I can’t go through Martinsburg without thinking of Willa, even though she’s nearly three thousand miles away.
I should’ve gone with her.
I should’ve done what I wanted and left everything but her behind. Instead, in a display of emotion I can’t call to memory without a wave of embarrassment, I begged. Just a few more months. Just let me graduate. I said please more often in that single conversation than in my last twenty.
I did not cry.
Maybe things would’ve ended differently if I had. If I could.
But even as she stood there, tears shimmering in her gorgeous blue eyes, she’d already decided. I have to go. You need to stay here. Those are the words she said more than any others.
And when I reached for her, she stepped away.
Even at the lowest part of that conversation, I didn’t think she’d actually follow through. Or that she’d refuse to take my calls. Ignore my emails.
But then she was gone and her first letter, postmarked from sunny California, hit my mailbox one week later.
Letters. Pages of memories in her dainty cursive. And never with a return address.
I’ve been accepted to twelve different colleges across the country and I can’t commit to a single one. I tell everyone I’m planning visits before I decide, but the truth is part of me is waiting for the letter that invites me to join her. And then my decision would already be made.
But that’s a truth I barely admit to myself.
Rain fills the pockets of the parking lot where gravel hasn’t, and my car rocks as I splash into a space near The Wayside’s front door. No one paints neat white lines on the asphalt here, but no one needs to. If you have to ask, you don’t belong here.
The Wayside is set far from the road. High windows. None of it is welcoming to outsiders. It’s not supposed to be.
It’s barely noon so there isn’t much company, and by the light of day, The Wayside is a place you’d only stop if you had no other choice. Its closest neighbor is the gas station at the corner, the one that ends a series of empty storefronts and overgrown parking lots.
There’s no neon Open sign in the window or vinyl schedule of hours affixed to the front door. That would require glass, and if there’s one thing The Wayside provides, it’s privacy.
It’s definitely not a place for a teenage girl. Definitely not a place for a man like Mr. McCormack.
Jake drums his fingers on the center console and narrows his eyes at the dark brick building. “You come here?”
“Sometimes.”
“Alone?”
“Sometimes.”
The color bleaches from his knuckles where he’s strangling the door handle. “A girl like you shouldn’t come here alone, Caroline.”
Before I can use my douche flute to knock out his front teeth, he flings open the door and storms toward the entrance.
I scramble to follow him, yelling, “What the hell does that mean?”
He sidesteps a wayward beer bottle, then turns and points to it, waiting until I catch up to say, “This.” His arms fling wide in what I can only assume is meant to encompass the entirety of what The Wayside is and everything it stands for. “All of this. You’re too good for a place like this.”
St. Francis Preparatory Academy claims they’re grooming tomorrow’s leaders, preparing us for the future, but it’s like walking a tightrope — it only works if you don’t look down. Down holds the world outside the reality Jake grew up in. Outside mine, or at least the one Jake and I shared until I fought my way free.
Down is where you learn life is unfair and it only changes for people who need it the least.
Down is all Jake’s seeing right now. The trash piled along the two-lane interstate, the graffiti scrawled on the gas station down the street.
I hold out my hands. The scars on my palms are healed, but the sun is just bright enough for the patches of shinier skin to stand out. “You remember when I missed a week of school freshman year? I wasn’t there for our first debate club competition?”
He takes a tentative step and his fingers close around my wrists, pulling my palms nearer. “Yeah. Your family went to Cabo.”
“My parents went to Cabo. I went to camp.” I can’t stop the shudder that works through me from the ground up, and Jake’s fingers tighten.
I toe the gravel and expose a soggy line of dirt beneath it, shivering against a slice of wind that sends drizzle burrowing beneath my jacket. “Conversion camp.”
His Adam’s apple bobs and I’m grateful he’s tall enough I don’t have to meet his eyes. “Why?”
“Do you not understand what conversion camp is, Jake?”
“Don’t make jokes about this. I meant why would they want to convert you?”
“Because my mom’s built her entire life around the St. Francis social circle? Because she can’t stop trying to win the approval of my grandma? Who doesn’t give approval to anyone, by the way. But my mom, she’s old-money St. Francis, and she’s, I don’t know, scared. That if I’m not perfect — if I’m not successful and pretty and marry the right guy and say the right things — it means she’s not a perfect mother and everyone will judge her and everything her mom has said about her is true.”
Jake is confused. It shows in every inch of his face. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s like … your dad was an awesome lacrosse player, right? And then let’s say little Jake comes along and the only thing he can play is the piano.”
“My dad wouldn’t care.”
I sigh. “Pretend your dad has low self-esteem and needs the approval of others to validate him.”
“Wait. You’re saying she’s like those pageant or dance moms on TLC who force their kids into shows so they can achieve things the parents couldn’t?”
I really want to know how much TLC Jake watches. “Close enough.”
“But why does she think anyone would care? Nobody cares that Michael Hughes is gay. Or Ella Ferris. Catalina Hunter has two dads and your mom made them co-chairs for the annual fund drive.”
“Yeah, see, my mom doesn’t exactly have a problem with people being gay, she has a problem with me being gay — because then I’m not a replica of her. I can’t fulfill her expectations. Though she might not be as nice to Catalina’s dads if they didn’t get her tickets to their Broadway shows.”
He shakes his head, droplets springing from the ends of his hair to land on his upturned palms. “But it’s not a secret. People know.”