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  Instead of trying for the hundredth time to convince him, I go with something else. “Here. Take this.” I pull the chain I’ve worn around my neck for ten years out of my shirt. I don’t even take it off when I shower. It’s become as much a part of me as my ears and toes.

  When I slip off the necklace and hold it out for him, Torrin steps back. “I can’t take your grandma’s ring.”

  “Yes, you can.” When he doesn’t reach out for the necklace, I slip it over his head. “Hold on to it for me. As long as you have it, you have a part of me. And as long as you have a part of me, you can never really lose me.”

  The necklace is shorter on him. The ring falls just below my chest, but on Torrin, it swings just above his heart.

  He looks down at where it hangs. His forehead creases. “It’s a family heirloom. I can’t take it.”

  I study it on him too. My grandma specifically wanted me to have it. She picked me over my five girl cousins, and I’m not sure why. Now that she’s dead, I guess I never will. But I love that ring something fierce, and I love this person something fierce, so it’s right where it needs to be.

  “You can give it back to me one day,” I say, shifting. It takes a lot to make me shift, but I guess hinting at exchanging rings one day is up to the task. “You know, when the time’s right.”

  I hear the screen door at my place whine open again. I’ve already earned myself a weeklong grounding by being what I guess is fifteen minutes late. I don’t want to tack another week on by being another minute late. “Good night. And thank you.”

  I pop up onto my tiptoes and press a quick kiss onto his mouth before jogging down the sidewalk toward my house. After tonight, I feel more like I’m floating though. Run-in with Caden aside, this has been the best night of my life. It always will be. I know it.

  He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts at me, “Wave at me when you get to your house, ‘kay?”

  I flash a salute back at him. “Yes, sir.”

  I’m in front of the vacant house beside mine when his voice rolls over me again. “Jade?”

  “Yep?” I spin around, continuing to back down the sidewalk.

  The look on his face stops me.

  “Will you marry me?” Hands stuffed in his front pockets, barefoot, and his dark hair shining in the moonlight, he smiles at me. It almost looks apologetic. Almost but not quite.

  “What?” My voice breaks over that one syllable.

  He doesn’t blink. “You heard me.”

  My heart starts firing like it’s trying to escape. “We’re seventeen. I must have misheard you.”

  Right? I can’t have heard what I think I did. Right?

  He shakes his head once. “You didn’t. I’m asking you to marry me.”

  My throat runs dry. I’m not sure I can reply. “Torrin . . .”

  “Not today. Not tomorrow.” His voice is so calm, like he’s been planning this for years and has been certain of this for decades. “But someday. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  A breeze rushes over me, playing with the hem of my skirt and the ends of my hair. I know my answer. I know I want him. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to know this at this stage in my life, but I do. I want to spend the rest of my life with him too.

  But I can’t just say Yes or I do or I will or whatever girls in this kind of a situation do, because I’m seventeen and I’m me and Jade Childs can’t be a teenage bride. She can’t even be a teenage fiancée. Can she?

  God, I’m so confused. But I’m not confused about Torrin or loving him or wanting him forever. That’s the clearest thing to me in the whole world.

  “Are you just asking that because we”—I clear my throat—“you know and the good Catholic boy you’re not is making you feel all guilty?”

  He’s at least fifty feet away, but I don’t miss his smile. I couldn’t miss it if we were an entire solar system apart.

  “No.” He pads a step closer. “I’m asking you to marry me because I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

  The wind keeps playing with me, toying with my mind the way it’s messing with my clothes. “Not today. Not tomorrow.”

  Torrin’s head shakes. He steps closer. His eyes never leave mine. “Someday.”

  When the next rush of wind hits me, I move. Toward him. Before he can get a few footsteps forward, I throw myself against him. He falls back a few steps then steadies himself.

