The Way Back to You Read online

  My arms dropped; my lungs shriveled up. “Don’t tell anyone” was all I said.

  Then I bolted. Jumped right off the chair before he could give an apology or a rejection. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want either of us to even acknowledge how I’d massively wrecked this. So I’d avoided him and Ashlyn after that—and the only reason I hadn’t completely avoided Matty was so I could dump him.

  Six days after I kissed him, Kyle rang my doorbell. He’d come over to talk about how worried Ashlyn was about me, and what was worse, he wanted to know if I was okay after what happened at WinterFest. I couldn’t let him believe that the kiss had meant anything, not when it could be erased if we ignored it.

  We. Kyle and I were a We—and this was why. Because We had a secret.

  So while we froze solid on my front porch, I told him to stay out of my business, that as far as I was concerned, the kiss never happened, and he was taking it all way too personally, anyway. He didn’t have to play peacemaker because there was nothing for him to come and fix. Everything was fine. And I was determined to keep it that way. I’d be a better friend; the kind Ashlyn deserved. Matty would get over the breakup soon enough, and Kyle would forget what happened.

  Except Kyle clearly hasn’t forgotten. And now here we are.

  Five hours in the somber-mobile.

  Five hours of Kyle’s “Mood Disorders for Beginners” playlist. Except for one song that he purposely skips every time; one that opens with these earnest, twinkly piano chords. How he finds it any more unbearable than the rest is a mystery, but it’s not like I’m asking.

  Five hours of basically no talking, aside from the occasional necessary “I need the bathroom” or “I have to stretch my legs before they shrivel.”

  Five hours of those words bouncing around in my head, wondering how long they’ve been in his.

  Because you never lie.

  He thinks I’m a liar, and he said it out loud, so now it feels like a truth.

  I was ready to deny it and instead the first thing that came out of my mouth was another lie. That’s what shut me up, smothered the outrage crackling through me. He was right. And something about being in his car, with its freakishly comfortable seats and dumb tree-shaped air freshener, made fighting with him impossible. I have lied. I am lying, whenever I don’t tell him why we’re actually on our way to Sacramento. But I’m hoping it won’t be the kind of lie that breaks everything apart.

  The car slows and I check Kyle’s phone, where the GPS app is tracking our progress. We’re a couple-ish hours from Sacramento now—my time is running out. But if I’d come clean when he asked, just twenty minutes outside of Bend, he could have turned us right around. Then I’d go back to my house for the week and he’d go back to his. With the kitten.

  Arm.

  Like I’m falling for that Armadillo bullshit. There’s no question Kyle named her after Ashlyn. If anything, it proves that he needs to see the recipients for himself. The cat is an enormous sign. We’ve passed smaller billboards on I-5.

  I risk a glance at Kyle. His anger—or whatever that was earlier—quickly simmered into that quiet, contemplative thing he does so well. As if he’s running on this hamster wheel inside his own mind. And I’m partially responsible for it. If I hadn’t defended Matty, Kyle wouldn’t have gotten so worked up. He wouldn’t now believe we pity him or swap stories behind his back. Or that we’re ganging up on him.

  I slump lower in my seat.

  How am I already losing control of this?

  “You look the same from this side, you know.” It comes out louder than I want it to. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to use my vocal cords.

  Kyle blinks twice at the windshield. “What?”

  I clear my throat. “When we were lab partners, I always sat on your left side. I’m not used to seeing you from this angle.”

  “Oh.” He places a palm over the heating vents. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  My heart bumps around my rib cage even as relief settles my nerves. He’s answering back, which hopefully means he hasn’t spent the entire ride counting the ways he hates me. But the silence between us returns in full force, and these few seconds might be worse than the entire five hours that came before them. I’m trying. Can’t he tell I’m trying?

  Something hot prickles on my skin, the same aggravation from when he lashed out this morning. So I untie my bun, and coil it back up, and breathe through it. Giving him attitude now will only make things worse.

  “Look, isn’t it too long a trip for us not to talk at all?”

