The next few days pass in a blur. My father is released from jail. Jalen and I are discharged from the hospital. I go to stay with my mother and Stuart at the Marriott near the airport. My mother and I share a room; Stuart gets his own. I can tell they miss being together, but they’re trying to make things easier for me. I’m grateful, especially when the nightmares wake me up and my mom is there. She doesn’t seem to mind watching old movies in the middle of the night or sleeping with the light on. I know eventually we’re going to have to talk about what happened between her and Stuart before the divorce, but I’m not ready. Maybe I’ll never be. The truth is that she’s here and she loves me. For now, that’s enough.
Jalen visits me every day. My mother leaves us alone, and we spend hours watching movies or playing board games while I’m hooked up to the bone stimulator. We talk about everything. He tells me about his uncle—a powerful healer, and also an alcoholic. I remember what Jalen told me about medicine men, how the skills are passed down from one generation to another.
“Your uncle is going to teach you to be a healer, isn’t he?”
Jalen nods. I tell him I’m glad but don’t ask him questions he can’t answer.
In return, I tell him about my mother’s affair, how it seeped like a poison into our house.
The stories we tell each other are ones we have never told anyone else and probably will never repeat. But as the daughter of an archeologist, I understand the power of stories like these—how they lay bare the bones of your family and expose the very things we’ve been taught should stay hidden. How the truths in them can set the course of your life. You can either learn from the past or risk the same consequences. That is the gift of history.
The Lintons hold a funeral for Emily on the fifth day after I’m released from the hospital. The service is held in a small, nondenominational church that looks more like an auditorium than anything else. But it’s bright and open with a full wall of windows.
Dr. Linton asked me to share a little bit about the friendship Emily and I had growing up—in other words, to talk about the happier times. Although Stuart objected (he honestly used that word) on the grounds that it would be too stressful for me, I overruled him.
My legs shake as I walk to the podium and look out at a pretty good-sized group of people. Jalen sits near the front and gives me an encouraging nod. There’s a microphone in front of me, and as I adjust it, it makes a loud, static noise, and I feel even less worthy of talking about Emily. However, I’m here and there’s no going back.
“Emily was my best friend.” I hear the nervousness in my voice and take a breath. “We were five when we met. I was pretending Birthday Barbie was an Anasazi princess—only I couldn’t pronounce Anasazi—I called it ‘Anassie.’. Emily had to teach me.”
Someone chuckles in the audience, and suddenly it’s much easier to tell everyone how fearless she was. How we skinny dipped, tried to make a pet of a tarantula, and snuck out of our tent at night to look for ghosts in the ruins our fathers excavated. In the telling, I remember the best parts of her—the way she made me feel like I was the smartest, most creative person in the world, and the way she loved without holding anything back. Maybe it hadn’t turned out the way it should have for her, but she’d followed her heart and that took guts.
As they take away her casket, I know I take part of her with me. That I am stronger and more appreciative of life. Thanks to her, I know who I am and, more importantly, who I want to become. She died, but I get to live. I know she would want me to see this as an opportunity, a second chance that shouldn’t be wasted.
That’s why, after the funeral, after I hug a weeping Mrs. Linton, I seek out my father and lead him to a quiet spot in the back of the room. His tanned skin is paler than usual, and I can tell from the way he keeps nervously checking the knot of his tie that the service has been hard on him.
“You did a great job,” he says. He lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Paige.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say. Inside my cast, my arm itches like I have a hundred flea bites. I rub it against my dress and feel a very dull ache, but it reminds me there are worse things than broken bones. In the distance I see Jalen, talking to a group of what must be Emily’s friends from school. He looks unfamiliar but handsome in a dark suit and tie. He feels my gaze and glances over, a question in his eyes. He has no clue about the conversation I’m about to have with my dad.
I look down at my new sandals, only one of the gifts my mother has been showering me with since she’s arrived. The presents are her way of telling me she loves me, which makes what I have to do all the harder.
“I’ve been thinking, Dad.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to go back to New Jersey. I want to stay in Arizona. With you.”
An expression of incredulity passes over his features. His hand goes to his head as if to readjust his cowboy hat, but then he realizes he isn’t wearing one and his hand drops. A muscle works in his throat, and for once I think he’s speechless.
“I want to stay here,” I repeat. “Live with you.”
He gives me a small smile and shakes his head. “Your mother needs you. Especially after everything that’s happened.”
“She has Stuart.” I search his eyes, trying to read if this is the real reason he hasn’t said yes. “I like it here. I like the desert, working around the old pit houses.” I feel the color burning in my cheeks. “I feel like I belong here.”
His expression seems to soften. “You don’t know how much that means to me to hear you say that.” He pauses, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “But your mom is a good parent—she loves you, Paige. It’ll hurt her if you choose to stay here.”
This is true, but not enough. Not anymore. My arm itches so badly I want to rip the cast off. “I’m seventeen, Dad. In six months, I’ll get to decide where I live, but please don’t make me wait that long. This isn’t about me being angry at either of you. This is about me. What I want—what I need.”
His eyes study my face, and a new light seems to burn in them. “You sure? You know I can’t cook, and half the time I’m in my own world… What about your friends in New Jersey? Prom and all that.”
I shrug. “I don’t care about proms. New Jersey isn’t right for me anymore—I think you get that. I want to help you finish restoring the ruins.” I give him my best smile. “Will you let me live with you?”
“I’ll have to talk to your mother,” he says, but then his face softens. “But if it’s up to me, it’s a yes.” He smiles, opens his arms, and pulls me into a hug.