  My legs wind around him and my arms rope around his neck, then I’m kissing him. For anyone to see. For everyone to see. Right here on the sidewalk I grew up riding my bike down, drawing chalk hopscotch squares on, scraping my knees on. I kiss Torrin like my life depends on it, and in a way, it kind of does. Our lives have been tangled together for a long time—this is when I know that they’ll always be tethered together.

  This moment, right here, is somehow even better than the one we just shared upstairs in his bedroom because this is when I feel it. Forever. It’s right in front of me. He’s right in front of me.

  “JADE CHILDS!!!” My dad’s shout echoes up and down Madison Boulevard.

  A few more dogs are yapping in yards and front windows now.

  Torrin keeps kissing me, but eventually I pull back. My heart is pounding. My lungs are straining. Everything else is floating.

  “Gotta go,” I whisper against his lips, breathing him in one last time, hoping I can hold in his scent until I see him before first period tomorrow morning. I unwind my legs from around him and kiss the corner of his mouth.

  Just as I’m about to charge back down the sidewalk, his hand snags mine. “You never answered me.” His forehead’s lined as deeply as I’ve ever seen it.

  My smile crawls into place as I glance at the claddagh hanging from his neck. “I thought I was pretty damn clear with that kiss.”

  With a wink, I give his hand one last squeeze before turning and running. I don’t want to run away from him moments after his question and my answer, but I know the next time my dad steps out onto the porch, he’ll be coming out with his shotgun. My dad will freely admit that he’s a cop but that he’s a father first. Thus, the shotgun.

  When I reach the short white gate in front of my house, I look back. He’s still there, waiting. I know that if I asked him, he’d spend the night waiting right there. I know he’d wait longer. I wonder if any length of time’s too long for him.

  I open the gate latch and wave at him. Home safe and sound. Torrin waves back, but he doesn’t move to go back inside. He stays there, watching, waiting. He probably won’t go home until he’s heard my screen door close.

  I feel like I’m dancing up the walkway. I know better than to explode into the house with a crazy grin or my parents’ radar will go off hardcore, so I pause to collect myself. It’s hard to do. I just had sex for the first time. With the guy I love. He just asked me to marry him. Someday. One day. I just agreed to it in the form of a kiss that felt like it melted all of my nerves.

  I need more than a pause to collect myself from all that.

  It’s dark as nights come, but that can’t touch me. I feel like I’m glowing from the inside out, and nothing can dim it. Nothing.

  Giving myself two more breaths to compose myself, I pull the screen door open. Just as I’m about to shove through the front door, I hear something behind me.

  It might be late and something’s making funny noises in the bushes, but it doesn’t raise the hair on my neck. This is one of the safest blocks in the whole country. Nothing even remotely exciting happens here. People don’t even speed five above the limit.

  I let the screen door close before I climb down the front stairs. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I call, approaching the bushes slowly.

  The honorary cat lady who lives a few houses down adopted a new cat who’s under the impression the world is its litter box. Dad’s threatened to shoot the poor thing the next time it takes a sideways look at Mom’s rose bushes, so I want to shoo it away before Dad and his shotgun show bac
k up at the door.

  “Go on, kitty, get out of here if you want to save your skin.” I slide a few steps closer and clap, but when that doesn’t do the trick, I shake the bush a few times. Sure enough, one surly-looking orange tabby goes flying from the bush. “You can thank me later,” I mutter, patching up the dislodged earth before my dad sees it.

  I’m just about to head back inside when I hear a car crawl to a stop in front of our house. My dad has lots of random visitors from the police station who show up at all hours of the night. Usually the visitors who come this late don’t have good news.

  I walk around the bushes toward the gate. The car stopped in front of our house is an older white van, not the cruiser I’m used to seeing show up late at night. I can’t see who’s inside. The van’s still running, so maybe the driver just pulled over to make a call.

  The driver’s window rolls down, and a man’s face pops out the window. He’s clean-cut and middle-aged—he could be a cop, but I know he’s not. I’ve met all of the cops in my dad’s precinct.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Is this Driscoll Avenue?” the driver asks, spreading a map over the steering wheel.

