“So maybe my last game is in two weeks,” says Jacob, drawing me back to him. “But you need to see me play.”
Echo’s had a rough tail end of the summer when it comes to selling her paintings, and she’s contemplated adding more appointments on the way home, which could prevent me from seeing Jacob’s game. I rub at the tension forming in my neck, hating being torn between two people I love. “I’ll try.”
“Awesome!”
“Tell Tyler I’ll be home soon and that I love him.” I already told him earlier, but I want Tyler to hear it as many times as possible from as many people as he can. He’s five, and because of the foster care system that kept us apart, he doesn’t have a decent grasp of who I am.
“I will.” Jacob says goodbye and I do the same.
As I’m about to end the connection, Carrie’s blond ponytail swings into view. “Noah.”
My finger freezes over the touch pad of Echo’s laptop. Carrie and I have despised each other for three years and when I stopped pursuing custody of my brothers, we called a truce. I don’t hate her anymore, but it doesn’t mean I want to chat with her. “Yeah?”
Carrie scans the room around her then settles into the seat Jacob abandoned. “Are you really in Colorado?”
Unsure where the hell this is going, I scratch at the stubble on my face. “Yeah.”
Lines clutter Carrie’s forehead, and she releases a long breath. “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. Joe thinks it’s wrong. He says that you’re doing well and that we should let the state handle this, but when it comes to you we’ve made too many wrong choices. I’m afraid this will get lost in the system and, besides, you’re an adult and you should decide.”
“Decide what?”
“About your mother’s family,” Carrie says.
“What about them?” My mother told me she was an only child and that her parents had died before my birth. This past spring, Carrie’s husband, Joe, informed me that was a lie. At night, when Echo’s tucked close to me asleep, my mind wanders with thoughts I don’t dare entertain during the day. I have living blood relatives. Ones I could meet.
“They live in Vail.”
It’s a town north of here. “And?”
“They emailed us, asking if they could see Jacob and Tyler.”
“So?” Though my fist tightens under the table. Mom’s family didn’t try for custody of me when Carrie and Joe asked them to sign away their rights to Jacob and Tyler for the adoption. I may not have admitted it to a single soul, but the idea that I was forced into foster care when I had living blood relatives makes me feel like trash thrown to the curb.
“They also asked to see you.”
Her words land like a blow to the gut. “Little late, don’t you think?”
Carrie picks up a napkin ring and rolls it between her hands before setting it back down. Her anxiety twists the coil within me.
“Let me forward you the email. They say...” She trails off, and her cheeks puff out when she exhales. “They say that when we contacted them two years ago about adopting Jacob and Tyler, they thought we were asking to adopt you, too. There’s been a misunderstanding. They thought we were taking care of you.”
Fuck. Me.
Echo
Noah sits inside, and I sit outside. It’s not unusual for me to give him space while he talks with his brothers, but what is unusual is the silence between us before he went in. I’ve got nothing to say to him, and he obviously has nothing to say to me.
My hand flies over the page and what typically erases the unease and melts the apprehension doesn’t smooth away anything. My grip tightens on the chalk, and each swipe across the paper becomes more clipped and less thought out until the markings represent disoriented lines on a page and not an image or a picture or anything.
I toss the sketch pad and the chalk onto the table and rub at the wetness forming in my eyes. Freak. The guy called me a freak, and that’s what I am.
Noah and I are heading back home, and the nightmares I thought I was running from lurk behind every corner and coffee shop in America. In less than a month, Noah and I will start college, and I’ll have a roommate in the dorms and new classes, and a ball of dread knots in my stomach. This summer was supposed to change me, and nothing has changed.
Noah
Back at the parking lot of the campsite, Echo sets her sketchbook into the passenger side of the car and riffles through her duffel bag of clothes. She hasn’t spoken to me since the incident at the café. It’s not the first time Echo’s been pissed at me, but somehow this anger feels different—weighted.
I drop the packed tent next to the open trunk and lean my hip against the car, praying Echo will at least make fleeting eye contact. It’s not like her to go this long without acknowledging me. I’ve been hoping she’d talk—give me an idea of what direction to take.
If she said, “I hate you,” then I can say, “I’m an asshole, so you should, but I love you.” If she said that she’s mad at me then I can respond that she should be, but it doesn’t matter because I love her. But she gives me nothing. Silence.
Echo tosses the duffel bag in the backseat and rummages through another. With her clothes stacked to the side, Echo withdraws a light white button-up sweater. She jams the clothes back in and closes the car door.
Fuck. Plain and simple fuck.
It’s nine in the morning and close to eighty degrees. She’s covering her scars again.
As Echo walks down a trail leading to the campground and the dunes, she slips the sweater over her arms and draws the sleeves over her fingers. I haven’t seen her do that since March. And Echo wonders why I don’t think she should talk to her psychotic mother. One phone call along with the wrong words from a stupid-ass bastard and she spirals.
The memory of the way her face paled out when I told the bastard to apologize circles my brain. Echo has a habit of making me feel like a dick, and this is one of those moments, but damn it, I went after that guy for her.
Screw it. We’ll get on the road, and she’ll calm down after some distance. I pick the tent up and try to cram it into the small space I left for it in the trunk. When it won’t fit, I push harder, and the sound of material ripping causes a rip within me. Possibly my sanity. “Shit!”
I slam the trunk with a thunderous bang. For two months, Echo and I didn’t worry about our messed-up lives in Kentucky. She didn’t focus on her mom or dad or her newfound memories or the scars on her arms, and I didn’t think twice about how in June I turned eighteen.