  Kyle pauses, then reaches over to turn down the music. “I’m not not talking to you. I’m just . . . driving. When I drive, I think.”

  “About kicking me from a moving car?”

  He smiles, but not enough to put me at ease. “Nothing that vicious.”

  “Great.”

  “I’m kidding.” His fingers curl around the steering wheel tightly before loosening up. “Cloudy, I didn’t mean all that before. I—”

  “No, don’t. It’s fine.” I tap my armrest. “Let’s drop it.”

  “I can’t drop it,” he says quickly, and it isn’t resentment—it sounds like part of an apology. “I’m not sure I function that way.”

  I nod once, afraid of encouraging him to keep going. But he does.

  “I was pissed about Matty—and Jacob is such an ass. But I couldn’t blow up at them, and you were sitting right there, so I blew up at you. I’m sorry; it wasn’t fair. And bringing up that stuff from last year wasn’t fair either.” He sighs again. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

  I look out the passenger window as we zip by signs for towns I don’t recognize. Every second means we’re a littler farther away from Bend, and the thought makes something in my chest contract. I can’t tell if it’s a good feeling or not.

  “Keeping WinterFest a secret, I did it for her,” I say quietly, my gaze stuck on the California plates of the cars that pass us. “And for Matty, and even for you, I guess. But I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  It’s not enough, but it’s all I have right now. Maybe we’ll go the rest of the way not talking, until I unload the whole story on him, and who knows what’ll happen then.

  “Hey.”

  When I turn my head to him, Kyle says, “You’re the same from this side, too.” And he’s smiling like that’s a good thing.

  WE GET THERE earlier than expected, right around five-thirty. Even more time to come clean.

  “Sacramento Children’s Theater?” Kyle asks, though the awning on the building pretty much clears up any confusion.

  “I told you we were coming for a play.” I dig through my bag, looking for the email from Ethan’s mom. The last couple of hours in the car have been practically pleasant—despite the playlist—and I’m finally ready to tell Kyle. Not that I have a choice anymore.

  Kyle swings the car into a long driveway that leads behind the theater. He pulls into a spot under a tree. “Is it for extra credit or something?”

  Snorting, I say, “You think a teacher would give me extra credit for watching some kids in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? In another state?”

  Kyle shrugs stiffly, and I’m nervous his patience is running on low. Perhaps making him drive for seven hours, then mocking him, wasn’t the greatest warm-up.

  I swivel in my seat to face him. “I need to tell you something, but if you yell at me again, your phone’s eating sidewalk.”

  He chuckles, embarrassed. “I’m not going to yell at you.”

  I fold my hands in my lap so I won’t fiddle with them. “Do you know anything about what happened after Ashlyn died? About her organs being donated?”

  Everything about him goes still. So still his cells have probably stopped dividing. “I guess.” He’s staring at a candy wrapper in the center console. “I remember her parents mentioning it at the memorial service.”

  “Apparently, they’ve been in contact with a few of the
recipients. Including Ethan, the boy who got Ashlyn’s liver—well, some of it. I was over at the Montiels’ yesterday and I read an email from his mom saying he’s in this play.” I hold up the crinkled paper. “And I printed it out. Without telling anyone.”

  His eyes meet mine. “Can you do that?”

  Why is that everyone’s first reaction?

  I lift my chin. “No, I can’t do that, but I did. And I couldn’t ignore this, not when we’re on break from school and Ethan’s so close.” Kyle’s undoubtedly about to disagree with my “so close” comment, so I jump in first. “I thought it would be cool to see him. And I thought you might think so, too.”

  His eyebrows slant up in that way they do. “This is the email?” he asks, nodding at my hand. When I tell him it is, he reaches for it.

  Suddenly, there’s too little air in here, so I open my door and wait outside. According to the dashboard, it’s sixty-four degrees out, but it feels warmer—anything feels warmer than Bend in February.

  The back door of the theater is in clear view. Ethan’s probably already inside getting ready for his performance. I don’t know what he looks like. His mom may have sent the Montiels photos, but I couldn’t risk getting caught to search for them last night. Does he look different than he did before getting part of Ashlyn?