  Lost. It happens a lot. Our neighborhood’s tucked back behind one of the main commercial parts of town, and out-of-town business people get lost in here all the time.

  “Eh, no, this is Madison Boulevard,” I say. I’m pretty sure I just heard Torrin’s front door close. It’s a sound I memorized a few summers ago. “Driscoll is back a couple of miles. Off of Hemlock Street.”

  The man nods and consults his map again. “Hemlock, Hemlock . . .” He skims the map apparently unsuccessfully.

  Who still uses maps? There are these handy things known as cell phones with built-in maps and navigation and everything. They make life really easy. Speaking of phones . . . I left mine on Torrin’s nightstand in my hurry to get home. Great.

  “I don’t see it on here. Must be an old map.” The man frowns and rubs his chin, still studying it.

  Opening the gate, I step out onto the sidewalk and try looking at his map. I can’t see it from this angle though. “Hemlock’s an old street. It should be on your map.”

  He holds it up for me to see, and I take a couple steps closer. Glad I can be this guy’s personal MapQuest

  “There, there it is.” I land my index finger on the grid where Hemlock Street runs into Driscoll. It’s only a mile or so back. “You’re not too lost at least.”

  That’s when I feel a sharp prick in my wrist. That’s when the hair on the back of my neck finally rises.

  Why is a needle hanging from my wrist?

  I snap my arm back, but I feel like I’m moving in slow motion. I feel like my entire body has been dropped in a pool of Jell-O and I’m trying to move.

  The man’s hand seizes my wrist before I can step back. “No.” His voice is different now, less friendly. “I’m not lost at all.”

  I’m floating and sinking at the same time, and before I know what’s happening, I’m being thrown through the van’s door and sealed shut behind it. I can’t move. I can’t scream. I can’t do anything but think of him. The way he looked in bed with me tonight. The way he looked on the sidewalk after asking me to spend my life with him. The way he’ll look tomorrow when he finds out what has happened.

  “Torrin . . .” It sputters past my lips barely loud enough for me to hear, then the darkness creeps in.

  It sucks me under until I can’t remember my name. It takes me down until I’m not sure I want to remember it.

  THE DARK ISN’T as black as it used to be. Not because it’s changed any but because I’ve changed. I’ve gotten used to it. What once was dark isn’t so suffocating. What once was black isn’t so consuming.

  That’s the dream I wake up from. Weird.

  I stretch my legs and arms and sit up on the couch. So I guess it isn’t really morning anymore. A quick check of the clock hanging above his recliner reveals it’s almost twelve thirty. Lunchtime.

  I roll my neck to get out the kinks. Sleeping on an old couch with a flat pillow isn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s a lot better than what I used to sleep on.

  I stand up slowly to test my legs. If I stand up too quickly, I fall right back down. I’ve learned that lesson more times than I care to count. I hear the television upstairs in his room, the usual show on at this time of the day. Just in time for the usual lunch. The usual.

  Every day is predictable because every day is the same. There was a time I would have hated living with a rigid schedule, but that girl is gone. This one, whoever she is, likes knowing what to expect because it doesn’t feel like so long ago when I couldn’t predict anything. This is better.

  Sometimes I have to remind myself of that, but most days I’m content with the mundane schedule. Today’s different though, at least a little. Instead of moving toward the kitchen because it’s 12:20 and lunch is to be on the table at twelve thirty, I find myself lingering beside the couch. An emotion flares inside my chest, one that starts out small as a seed then blossoms into something so large I feel like it’s going to break me open.

  I had a lot of these days at first, but they’ve decreased in frequency and intensity. This one’s different though. As intense as any I’ve had—maybe more than any of them. Of course the dream’s to blame for that. The dream of him.

  I can still see his face that last night, the way the dark shadowed half of his face and the moon illuminated the other half. The way he looked at me like I was everything. The way he smiled like we shared a whole lifetime of secrets.

