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Chapter 3

Fifty-Five Days Before

I
wished that Finn and I could see each other during the day, like by the school lockers or in study hall or over greasy pizza in the cafeteria like normal people, but Finn and his younger brother, Wallace, were homeschooled. That was why I lived for afternoons at the stables, even more than usual, the more I got to know him. But even Mother Nature stopped cooperating with me. Shorter days meant shorter horseback rides, which meant less Finn Time.

Finn and I were riding our horses along one of our favorite trails, the one where we couldn’t hear nearby traffic or see tile rooftops, only endless creosote bushes, tumbleweeds and saguaros. It was just us and our horses and my heartbeat that thundered against my rib cage whenever I got within twelve inches from him. I was convinced Finn could hear the excitement thundering in my chest. Or was it anticipation? Whatever it was, Finn was beginning to own it.

The farther we rode from the stables, the quieter the desert got, until I figured Finn could hear my thoughts, too, which would have been totally embarrassing because I loved watching him ride. His body moved like music in the saddle as his head shifted from side to side beneath his cowboy hat, surveying the dirt for rattlesnakes or coyotes or whatever danger he thought might lurk and spook the horses. I loved that he took care of us. I felt warm and safe riding with him.

That was the moment when he stopped his horse and waited for me to pull up alongside him. When I did, he reached a long arm over and grabbed my saddle horn before Honey’s nose passed Buster’s, murmuring to the horses to slow.

“What is it?” I sat higher as the horses rubbed sides, my heart still thundering with all of my embarrassing thoughts of Finn playing on repeat inside my head. “You see a snake or something?”

“I’ve got to go to New Mexico with my dad for a few days,” he said, out of the blue.

“Oh,” I squeaked. Wasn’t expecting that. My breath tightened and not just from the colder fall air. His news made me ache from missing him, even though he sat right beside me. “What for?”

“Rodeo in Gallup.” Finn had been saving his winnings from barrel-racing and team-roping competitions for college. They weren’t much, but as Finn said, every little bit helped. Like me, he wanted to become a veterinarian, another thing among a dozen that we’d learned we had in common during our now-almost-daily afternoon trail rides. You might not have known it from looking at him, but beneath his broad chest and cowboy bravado, Finn was crazy smart. His ACT scores were higher than mine and I thought my twenty-eight was boast-worthy. A part of me thought that Will Finnigan was too good to be true.

“When?”

“We leave Friday with the horse trailer.”

“So I won’t see you Friday after school?”

“No.”

“I’ll miss you,” I said, angry that my voice caught a fraction.

“I know.” He fought back a smile.

“You
know?
” I looked away and rolled my eyes at his uncharacteristic smugness.

Finn didn’t reply. “Jenn?”

I still wouldn’t look at him, which I knew was angry and silly but I couldn’t help it. I hated to think I wouldn’t see him for three whole days. It might as well have been three centuries.

Finn pulled both reins taut with one hand so the horses barely moved. His other hand left my saddle horn and reached for my shoulder.

My breathing stopped the instant the heat of his hand reached my shoulder.

Then he leaned across his saddle so that I had to look at him. We locked eyes.

He tilted his head and pressed his lips against mine, whispering “Jenn” between our mouths. I got dizzy when his lips touched mine, warm like his hand. I forgot how to breathe. Sounds disappeared. Colors blurred. The wind stopped and time froze.

Our first kiss.

When he pulled away, we opened our eyes at exactly the same time. It was like the Earth turned in slow motion. I swallowed and then said, “What took you so long?”

Finn’s chin pulled in and he smiled that crooked smile that made everything flutter inside my stomach. “Waiting for the right moment.”

“You chose wisely.” My eyes dipped back to his lips.

“So it would seem.” He clucked at the horses and snapped both sets of reins with one hand and laced his fingers through mine with his other one. We rode toward the sunset and my chest filled with so much lightness and warmth, the first time in a very long time that I cried happy tears inside.

Too soon we returned to the stable, just as the remaining sliver of sun was getting ready to dip below the jagged horizon.

Finn leaped off his horse and I tossed him my reins, still in the saddle, as he led our horses back to their stalls.

“Who’s that?” I whispered.

A girl I’d never seen before was riding a chestnut horse in the corral. Her long blond braid glowed in the darkening sky. It bounced against her back as she trotted the horse between hay bales. She waved at us as we passed by, a flash of teeth beneath her hat. I waved back.

We didn’t stop.

“Who is that?” I asked Finn again, squinting to see her face, but the brim from her cowboy hat hid everything except her smile.

