Chapter Seventeen

MY VISION BLURS AND I READ the same sentence for the fourth time.

It was a weekend of unbroken tension in our home. The voices arguing Friday night, the lost construction bid, Campbell’s bike. More problems to solve. Less time to do it.

Tension like that works its way into every nook of the house, until it feels small and tight and so full you can barely breathe with all of that worry packed inside the walls.

I’m balancing a huge stack of loose papers, still warm from the library printer. I’ve been running back and forth because the newspaper room printer is down. The pages in front of me contain crow myths and folklore, from almost every historical period and major geographic region in human history. Medieval. Babylonian. Celtic. Crows have been used as symbols for as long as we’ve told stories.

I’m not looking where I’m walking.

“Whoa there!” shouts a voice from the floor, too late.

I walk into Liam where he was crouched at his locker.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter as my pages fly everywhere.

“It’s a little late for a prayer on this one, don’t you think?” Liam scoops up my scattered pages and climbs to his feet. We talk every day when we exchange books, and we debate each other in lit class all the time, and I like how familiar he is to me now. How I’m starting to think of him as a friend. His eyebrows shift into concern.

“You all right?” he asks.

“I’m really sorry. Sleep deprived.”

“Studying too much?” He shakes the papers in his hands.

“Kind of. Newspaper article.”

“That’s a lot of work for an extracurricular,” he says.

“Says the football player with the perfect grades,” I say, cocking my head to the side. “How much do you practice? Three hours a night? And then you study?”

“That’s different. It’s all for those college applications.”

“Not so different. Me too.”

“You want to do this in school?” Liam shuffles the pages, straightening them. We start walking together, my notes tucked safely under his arm.

“More like in life. But yeah, school to start.”

“That’s cool. I’ve read your articles. They’re really good.”

“Thanks, Liam. But flattery doesn’t really—”

“It isn’t flattery.”

I squint my eyes at him. Isn’t it?

“Okay, it’s flattery, but it’s true. And you can’t say the same, because you don’t come to football games.”

“How on earth could you know that?”

“Because Sofia knows that, and she told me. Sofia is wise. Sofia knows all. Sofia thinks I’m nice.”

“Very smooth use of the best friend card, Liam.”

Dammit. I really do like him. And for a moment, I let myself have the daydream. The one where he asks me out again, and this time I say yes. The one where we go see a movie, and I lean my head on his shoulder.

It’s a perfect night.

It’s an impossible night.

We’ve reached the newsroom.

“Sorry I ran into you, Liam.”

“It’s cool. Pretty girl tripping over me is kind of the opposite of a problem for a seventeen-year-old guy.”

I reach for the classroom door.

“Hang on,” he says. “I do want to ask you something.” He looks into the room, like he’s checking whether anyone can overhear us, before he speaks. “I’m not gonna keep asking you out, Leighton. I don’t want to bug you. But if you ever wanna just . . . talk? I’m a good listener.”

Goose bumps prickle my arms, and tears threaten my eyes. It’s hard to keep it under control when I’m tired. It’s even harder when Liam McNamara is looking at me like he already knows my secrets.

I swallow hard.

“Thanks, Liam. That’s really nice. But I’m fine.”

I start to walk into the classroom but turn back, feeling some weird, strong urge to be honest with him. To stop using school as the dumb excuse that it is.

“I do like you, Liam. If things were different, I’d love to go out with you. But my life is a little more complicated than it might appear here at school. I have sisters, and they, ah, they really need me. Next year they won’t have me, and this year I need to be with them.”

I don’t know what else to say. I can’t be specific. It’s too much.

It hurts too much.

“I have a little sister, too, Barnes. I . . .” He hesitates, leans up against the wall. “Listen, I get it.” He holds out my notes for me, and I want to take my rejections back. I want to say yes. But I don’t.

Because the truth is that I don’t need Liam, but Campbell and Juniper still need me.