Lucky Penny (10 page)

“Okay, guys, five minutes to say your final goodbyes and then it’s time.” Marissa wrapped her arm around me, and I bristled.

I couldn’t help it.

She knew I didn’t feel comfortable when someone touched me, but she had been pushing my boundaries lately. Although she still hadn’t come right out and asked why I opposed touch, it was as if she was trying to use shock therapy to cure me.

“Hmm, Penny, can I talk to you in, hmm, in private?” Erica stood awkwardly looking down at her feet.

I ducked out of Marissa’s hold, instantly feeling myself relax. “Of course, you can.”

Marissa gave us some space, and I motioned to the bench off to the side. Once seated, I turned to Erica and waited.

“I just wanted to say sorry for giving you a hard time. I know you’ve only been trying to help me, and I’ve been a total bitch, and now, it’s time to go back, and I don’t want to leave.”

Erica’s eyes filled with tears, and I swallowed hard. Anguish etched into her face. Inside of her. This was a teenage girl who was confused and scared and alone, and I related to that more than she would ever know.

Clearing my throat, I said, “It has been my pleasure getting to know you, Erica. You are smart and determined, even if it is determined to do the opposite of everyone else.”

At that, Erica laughed.

"Living in foster care isn’t easy. I know that better than anyone does, but it doesn’t have to define you. Figure out what you want in life and go for it. Remember, a lifetime of possibilities."

Erica nodded, even managing a small smile. “Thank you.” She rose from the bench. But before she walked away, she turned back and said, “My foster family… they’re not bad people. They just don’t get me. I just thought you should know that.”

I swiped the tears from my eyes as I watched her leave. When I looked back over the sea of people, I found Blake watching me with sadness in his eyes.

It was as if he knew. Knew what had just passed between Erica and me.

Somehow, he always knew.

“Two down, three more to go. Good job, guys. Keep up the hard work. Enjoy your downtime.” Troy applauded the circle and left us to go in search of Tina, who hadn’t made it to the debrief this time.

I pulled my hoodie tighter around my body. Although the sun kept the days warm, evenings were starting to cool down already, and I noticed no one seemed as eager to skinny dip in the lake tonight.

“How are you feeling?” Marissa asked me as she edged closer to the fire to toast a marshmallow.

“Okay, I guess. I was sad to see them leave.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t get any easier. Some groups are harder to let go of, but tomorrow is a new day and a new set of teenage attitude.”

Sheridan was sitting next to us, and she muttered something that sounded a lot like an amen to that, but neither Marissa nor I asked her to repeat it.

“Okay, since Troy isn’t here to kick us off with a song, I don’t mind stepping in.” Blake stood up, retrieved Troy’s guitar, and slipped the strap over his neck. His fingers plucked at the strings a couple of times as if he was getting reacquainted with the feel of them, and then he sat back down on the overturned log.

Everyone watched him like it was a completely normal occurrence, even the new counselors. But to me, it was just another thing to add to the growing list of things I didn’t know about Blake Weston.

“I wrote this song a while back.”

Blake could play. His fingers worked the strings with ease, blending together to create a soft melody, but it wasn’t his guitar skills that had me in awe. It was his voice. Deep and gravelly, his sound filled the space around us until I was lost in his words.

I’ve never been one to say how I feel

Talk comes cheap and I wanted it to be real

A touch of our hands as we lay under the sky

With you by my side I felt like I could fly

She’s my lucky penny, my lucky penny

She’s my lucky penny, my lucky penny

Lucky, lucky, lucky, my lucky penny

You walked into my life and turned things around

Showed me how it felt to be found

We had everything and nothing all at the same time

My best friend, my heart, my partner in crime

She’s my lucky penny, my lucky penny

She’s my lucky penny, my lucky penny

Lucky, lucky, lucky, my lucky penny

I didn’t realize I was crying until Marissa pressed a tissue into the palm of my hand. I blinked down at the white paper and sniffled. To my relief, everyone was as entranced by Blake as I had been and no one except Marissa noticed my emotional state.

Excusing myself, I made my way back to our cabin, the ghosts of my past weighing heavy on my shoulders. I felt Blake’s eyes follow me as I disappeared into the trees, but I didn’t look back.

I couldn’t.

Marissa didn’t follow me. It was most likely she had pieced together our story after Blake’s song. How could she not? It was as if he had weaved our entire relationship into his lyrics. I could feel his sixteen-year-old self singing every line to my sixteen-year-old self. Although, I was pretty certain the sixteen-year-old Blake I’d known then had no clue how to play the guitar.

After washing the tearstains from my face, I brushed my teeth. It was still early, but I couldn’t face going back out there, so I changed into my shorts and tank top and climbed into bed. Sleep would be impossible, but at least here, I was safe.

