Chapter thirty-four

M addy had thought she would never see her room again,

and now here she sat on her bed, back as if nothing had

happened at all. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the wall. She

listened to the tick of her old alarm clock on the nightstand.

If not for the throbbing in her back and the lingering headache,

Maddy might have convinced herself she was dreaming

and any moment she would wake, back at the train station.

With Jacks.

The drive back had been silent, Kevin looking straight

ahead at the traffic while she sat numb and bewildered in

the passenger seat. At home she had gone straight upstairs.

On her way through the living room she realized the house

was much less damaged than she had imagined. It appeared

only the windows and the front door had been destroyed

beyond repair, along with some picture frames and dishes,

and, of course, the old TV, which Maddy was kind of glad

had finally been put out of its misery. Otherwise, the house

was fine. Kevin must have cleaned up most of the mess in

the morning, and some company had already been by to

cover the window frames in plastic sheeting in preparation

for new glass. In a day or two, the house would be back to

the way it had always been. Normal.

Maddy wondered vaguely if that’s what would happen

to her too. Kevin and Gwen and maybe even Ethan would

clean up the emotional mess, and then the irreparable

wounds, the memory of breaking Jacks’s heart at the station,

would simply be covered in plastic until the damaged

parts could be replaced. Time would do its job eroding the

memories, dulling the sharp edges and fading the once-vibrant

colors. And pretty soon she would be back to the way

she had always been. Habitual, average, routine. It was a

terrifying idea, she thought. Some wounds were meant to be

remembered. Some scars should never disappear.

After an hour of sitting motionless on the bed, Maddy

startled at a knock on the door. It was Kevin, in his plaid

robe. He sat on the edge of the bed.

“I ordered a pizza. It’s downstairs if you want some.”

“I’m okay,” Maddy said.

503/587

“You did the right thing,” Kevin said after a moment.

“I just want you to know that.”

“I do know that.”

He sighed and started to explain something about

healing, but Maddy couldn’t focus on the words, and eventually

she tuned him out. Her eyes drifted to her book bag

on the floor. It was Saturday. Monday would she be expected

to go to school like she had almost every morning of her

life? She wondered if she really could just get up, work the

morning shift, and then go to class like nothing had

happened. Was she capable of that?

Suddenly something Kevin said caught her attention,

breaking through the thickness of her thoughts.

“What?” Maddy said.

“I’m just saying, I know you think you’re in love with

him, but—”

“I’m not in love with him,” Maddy said, quickly defensive.

She saw him flinch at her tone and immediately

wished she could take it back. He looked at her with helpless

eyes, then shrugged.

504/587

“Well, like I said, pizza downstairs.” His parenting

now done the best he knew how, Kevin got up and shuffled

out the door.

His words hung meaningfully in the once-again silent

room. In. Love. With. Him.

She knew it was true, despite her knee-jerk rejection

to hearing the words out loud. She was in love with him.

Could it be possible that she had just made the biggest mistake

of her life?

Her gaze drifted around the room, looking for any distraction,

any escape, and came to rest on her bedroom window.

There to greet her, as always, was the sign. She

thought about what Kevin had told her on that first morning

of school. That their luck was going to change. He had been

right, she reflected bitterly, he just didn’t realize it was going

to change for the worse. That’s the funny thing, she

thought. You always want things to get better, but you never

know how good you already have it. Maddy certainly hadn’t.

She hadn’t realized that she was happy, with an uncle who

loved her, a loyal best friend, and a chance at a good life. It

was more than a lot of people could say.

505/587

Before, she hadn’t ever hurt anyone, and she hadn’t

known what it was like to care for someone and then have

them taken away just as quickly. And she didn’t know anything

of her own traumatic past. Would she truly be able to

live with the knowledge of who her parents were and what

really happened to them? If nothing else, there was some

small, bittersweet satisfaction in knowing the truth now.

Her hand reached up and felt for her mother’s necklace.

When she touched it, she discovered something heavy

hanging against her chest, near her heart. She pulled the

necklace out from under her shirt.

There, dangling from her neck, was Jacks’s Divine

Ring.

For a moment she just stared at it in numb disbelief.

In everything that happened, she had completely forgotten

about it. She held the ring in her hand and inspected its exquisite

beauty. She watched the way the light reflected onto

her palm and how when she turned the ring, those reflections

danced. It was the only thing he had ever wanted, and

he had given it to her. Seconds ticked by while she fought to

keep her fracturing emotions together. Was she feeling sadness?

Yes. But was it also regret? And despair?

506/587

Maddy made a decision. He deserved to know. Although

she could never be with him, and even though she

would never see him again, he deserved to know the truth

about how she felt. After what she had done at the station,

she owed him that much. Getting up, she rummaged

through her dirty jeans on the floor until she found her old

flip phone. She turned it on, navigated to the recent call log,

and dialed Gwen’s number.

The phone rang three times, then picked up.

“Maddy?” Gwen asked skeptically. Her familiar voice

caused Maddy’s throat to tighten.

“Hey,” Maddy got out.

“OMG! Where are you?”

“I’m back home. Gwen, I have a favor to ask.”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, anything. What do you need?”

Maddy looked at the Divine Ring in her hand.

“I need to drop off something. Do you think you could

borrow your mom’s car and drive me?”

“I can’t,” Gwen said.

“Oh,” Maddy said, her heart sinking, “okay, then—”

507/587

“But I can drive you and then return it before my

mom finds out, how about that?”

Maddy smiled in relief.

“That sounds perfect. Can you wait down the street?”

She didn’t know if Kevin would let her go, so she wasn’t going

to take any chances.

“No prob,” Gwen said. “I’ll come right now.”

Maddy flipped the phone shut. She dropped the necklace

and the Divine Ring back under her shirt and felt the

ring thump lightly against her chest.

Rifling around in her drawers, she found some old

stationery and a pen. She thought only for a moment, then

wrote:

Jacks, I’m sorry for being stubborn and impossible,

and I’m so sorry for what happened. I know now that I am

drawn toward you just as much as you are drawn toward

me, and without you, I will always feel incomplete. I lied in

the station, but I did it for a good reason. The truth is... I

care about you very much. Please know that—and please

never try to find me or contact me again.

—M

508/587

Fishing out a blank envelope from the desk, Maddy

stuffed everything in her pocket. Then she stopped.

She didn’t know where he lived.

He had never taken her there, and she didn’t even

know where to begin looking—beyond the assumption it

was somewhere in the Angel City Hills. She paced back and

forth for almost a minute before something occurred to her.

She got down on her knees and looked under her bed. It was

too dark to see, so she stuck her hand out and swept it back

and forth across the carpet. Hair ties, old homework, her

iPod box. Then her fingers curled around a folded crinkled

pamphlet, and she pulled it out. Bingo. She threw her hoodie

back on, stuffed the pamphlet in her pocket along with

everything else, and slipped as quietly as she could out her

bedroom window.

509/587

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14