  I fight every impulse to spy on Kyle. He deserves his privacy, but the longer he takes, the more likely he is to peel out and strand me here.

  Finally, after an endless few minutes, Kyle’s door slams shut. He comes closer, but stops before reaching my side of the car. He’s not veiny or panting or anything, but he seems . . . shattered. Not completely, but something about him has definitely cracked. His face is flushed and his gaze is far away, as if he’s about to cry or already has. Regret and empathy seesaw inside me. I’ve had only one day more of knowing about the recipients, but I’ve been able to box up thoughts of them. Organizing them in a way I can deal with. Kyle’s different. How else did I expect him to react?

  “This is for real,” he says, squinting.

  I nod. “Are you all right?”

  His mouth is open, like he’s rearranging the words in his mouth. “Yeah. I am. And this kid with Ashlyn’s—Ethan. He’s here?” Kyle gives his head a slight shake and gestures behind me. “In there?”

  “You read that he’s playing Sneezy, right? And the play completely sucks—we did it in second grade—but his mom sounds pretty optimistic about it.”

  His cap is off, and his blond hair picks up whatever light the early evening sun has left. I notice the email, all folded up, clenched between his fingers. “So this whole trip is about Ethan.”

  “Partly,” I say, wishing I could see his eyes. “There are others nearby. But I wasn’t going to tell you that until later.”

  “That’s why you brought a duffel bag. You packed for longer than a day.”

  I bite my lip. “I packed for the possibility of longer than a day.”

  “And this is why you asked me to take you, not your friends. Because—”

  “Don’t be stupid; you know why I asked you.” I have to say it before he babbles out the truth—that he’s falling into a rut again. That Matty’s right: Kyle’s sadness is so obvious, and that’s why I’m going this far to help him. “It wouldn’t mean the same thing to someone else. Plus, my car really couldn’t have made it.”

  Kyle lifts his arms, placing his hands on his head, and when his eyes do meet mine, his expression changes, opens. “We basically drove seven hours to spy on a ten-year-old.”

  “Don’t you want to see what he’s like?”

  He sighs deeply, staring at the theater. “The play really sucks?”

  “YOU’LL GET KICKED out,” I tell him.

  “No, I won’t.” Kyle is trailing behind me on the path to the entrance. He’s walking so slowly, and gripping my duffel bag in one hand.

  “Then arrested for animal cruelty, probably.”

  “I’m not leaving her alone in a car for two hours, so what I’m doing is the opposite of cruel.”

  I tried convincing him that Arm would be fine in the car—the temperature’s comfortable enough and we could’ve cracked a window for extra airflow. He pretended to humor me, then asked to borrow my duffel. And it’s not that I mind him using it for a cat carrier; I just didn’t count on temporarily storing my bras and underwear under his backseat.

  I wait for them to catch up, watching as Kyle holds the bag gingerly. “If you keep walking like that, someone’s going to think you have a bomb.”

  He makes a visible effort to loosen up, and I laugh. “An overprotective dad,” I say to Arm as I squat down. She’s sniffing at the mesh around the sides. “Good luck getting any dates, kitty cat.”

  When we get inside, parents and siblings and friends are grinning in every corner of the small, rectangular foyer. So maybe I was wrong about the play sucking so much. Or, what’s more likely, these people don’t care. Any of these women could be Ethan’s mom—I imagine she’s the one grinning the biggest.

  The guy at the box office window offers us a student discount—no word on any smuggled-cat deals. “I’ve got this,” Kyle says, all gallantly, pulling out a ten-dollar bill. I’m set to tease him, but after he hands me my ticket, his hand gently brushes my back, and my lips snap shut.

  Inside the auditorium, a girl about our age waits to exchange our tickets for programs. When she moves, I smell her cotton-candy perfume. It’s only then that her eyes graze over me, then Kyle, and for the first time it occurs to me that people might think we’re a couple. It makes me feel like I’ve swallowed tissue paper.