Most people felt lonely in solitude, but I welcomed the silence. I embraced it even. Something about the quiet, the knowledge no one else was around, comforted me. I knew it made me different. I didn’t need a shrink to tell me that, but it didn’t change the fact that I found sanctuary in being alone.

I lay there not really allowing myself to think. Thinking was dangerous; it led to remembering, and my memories were stained with pain and hurt and the kinds of things that made most people’s nightmares look like a walk in the park. Instead, I tracked the uneven cabin ceiling. My eyes followed the planes of the wood from one end to the other and back again until they grew heavy.

A knock on the door startled me sending my already restless heart into overdrive and I rubbed at my eyes.

“Hello?” I called out hoping to hear Marissa’s voice, but I knew it wasn’t her. She wouldn’t have knocked; she would have barged right in and demanded answers.

“Penny, it’s me.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, but my mind betrayed me as an image of Blake’s face filled my head.

Another knock.

“Penny.”

Forcing myself to sit up, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. He wasn’t going away. Blake—our connection—was something I was going to have to deal with sooner or later, and from Blake’s admissions over the last few days, it seemed that he was making the decision for me.

My legs were like lead as I walked to the door. It swung open and Blake stood there looking at me with such reverence in his eyes I almost crumpled. Maybe I did crumple because, before my head had time to process what was happening, I was in Blake’s arms, and he was holding on to me like he needed me to breathe.

“I’ve missed you so much. I’ve tried to stay away, to give you space, but I can’t. I can’t spend another day feeling like you might slip through my fingers again.”

One of Blake’s hands buried itself in my hair and cradled my head holding me to him. My face pressed up against the collar of his hoodie, and I breathed him in. He smelled familiar, like damp grass and fresh air, of a time when things were less complicated, and my heart ached for us. At that moment, we weren’t two strangers reunited by chance; we were sixteen-year-old Blake and Penny.

And we needed each other to survive.

I
was twelve when I watched my parents die in the collision that should have killed me as well. With no family to take me in, the state had no choice but to put me in foster care. At the time, I was too numb to care. My world had been ripped apart, and if that wasn’t enough, it chewed me up and spat me out. I wanted to die. Wished over and over that the accident had taken me as well. But instead, I ended up on the front porch of a run-down house in Lancaster, Ohio. ‘The Freemans are good people,’ my social worker had said to me on the car ride over. I didn’t care if they were the fairy godmother and Santa Claus—no one would ever replace my parents.

Being all alone in the world is a scary place when you’re a child. But I wasn’t alone for long. Blake was the only other kid in the group home who tried to get to know me. The others were okay, except a mean girl called Amy, but they didn’t want to be friends.

Blake was different.

He stuck up for me, made me laugh, and enjoyed my company. He wanted me around.

He was my best friend at a time in my life when I thought I’d never feel whole again, and in the end, Blake had done the impossible. He had started to piece together some of the brokenness in me. Although he could never replace my parents, he did make living each day a little bit less painful.

And then one day, he was gone—taking with him a part of me that had never been replaced.

The day I aged out of the Freeman group home, the social worker had asked me what the first thing I was going to do now that I was an adult. I looked at her, choking down the tears building behind my eyes, and said ‘never look back.’

And that was exactly what I did.

I didn’t dwell on what had happened to me at the hands of Derek and Marie. I didn’t allow myself to cry any more sleepless nights over Blake. I lived each day as it came and learned how to navigate the world on my own.

I became a survivor.

Even if I wasn’t really living and only existing, I didn’t let myself get close to anyone or put my trust in others. I built walls around me so high that it was virtually impossible to climb over them, and when I did finally let someone in, my anxieties prevented me from taking the next step.

Or, at least, that was what I had thought until I saw him again. But now, as I sat across the room from Blake, I couldn’t help but wonder if my attempts at relationships had all failed because he was the benchmark. Because the sixteen-year-old guy I had fallen in love with, who understood me like no other, still owned my heart.

“What are you thinking?” Blake broke the heavy silence between us.

After I let him into the cabin, I’d returned to the bed and he had taken the rickety chair in the corner of the room. We had been sitting like that for the last twenty minutes.

I pulled at the frayed hem of my shorts. “Nothing. Everything.”

“Just like my song, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t know you played the guitar?”

“I didn’t. It’s a recent thing. Troy is a great teacher. Listen, I’m sorry if the song was too much. I wrote that a long time ago when things were, well, when things were confusing. I didn’t plan to sing it tonight, but I saw you and it just came out.”

I dropped my eyes and took a deep breath. Blake seemed to have no problem talking about us, when all I wanted to do was talk about anything but us.

When I didn’t look back up, Blake whispered, “I never forgot about you, Penny.”