“Nobody,” he said.

Chapter 4

Forty-Two Days Before

T
he next time we were all alone in the barn, Finn took my hands, lacing his warm fingers through mine, and backed me up against the wall. He whispered in my ear that he loved me, so I told him everything. Everything was a lot. Everything was my whole heart.

Nothing else mattered.

Chapter 5

Thirty-Six Days Before

A
fter school the bus dropped me off at the end of the mostly dirt-and-gravel road that led to the Finnigan Boarding Stables. I hadn’t seen Finn since before Christmas and there was an ache in my chest from missing him. With every day that passed without him in it, the ache grew tighter.

Finn and Wallace had spent most of the holidays at their grandparents’ ranch in Wyoming, apparently in a place so remote that even talking on Skype wasn’t possible. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait for Christmas vacation to end. How crazy was that? On the day that I would see him again, the clocks dragged as though someone had superglued the hands and my bus couldn’t chug itself fast enough down Lincoln Drive.

Jumping off the bus stairs, I sprinted all the way down the dirt road and through the back door of Finnigan Boarding Stables as my backpack thudded against my spine with six of my heaviest schoolbooks inside.

I burst through the barn door, already propped open by a hay bale, giddy with finding Finn and throwing my arms around him. A nervous grin had already spread across my face, as I anticipated his hands reaching for my waist and our lips pressed together in the cool darkness of the barn before we saddled up and escaped into the desert for a couple of hours, just the two of us.

Inside the barn, my eyes blinked rapid-fire for a few seconds, adjusting from the cloudless sky. The moment they cleared, I spotted them at the other end of the barn.

Finn and Nobody, the girl with the hair that glowed.

Finn was leaning next to Honey’s stall, right arm extended upward against the wall, with Nobody nestled beneath his arm. I’d stood in that exact spot before Christmas vacation, with Finn’s arms wrapped around me like a glove. Nobody’s blond braid curled over her shoulder and her chest, her thumbs tucked in the front pockets of her jeans. She wore her cowboy hat and tilted her head back to giggle at something Finn said, flashing those perfect white teeth. There was something familiar about her, as though I’d seen her somewhere besides Finnigan Boarding Stables, but I was too angry to take a closer look. Hot tears had already begun to cloud my eyes. Finn dropped his hand to brush something off her cheek. That simple touch, that intimacy, threatened to drop me to my knees.

The barn grew smaller in that moment, as if I were looking through a black hole that got tinier with every second. My head exploded with fury. Between their hushed voices, they didn’t notice me standing by the door, shaking. Struggling to form words.

I should have kicked the barn wall or thrown a pitchfork at them, because I wanted to. I should have screamed at the top of my lungs. I wanted to scream the hurt that burned through my chest but my heart was breaking with every tight breath I took.

Nobody was a Somebody.

And I was a Fool.

I spun around, my backpack still threaded over my shoulders. I ran outside through the back door toward Lincoln Drive and home, my footsteps crunching over the gravel like bullets. My tears burned my cheeks and flooded my throat. I didn’t stop running until I reached the circular driveway in front of my house.

Then I got the wind knocked out of me again.

A fluorescent-orange sticker was plastered on our front door, just below Mom’s Christmas wreath. Below the sticker, two strange men hovered outside the door. An official-looking guy in a brown uniform with a silver badge on his chest and reflective sunglasses stood beside another man hunched over the brass lock on our front door as if they had a right to be there. The other guy wore a black jumpsuit and had a skinny ponytail that stretched down the middle of his back. He was kneeling in front of our door, coring out the lock with a drill. It made a high wheezing sound, like a dentist’s drill. I shuddered.

It was the sound of our life changing.

Just like that, Drill Guy opened our front door and stepped inside our home, the only home I’d ever known.

My lungs still burned from running. “Hey!” I screamed at the men but it came out raspy and hoarse. “You can’t do that! I’m calling the cops!”

As soon as he spotted me, the man in the brown uniform reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet that held another badge that I couldn’t read from twenty yards away. I stepped closer, my fists clenched, my whole body raging. “I’m a sheriff,” he said. “I’m supposed to be here.” The sheriff lifted his palm, ordering me to stay back.

I froze in place, still struggling to steady my breath, my anger, my shock, everything. What could I do? I was just a high school junior with a sagging backpack. This was a nightmare. First Finn and Nobody, now this? Pinching my arm, I ordered myself to wake up.
Now!

