Chapter Fifty-Six

BY THE TIME I GET TO where we parked earlier, in a field for overflow cars, his truck is gone.

Shit.

My chest aches, and I sit down right there, on the cold ground. I feel like I’m suffocating. I lean my head down to my knees, hug them to me, and try to suck in enough air. The thing in my chest is rattling its cage so hard it’s stealing my breath.

I hear footsteps approach, and then someone sits down beside me in the grass.

I finally raise my head. It’s Sofia, with her usual lopsided smile and bouncy ponytail and spotless cheering uniform now sitting in the mud with me.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Fiona has the girls; they’re getting hot cider. Are you okay?” She tucks the loose hair in my face back behind my ear.

“I don’t feel good, Sof.”

“Just breathe,” Sofia says, rubbing small circles on my back.

We don’t move for a few minutes. It starts to flurry outside, and the ground is freezing. I can hear when the game reaches halftime and the band starts to play. The cheerleaders usually perform at halftime. Sofia won’t just be missed, she’ll get in trouble with her coach. But she makes no move to leave.

When I can breathe normally, I sit up.

“Thanks, Sof. I’m fine now, really. You should get back to the field.”

“Don’t worry, it’s just a stupid game.”

“You’ll get in trouble. And you’re covering the game for the paper.”

“Coach will get over it. I’m the best one she’s got. And there are, like, a thousand people who can fill me in on the seven minutes of game time I’m missing.”

Sofia doesn’t budge, and I lean my head on her shoulder.

“Is it stuff at home?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I honestly wasn’t even sure you knew.”

“I’ve known you forever, Leighton. I know why you hardly ever want to hang out at your house. And you are never fully relaxed around him, even when his charm is turned way up.” Sofia mimics turning a dial. “I’m not stupid. I knew. I just didn’t think you wanted me to know, so I pretended not to notice things.”

“I didn’t want you to know,” I said. “Or maybe I did. But I didn’t want to acknowledge it.”

“I can understand that,” she says. “Listen, if it gets scary and you need a place to run away to, I’ll literally leave my bedroom window unlocked twenty-four seven. Just come right in. Bring Cam and June Bug. We’ll have a slumber party.”

I laugh and shake my head, suddenly sniffling, and not from the cold.

“Thanks, Sof.”

“Ready to go back in there?”

“Yeah,” I say. She jumps to her feet and pulls me up.

“Are you frozen, snowflake?” she asks.

“You’re the one in a skirt,” I point out, and she laughs.

Just inside the stadium, I find my mom.

I wrap my arms around her immediately, and Sofia slips past us, giving me a little wave before jogging away.

“I thought he made you go,” I say, my voice a little muffled against her jacket.

“Without you guys? Never,” she answers. “Sorry, Leighton.”

“It’s not yours to apologize for,” I tell her.

“We have to figure out a ride.”

“There’s a bus that runs to Auburn. It passes right through this town, just a few streets over.”

“Do I want to know why you know that?” she asks.

I look up at her. “It runs by Nana’s place, too. If we want to go there tonight.”

“I just want to go home,” she says.

Home.

I let go of her.

“I’ll go get the girls and meet you at the gate,” Mom says.

She walks away, but I hesitate for a moment in the cold. I stick out my tongue and catch some snowflakes. They melt in an instant, and I wonder if that’s how my life will look. Here for a fleeting second, and then gone. If I don’t get through whatever this is, then that’s all I will be. A memory in my classmates’ minds. Their true-life crime story to tell at frat parties.

There has to be more.

I can be brave, like Campbell and Juniper think I am. Like I’m not just one little snowflake, about to disappear, but the whole storm. A force to be reckoned with.

I’ll be an entire season, but my season is not the soft brown earth of spring or a blue-sky summer. I’m not drifting yellow leaves or crisp white snow.

My season is inconvenient, messy, loud.

The season of the crows. The color of mourning.

Nothing about Auburn feels like home anymore.

But if Auburn can have its miracle, however dark and strange and feathered it might be, then maybe I can have one, too.