breath and fought back another gag. “Where do you live? I’ll run and get your mom.”

  My mom.

  My mom.

  The stabbing in my chest was almost strong enough to eclipse the pain in my ankle.

  “She died,” I croaked.

  “What?”

  “She’s dead!” I screamed, the words shredding me as they came back in an echo. “You can’t get my mom. Nobody can get my mom!”

  His voice shook as he asked, “What about your dad?”

  I screwed my eyes shut.

  I’d had the perfect parents. High school sweethearts. Married by eighteen. Had me at twenty-five. They didn’t argue or bicker. They were the type of weirdos who left love notes hidden around the house and danced in the kitchen when they thought I was in bed. They loved each other so completely that it blinded to them to the world outside of their relationship. As far as I knew, they’d never spent a night apart.

  That night they would though. That night and all the nights to come, they would never be together again.

  My mother had been the heart and soul of our family. Without her, my father wasn’t going to be able to survive. He’d breathe. He’d wake up every morning. He might even smile once in a while. But without her, his life was over. And then where did that leave me?

  Alone. So utterly alone.

  But judging by the boy’s face and the fact that my leg was in so much pain that my vision was starting to tunnel, even my poor broken father could help me more than this kid.

  “His name is…Joe and we live at three-one-nine Leaning Oak Drive,” I panted. “Go past the big ditch to the…”

  “I know where it is. I’ll be right back. Don’t move, okay?”

  I listened to his feet crunching in the grass as he sprinted away, and then I lay there staring up at the sky, wishing it would swallow me up.

  Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Everything hurt.

  But through it all, I never cried.

  What was the point?

  Four days, three pins in my ankle, one surgery, and a neon-yellow cast later, I went to my mother’s funeral in a wheelchair. I cringed while listening to my father’s constant whimpers and sniffles. He didn’t look at me or ask if I was okay. He didn’t seem to care that I was ten and had lost my one and only mother. He’d lost his wife—his one and only love.

  Anger and resentment brewed inside me, swirling into a wicked rage. I sat in my wheelchair, listening to the preacher talk about how my mother was now looking down on us from the arms of Christ, and I couldn’t stop wishing that it had been my father instead.

  I wished he’d gotten cancer.

  I wished he’d spent three months wasting away.

  I wished we were at his stupid funeral instead of hers.

  I looked at him, tears streaming down his cheeks, his gaze anchored to her coffin like he could somehow see through it. Only then did I realize he probably wished I were the one dead instead too.

  I just wanted to go home. It was supposed to be over. Her hospital bed and monitoring equipment had been removed from our living room. The rental company had picked it up not long after she’d died. Our home had returned to its warm and welcoming façade, filled with smiling pictures and bright-colored art. The handrail in the hall bathroom my father had installed when she was still mobile enough to get around was the only proof left that my mother had been ill at all.

  But the memories of those nights, listening to her struggling for survival, would stay with me forever.

  The ladies from the neighborhood brought us dinner every day for a week. Dad had no appetite, and we eventually ran out of room in the fridge. Sometimes I’d throw it away. Sometimes I’d freeze it. But I’d never be able to eat spaghetti again without tasting the stale, putrid flavor of my mother’s death.

  The desserts were pretty great though, and since I couldn’t escape The House of Despair due to my bum leg, I spent the last week of my miserable summer vacation sitting in front of the window with a spoon in my hand and whatever chocolaty delight had been delivered that day in my lap.

  That was when I saw him.

  The boy from the tree.

  It was the first time I’d seen him since my father had carried me out of the Wynns’ hayfield. That boy had followed us to the car, saying he was sorry with every step. I had been too concerned with my foot facing the wrong direction to entertain any kind of apology—or plan my revenge.

  Right then, however, he was outside my house, riding his bike with a little girl who looked so much like him that it was impossible she wasn’t his sister. He was wearing the same faded jeans. Same worn-out shoes. Same shaggy hair. More than likely the same obnoxious personality too. He was having a grand old time, while I was stuck inside, downing half of a chocolate pie, with my worthless leg in a cast, requiring help just to go to the bathroom.