But instead my gaze darted to my neighbors’ houses, wondering when someone would peer out a window and see this craziness happening in broad daylight on a perfectly sunny day. Wondering when someone would burst through their front door and help me. This wasn’t right. Strange men at our front door? Drilling through a lock? None of this made sense. I did the only thing I could: I screamed till my voice cracked, long enough to fall forward onto my knees.

When I couldn’t scream another second, I whipped out my cell phone and speed-dialed Mom, my rib cage aching from screaming and crying and raging.

“Dammit!” I muttered when I didn’t get a tone. I jammed my thumb into the buttons but my phone was officially dead, the third time in the past six months. I was tempted to throw the useless thing at the sheriff. I was tempted to run at him and kick him in the shins. But all I could manage was to come very close to hyperventilating.

The sheriff removed his sunglasses, walked closer and then placed a hand on my shoulder. He pulled me to my feet but I only bent over again to steady myself against my knees. I felt as if I could vomit on his shiny black boots.

“I’m sorry, kid. I’m really very sorry,” he said. “But you gotta know, when it gets to this point, a homeowner has been notified in just about every way possible about what’s going down.”

“What’s going
down?
” I screamed all over again. “What are you talking about?” We weren’t homeowners. We were a family. And this was our house. “You’re trespassing!”

But the sheriff’s voice stayed calm. “Like I said, I’m sorry. Just doing my job.” His bushy eyebrows lifted. “Here,” he said. “Use my phone. Call your parents.”

I snorted.
Parents.

There were no parents to call. I wished with all my heart there were parents. There was only Mom.

Even so, I grabbed the phone from his hand. I dialed Mom’s office phone. She’d given up her cell phone the last time my phone died because she’d said that she didn’t need it. Said it would reduce the cost of our “family plan.” Mom answered on the third ring but with the sheriff watching me and the sound of the locksmith’s drill hanging in the air, it felt as though Mom answered on the three-hundredth ring.

“Elaine Whitman,” she chirped. “How may I help you?”

“Mom!” My voice raged across the phone. “There are men at our front door they are rekeying the front door how can they do this they said they could why aren’t you here what do I do. What do I do? What do we do?”

When I ran out of breath, Mom spoke. Her voice morphed from Cheery Realtor Voice to the one that was small and tired, the way it had become since Dad died two years ago. And the way it stayed after Grandma died the following year, after she moved in with Mom and me and my little brother, Jack. Back then, after Dad and Grandma died, it had felt as if the whole world had turned against us. And to think that I’d told Finn all about it, all about Dad, all about the painful way Dad died. Even how I still thought about Dad all the time. Why did I have to share my deepest secrets with him? Tell him all the things that no one else knew?

“Oh my God, Jenn,” Mom said, her voice turning as desperate as mine. “I’d forgotten that today was the day. I’d forgotten. I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.” She kept apologizing, over and over, the word
denial
popping up between apologies. We had tried to sell the house after Dad died but Mom said that we owed more than what our home was worth. I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but I knew it wasn’t good. So I supposed that was why we’d never left, not that Jack and I ever wanted to leave. Leaving home would be like leaving Dad behind, too.

As Mom spoke, I flashed back to the piles of envelopes on the table inside the foyer that went unopened for weeks, maybe even months. Most of them were Grandma’s unpaid medical bills, “the ones that Medicare didn’t pay,” Mom had told me one night weeks ago, the only time I’d asked her about them. “I don’t have the energy to open another late notice,” she’d said. “I’ll deal with it later.” She’d waved it off as if it were no big deal, but whether that was to appease me or her, I wasn’t certain, looking back now. Then some thicker envelopes had begun to arrive, but to be honest, I’d only glanced at them when I glided through the front door after an afternoon at the stables, still high on Finn’s kisses.

With the sheriff’s phone against my ear, my eyes clouded over and my knees started to buckle. Not only were there strange men at our front door, drilling straight into our lives, but I realized that they had some kind of warped right to be here. How twisted was that? Finally, Mom said, “I’ll be home in ten minutes,” and I straightened as if slapped across the face. “Tell them to wait.” Then she hung up.

I looked up at the sheriff, a new wave of tears burning my eyes, his hand still gripping my shoulder, steadying me. The locksmith fidgeted from foot to foot and avoided my eyes. But he’d drilled long enough so that between their bodies I could see through the tiny circle clear into the inside of the house and all of the memories that lived there, good and bad. “My Mom’ll be here any minute.” I pulled back my shoulders and shrugged off the sheriff’s beefy hand. “Please wait.”

And they did.