It takes my parents a full day to work out a new plan for me. Even then, it’s full of disclaimers—the judge has to amend the custody arrangement, I have to do well in school, I have to spend Christmas and half the summer with my mother. I think I would agree to just about anything, though, to be able to stay.
I can’t wait to tell Jalen, and when he calls to invite me to have dinner with his family, I have to bite my tongue to keep from blurting it out.
He picks me up in that battered old pickup that idles like we’re sitting on an earthquake. It smells of men and tools and summer, and the wind whooshes in my face as we drive down the road, ending any hope I have of arriving at his parents’ house with neat, smooth hair. But it doesn’t matter. I’m sitting on top of a secret so exciting I feel like I’m going to explode, and yet it’s so big I don’t know how to tell him.
“How are you doing?” Jalen asks as we exit my father’s neighborhood and head for the highway. It’s still bright, but the sun is beginning to lose the worst of the heat and the air feels like satin. I shoot him a sideways look. Today he’s wearing a pair of khaki-colored shorts and a black Jimmy Eat World T-shirt.
“A little nervous,” I admit. “Can we stop somewhere? I want to buy some flowers for your mother.”
Jalen shoots me a sideways look. “You don’t need to bring her flowers. And you don’t need to worry. Everyone is going to love you.”
I pick at the nubs of the worn fabric seat. “Thanks, but right now I’m the girl who almost got their son killed. I’d kind of like to change their impression of me.”
“You’re the girl who stopped a monster,” Jalen says. “That’s how they think of you.”
I try to read his profile to see if he’s just saying that to try to make me feel better or if he really means it. Even he doesn’t, I’m glad he said it. “All the same, I’d like to bring your mom some flowers.”
He smiles. “Okay.”
We drive a few miles and then take an exit that turns us in the direction of the mountains. We follow a two-lane road that splits farmland on either side of us. Jalen drives a little farther, and the road narrows, becomes more rutted, and he slows down. Just as I’m about to ask where he’s going, he pulls the truck to the side of the road and turns off the engine.
For a long moment, we stare out the window at clusters of orange wildflowers growing along the fence line, stretching as far as my eye can see. They look a little like marigolds, but more delicate, which seems strange considering they have to be a lot more hardy to bloom in such dry soil.
“Beautiful,” Jalen says, and his eyes say that I am, too.
We turn and look at each other for a long moment. He is also beautiful, with his long dark hair framing his oval face, his skin smooth and dark, his lips so perfectly sculpted that all I think about is how much I want to kiss him.
We lean toward each other, but between the truck’s gears, my broken arm, and his broken collarbone, we have to turn and shift and strain. We both laugh at the failed attempts to reach each other, how careful we have to be to line our bodies up without hurting each other. But then, his face is close to mine and his warm mouth closes over my own. We’re kissing, and even though I can’t hold him the way I want to, can’t be as close as my body wants to be, it is amazing. I close my eyes. I belong to him and he belongs to me in a way that we can never belong to anyone else.
We pull apart for a few seconds and then start kissing again. I don’t think it’s ever going to be enough—I think I could kiss him forever. But then we pull back, catching our breath and grinning at each other. I love him, and I think he loves me.
“I’m staying,” I say, holding his gaze. “I’m not going back to New Jersey. I’m going to live with my dad.”
“Are you serious?” Jalen grabs me before I even have time to answer and hugs me so hard that I think he may have re-fractured his collarbone. “This is fantastic. Are you sure? When did you find out?”
“Today, right before you picked me up.” His grin tells me he’s happy, but I need to hear him say it anyway. “I don’t want you to feel pressure or anything about us. If it works out with us, that’s great. But if it doesn’t…” I give him a small shrug.
“It’s going to work out.” His eyes tell me he’s serious, and something inside me relaxes. We’re going to be together; we’re meant to be together. It feels scary, like I’m glimpsing something I shouldn’t, but it also feels exciting and right. I know if Emily were alive, she’d be cheering me on, telling me to go for it.
They’re all waiting for me when Jalen and I step through the front door to his house. I smell something delicious and glimpse an oak dining room table already set for dinner, and then a dark-haired woman with Jalen’s brown eyes and smile steps forward to greet me.
She accepts the flowers as if nothing I could give her could please her more and then takes my arm, leading me into a spacious family room decorated with brown leather couches, Western artwork, and shelves of family pictures.
“Everyone,” she says, “this is Paige.” She smiles at a boy seated on the couch with a gaming controller in his hands. “Turn that off, Harold,” she says, “and say hello to Paige.”
Harold is a younger-looking version of Jalen. They have the same strong cheekbones and deep-set dark eyes, but Harold is finer-boned and the expression in his eyes is more mischievous, where Jalen’s is almost always serious. “Do you want to play Ambush IV with me?”
“Jalen warned me not to,” I admit and he laughs.
“You already know John,” Jalen’s mother continues, gesturing to her husband, who welcomes me with a smile.
“And my brother-in-law, Billy Yazzi.”
It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the moment he appeared framed by the moonlight in the doorway to the ruins, and I feel my palms go damp at the memory. That night he was a warrior, but right now he looks like a kindly, middle-aged man dressed in Wrangler jeans and a red button-down shirt. He’s holding a plain brown bag in his lap, and as I greet him, he says, “I have something for you.”
I feel myself blush with pleasure and then cross the room. Pushing aside some white tissue paper, I pull out an intricately carved wooden doll—a girl, painted yellow, with corn, seeds, and other symbols running the length of her body. I recognize her immediately—the yellow corn maiden. It reminds me of Emily—not how she died, but as she lived, holding nothing back, running fearlessly, gracefully through the corn field.