  I walk away first, forcing Kyle to navigate his and Arm’s way down the center aisle alone. Then I drop down onto a seat in our assigned row and flip open the program.

  Kyle eases in beside me and carefully slides Arm’s duffel underneath his chair. We’re sitting close, closer than in the Xterra. I press the program to my face and hope the cotton-candy-perfume molecules are somehow more powerful than whatever Junior Mint-y freshness comes from Kyle.

  “What part were you in the play?” Kyle says, shifting his legs around the little space they have. “When you were in second grade?”

  “A hummingbird.”

  “For real?” Kyle laughs.

  “There was this huge tree onstage; it was in the background, behind the dwarfs’ cottage, for almost the entire play. I was the only forest animal who wasn’t scared to sit in it, so they made me an owl. I negotiated them to hummingbird.”

  “Why a hummingbird?”

  “They eat half their weight in sugar every day.” I shrug. “And they’re the cutest, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” he repeats quietly, with a small smile.

  It scares me how aware of him I am, even when I’m not trying to be.

  “Ashlyn got a speaking part, though. It was only her first year in Bend, so it was a big deal. Kiera Mahoney was pissed.”

  Kyle turns his head, his smile getting broader. “Who did Ashlyn play?”

  “Young Snow White. She kind of let it go to her head, to be honest.” I smirk so he knows I’m kidding. “I told her she got the part because she had black hair.”

  Then I pretend to pick at my nail polish, and Kyle pretends not to fuss over Arm, until the lights go down and the show starts.

  There is a lot of Snow White singing about being perfect. And the actress playing the Evil Queen is putting on this pseudo-British accent that I guess is supposed to make her sound royal but instead makes her sound as if her tongue is swollen.

  But none of that matters when the dwarfs finally come onstage. Beside me, Kyle stiffens, and without realizing it, I’ve scooted to the front of my seat. Sneezy—Ethan—is in a deep green, belted tunic with a matching pointy hat, and his nose is streaked with rosy makeup that makes him look more red-nosed reindeer than allergy-ridden dwarf. He is small compared with the other kids. Is it because he was so sick? Will he get bigger now that he’s not fighting to stay alive? Ethan cuts across
the stage with the others, and Zoë’s theory flickers through my mind. Whether I like it or not, I’m waiting for a little sign of Ashlyn; I want one. In the way Ethan walks or stands or taps his shoes. And I want it for Kyle, too.

  Maybe we did come here to watch Ethan, but we really came to see Ashlyn.

  Snow White hands Ethan an oversized prop flower. His nose twitches and he lets out a big, squeaky sneeze that the audience laughs at, even Kyle. My fingers are digging into the seat, and my body fills with a panicky heat as Ethan starts to walk offstage. I don’t want him to leave before I glimpse something. Why couldn’t he play a bird and be onstage the whole time?

  But before he disappears behind the curtain, he stops short. No one else notices because Snow White is singing another sap-tacular song at center stage, but my eyes are only on the kid in the corner. He turns his head slightly, probably to where his family is sitting, and he unleashes a toothy grin. It relaxes me, as if someone cut the string that tied me tightly. Because maybe Ashlyn never smiled exactly like that, but I know she gave that grin to Ethan.

  And when Kyle turns to me, I know he saw it, too.

  THE THEATER’S BACK door opens, letting some of the noise from inside slip out before it clangs shut. I tilt sideways around the front of the car. Kyle is halfway inside the trunk, fretting over Arm, and we share a nervous look.

  “Are you going to talk to him?” Kyle asks.

  “And say what?” I sort-of whisper. I don’t want anyone to overhear. “‘Hey, you know your liver? The part that’s not yours? It’s our friend’s! Wanna chat?’”

  Kyle presses the hatchback closed. “It’s just a little weird that we came all this way to not even say anything to him.”

  I can’t exactly argue with this. But as nice as it would be to talk to Ethan, there’s no way we can without it being suspicious. I do another front walkover—I’ve got residual energy like crazy—and Kyle hoists himself up on the front hood.