  God, those dreams are painful. Too painful. Part of me wishes they’d go away so I wouldn’t have to feel as if my ribs are being cracked from something growing inside my chest. Another part never wants to stop dreaming about him because that’s all I had left of him—dreams.

  It’s a poor substitute for the real thing, but it’s a better alternative than losing him totally.

  As I move toward the kitchen, my legs feel weaker with every step, almost like the muscles have atrophied. There’s probably some truth to that. My legs aren’t nearly as strong as they used to be. Neither is the rest of my body. That’s part of his plan of course. The weaker I am, the stronger he is. The frailer I become, the more powerful he grows.

  I try to shove all of those thoughts away before I make it into the kitchen. They don’t do me any good, but they could do me harm. That girl, that life—that boy—they’re all gone. Another life.

  This is my life.

  It’s not a bad one. It could be worse. At first, it was, but now . . . it’s not too bad. He told me that so many times at first it started to cycle through my mind involuntarily. Somewhere along the way, I adopted the same belief. This life isn’t so bad.

  And when the dreams remind me of the life I had, I convince myself that it’s nothing more than a dream. I’m more convincing now than I used to be.

  I flip on the overhead kitchen light, and sterile florescent light floods the room. It’s too bright, but at least I’m allowed to turn on lights whenever I want to. I feel like I lived in the dark for years. The kind of dark that was so disorienting I lost my sense of what was up and what was down. My eyesight had paid a price. Being stuck in that kind of dark for however long I was messed with my long-distance vision. I probably have the eyesight of an eighty-year-old now.

  That’s okay though because now I can turn on the light whenever I want. I sleep with the light on too.

  I try to ignore the framed photos hanging on the wall behind the small dining table, but I’m never successful. As I reach for the white loaf of bread in the cupboard, I find myself staring at those two photos. I move to the old tan fridge to grab the pack of bologna and bottle of yellow mustard, still staring at those photos. I’ve made this bologna sandwich so many times I can do it and still keep staring at that wall.

  Behind the glass of those brass frames are the faces of two girls. Well, one girl if you ask him. I guess most people would look at the two girls and believe they w
ere the same, one photo taken a few years before the other. Hell, there have been days I’ve convinced myself of that to see if it makes things easier. Sometimes it does, at least for a while—until another one of those dreams shatters that feigned reality.

  The younger girl has the same light brown hair that lightens in the sun that I have. The same green-blue, wide-set eyes. She even has the same bone structure. That girl is smiling, the kind that’s real because it hits her eyes. It’s clearly a school picture with one of those swirly bluish backgrounds. She’s wearing a lavender shirt and a matching headband.

  The older girl in the photo a few inches to the right is wearing the same kind of shirt and matching headband. Her hair’s draped in front of her shoulders, the same as in the other photo. The same background, the same hair, eyes, and face . . . the only thing that’s different is the smile.

  The older girl is smiling, but it doesn’t hit her eyes. In fact, that girl’s eyes look dead, like whatever lights used to burn behind them had been blown out like a birthday candle.

  I force myself to look away because I have the urge to throw the chipped white plate I’m making the bologna sandwich on at the photo of the older girl in the hopes that the frame will shatter. The girl in that picture’s broken—it seems unfair that the photo of her would tell a different story.

  I hear the floor creak upstairs as he moves across the room. This is an old house. I don’t know for sure, but I guess it’s at least a hundred years old. It creaks a lot. In a storm, it makes so much noise it feels like it has a life of its own.

  A minute later, as I’m portioning out a handful of plain potato chips on the plate, I hear the rush of water through the pipes snaking through the walls. The news on at twelve, bathroom break at 12:25, lunch at twelve thirty.

  I remind myself that predictability is a good thing. Knowing what to expect is better than knowing nothing.

  I pad back across the weathered wood floors to the fridge and trade the bologna and mustard for the gallon of milk. Always milk. With every meal. With every snack. Milk. So much milk I’ve had nightmares of drowning in it.