Jack shook his head and looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it does. I’m sorry. I was just zoning, but I’m with you now. Really.” I touched his arm to be sure he knew.
He didn’t move and that was a bad sign. He should have smiled or reached over to hold my hand. That’s what he’d normally do.
“Jack.”
He looked at me and I felt my stomach drop at the things I saw in his eyes: sadness, resignation.
“Listen,” I said earnestly, “I’m sorry I’ve been a little distracted. I’ve got some stuff on my mind, things to take care of. It’s nothing to do with you.”
“What kind of stuff ? What things to take care of ?”
I tried to hold his gaze, but his eyes were too penetrating. Daring me to be brave enough to tell.
Which of course, I wasn’t.
I shrugged. “Just … stuff.” I tried for the obvious. “You know, things with Nan, her will, um … schools. It isn’t you.”
He nodded. “Right. Except that it is, Cassie. Whatever’s bothering you is big enough that it’s always with you. I can see it, like a cloud in your eyes, something that’s keeping you from committing to anything else. Even when you’re with me, you aren’t really. Not a hundred percent. Whatever it is, I’d like to help.” He took my hands then, seeming so small in his, and looked deep into my eyes. “But you won’t let me, Cass. You know how I feel about you and I think you feel the same about me. I don’t know why you won’t tell me and let me help, but you won’t and I feel like an outsider. Like I’m always second best to whatever this thing is.”
He waited. This was my chance, I knew. My last one.
It made me tear up because I didn’t want to lose Jack and I would if I didn’t tell him. “You’re not second to anything with me, Jack,” I said. It was the best I could do, but it wasn’t enough. Especially since it wasn’t true. I wanted it to be, but the mark did cloud everything, and until I figured it out, nothing would be quite right.
We didn’t break up then and there, but that was the day I knew we would. The day I put it in motion.
Three weeks later, I told him.
“I’m leaving, Jack.” I’d asked him to walk me home, said we needed to talk. I hadn’t bothered assuring him it wasn’t as ominous as it sounded. We both knew it was.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything. We’d had a fight the day before. Something stupid. By then our fights usually were. I could feel us at the thinnest part of a relationship so frayed we were ready to fall through. I think that’s what he thought I meant—that I was leaving him, leaving our relationship. Which I was, but also more.
“You’re right about there being something else,” I told him. “I can’t tell you about it now, but I hope someday—when I’ve got it figured out—I can.”
He looked at me, residual anger replaced by something not much better: disappointment. There was little worse than feeling I’d let Jack Petroski down.
“It isn’t you,” I said, thinking how, if it weren’t already a cliché, my overuse of that line these past two months would have made it one. “If it were something I could tell anyone, you’d be the first. It’s just … it’s a family thing that I have to figure out on my own.”
“Cassie,” he started. “Whatever it is—”
I held up a hand. “I can’t.”
He nodded.
“I’ve bought my tickets, talked to guidance and all that …”
He stopped short, my real meaning sinking in. “You’re leaving Ashville?”
I nodded.
“Where will you go?” He wasn’t sure if I was kidding or maybe just floating the idea with no real plans to act.
“Chicago,” I said, the firmness of that one word clarifying how serious I was. “I have a friend out there, a girl I met in Kansas over the summer.” Or at least she’d be out there soon. We’d been arranging everything over the past two weeks, since I’d told Petra my emancipation paperwork had come through and I was thinking of leaving. I was shocked when she suggested that she come, too. Then elated. The semiregular e-mails we’d exchanged since I’d left Kansas turned into nightly phone calls as we planned the details, both of us ready and needing to leave things behind.
“When?”
This was the part I was really dreading. “Monday.” I grimaced, waiting for his anger.
But Jack was only confused. “Monday? You don’t mean four days from now Monday, do you?”
I nodded, still grimacing.
He frowned, getting it. “What about your apartment? The emancipation and will and other legal stuff you’ve been working on with that lawyer?”
“It’s all done. Taken care of.”
“So you’ve been planning this all along?” He asked incredulously. The anger I’d been expecting worked its way into his voice. “You knew you were leaving? How long, Cassie? Since you’ve been back? Didn’t give me much of a chance, did you?”
“It’s not like that, Jack. I—”
It was his turn to hold up a hand. “That’s okay. Spare me the excuses. I get it now. Sorry I was such an idiot before. I thought we …” Jack shook his head. “Forget it.”
“You thought we what, Jack?”
“Nothing.” He adjusted his backpack. “Good luck, Cass.”
“Wait. Don’t leave yet, Jack.”
“Why not? You are.”
And that was it. He turned and walked away.
I told myself that someday I’d work up the nerve to tell him about the mark, but it was a hollow thought because, really, why would he wait around to hear it? And even if he did, how could I tell? He might understand, but it would change how he looked at me forever, the same as if I told him I had a contagious disease or committed a horrible crime. I’d seen it with Lucas over the summer. I wouldn’t be the same person to Jack. The girl he’d taught penny poker and challenged to bike races and shared a fort with in the maple tree would be gone. And I’d never be able to reclaim her.
And then there was that lady. The friend of the dead woman. How long would it be before I saw her again? Before she told her friends about me? Before one of them recognized me as Nan’s granddaughter or the girl who lived next door to them?
When would they start showing up on my doorstep with torches? Overreaction? Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t take much for a reputation to be built in a small town.