  And it was All. His. Fault.

  Nothing, not even the two cups of sugar I’d consumed, was enough to sweeten that kind of bitterness.

  “Hey!” I yelled, pounding my fist on the glass.

  The boy abruptly stopped his bike at the end of my driveway, almost causing his sister to run into the back of him.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted, making a shooing motion with my spoon and dropping chocolate all over my shirt. “Go home! Nobody wants you here!”

  I assumed he couldn’t hear me because the jerk did a head twitch to get his hair out of his eyes and then shot me a grin as he chewed a mouthful of gum and waved. Using his best charades skills, he inquired about my ankle. At least that’s what I thought he was doing as he hopped around one foot, pointing at his leg.

  I wanted to kick it out from under him.

  “You look like an idiot!” I yelled.

  He gave me two thumbs-up and a huge smile. He had spied on me, broken my leg on the same day my mother died, and ruined the rest of my summer, and now he was giving me a thumbs-up. He could take that thumb and shove it up his—

  “Thea?” my dad called as he walked into the room.

  I jumped, nearly knocking the rest of my pie onto the floor. He hadn’t been back to work at the barbershop since she’d died. And short of my doctor’s appointments, he hadn’t been out of his room much since the funeral.

  “Hey,” I replied, taking in his pajama pants and mismatched T-shirt hanging off his thin frame. He’d lost so much weight in such a short time.

  Nine days to be exact. I hadn’t yet switched to weeks to count the length of time she’d been gone. But there was no time like the present.

  She’d been dead for a week. Over a week actually.

  No. No. I liked counting in days better. More precise and torturous. Like the seconds on my watch.

  I peered up at him as he walked to the window. The scruff on his face had grown out enough to be considered a beard, and he reeked of sweat and filth—or maybe it was tears and grief. I couldn’t be sure. Regardless, it was terrifying. When she’
d been alive, it was rare I’d see him in anything other than pressed slacks and a white button-down. He was always clean shaven, and his hair was meticulously styled. That was the way my mom liked him. So that was how he’d dressed.

  I swallowed hard, wondering if he was going to die too. Could people really die of a broken heart? I wasn’t exactly his biggest fan at the moment, but he was the only parent I had left. Watching one die had been enough.

  “Is everything okay? I heard you yelling,” he said.

  “Um, yeah. It’s fine. That kid who broke my leg is outside. That’s all.”

  “Ramsey?”

  Ramsey? What a stupid name. And that assessment came from a girl named Althea Floye Hull, but somehow his was still worse.

  “How do you know his name?” I asked.

  “His family moved in two doors down a couple weeks ago.” My zombie father lifted his hand in a wave, and I glanced out the window in time to see Ramsey return it. With that, my dad ran out of energy for the day and headed straight back to his bedroom, muttering, “Nice kid. You should get out of the house and see if he wants to ride bikes with you.”

  I gritted my teeth, biting back a dozen words I wasn’t allowed to say. “Yeah. I’ll get right on that.”

  The door closed behind him without another word spoken.

  For three days.

  “Dang it, come on,” I mumbled, struggling to sharpen my pencil while balancing on my crutches.

  I wasn’t supposed to be using them yet. The doctor had told me to wait three weeks to make sure my ankle had healed enough in case I accidentally put weight on it. I was beyond done with the wheelchair thing though. Limping and hobbling had to be better than sitting around all the time.

  Getting on and off the bus that morning had been a nightmare. I don’t even know how my dad had expected me to get to school in my wheelchair. Not that we’d really discussed it. He didn’t talk much anymore.

  He nodded.

  He hummed in acknowledgement.

  He sometimes smiled when he thought it was socially required.

  But he was a shell of the man I’d grown up with.

  It had been fifteen days since she died, and while he’d returned to work, he was only going through the motions.