Page 1 of The Light We Lost

Chapter One

Indy—nine years ago

This was my coyote ugly moment.

No, I wasn’t lying in a strange bed, head pounding as I tried to unravel who was passed out beside me. Nor was I atop a beer-slicked bar counter, dancing to LeAnn Rimes.

But I would chew my arm off to be anywhere but here.

“For Pete’s sake, Indy—you can’t put sugar in a customer’s gas tank just because they made you mad.”

“I didn’t put sugar in his gas tank.” I thrummed a finger over the cardboard box, deciding what to pack next. Tossing the roller skates aside, I grabbed a pile of clothes and stuffed them inside. “That damages vehicles, and I’d never do something like that.”

“Then can you explain to me why Mr. Walsh’s vehicle is currently stuck outside the diner? It won’t start, and there’s sugar scattered on the ground beneath his gas tank. I have two witnesses who claim they saw you outside fiddling with his car.” Mom tapped her foot, and if I wasn’t running late, I might’ve paid attention to the keen sense telling me to stop. But I had somewhere to be, and these boxes weren’t going to pack themselves. “He said you even charged him for the sugar. That’s some nerve!”

I choked on my laugh, and Dad seemed to do the same from my bedroom doorway. Hastily, I grabbed the roller skates and crammed them in the box with my sewing kit, deciding I hadn’t given them a fair shot after quitting the first time I nearly broke my ankle. “He wanted sugar in his tea. Am I not supposed to charge him for that?”

“No, you should not charge him for free sugar packets. Especially if you poured them into his gas tank! How do you expect us to replace his vehicle? We’re not made of money.”

“Then maybe it’s not such a bad idea to start charging for sugar packets?”

I was running a bandana through my fingers, wondering if I should bring my gardening supplies, when I realized how silent it had fallen. I glanced out of the corner of my eye. Mom’s nostrils were flaring. I swore her hair deepened a shade of red, something Dad said she and I had in common—when we lost our temper, our hair was on the verge of flames. “I may have dumped a few packets on the ground beside his car so he’d think I did,” I admitted, turning to face her in my haphazard bedroom. Jeans were piled on my desk, my pair of red Ariat boots beside them. Yellow nail polish was tipped over, leaking onto the Lucky Charm crumbs on my floor. Nearly everything I owned had been tossed around my room as I struggled to decide what to keep and what to leave behind. “But I didn’t put any sugar in his gas tank.”

“Then why won’t his car start?”

“I unplugged his battery.” I shrugged. “If he’d looked under the hood, rather than pointing fingers, he would’ve seen that.”

She gaped at me like she had no idea where I’d come from. Chuck E. Cheese was what I told her every time I got that look. “He has every reason to believe you’d do that. Don’t think anyone forgot how you tortured that poor man by hiding Pop-Its in his chair every day last semester. You’re lucky they let you graduate.”

“How could they stop me from graduating if they never proved it was me?”

She raised her brow, silently calling me out. Fine, it was me. But Mr. Walsh deserved it. I shouldn’t have bothered him today, but after he walked into theStruttin’-Ruttin’ Diner, I’d practically foamed at the mouth to deliver one last prank.

Mom sighed, a hand on her hip. “When is this going to stop? What did that poor man ever do to you?”

“Nothing.” He’d done something to someone I loved, and that was worse. “I’ll apologize to him the next time I see him. I’m sorry,” I added, realizing both she and Dad still wore their aprons. They must’ve been mad if they’d left the diner in the middle of the dinner rush. “I won’t do it again.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

I gave her a tight-lipped smile, saving my breath. I could swear on my firstborn child, and she still wouldn’t believe me. I eyed the Patrick Swayze poster on my wall, torn if I should bring it or not as she said, “I found one of your acceptance letters today. Might not be too late to change your mind.”

I rolled my eyes. I should’ve burned that letter, not thrown it away. Rather than commenting on her going through my trash, I reminded her, “We agreed that I’d apply.”

Not that I’d go.

Leaving the poster behind, I slipped into my bathroom, aware she and Dad were having a silent conversation behind me. Opening the medicine cabinet, I rifled through the bottles as Dad said, “Might not be a bad idea if you take a class or two. Especially since you’re going to be living on campus anyway.”

“I don’t understand why you want to live on the campus of a college you aren’t attending,” Mom muttered.

I opened the bottle of Benadryl and grabbed two tablets before swallowing them dry, gagging at the taste. “Because I’m living with someone who is going to school there. And I’m not taking classes because I don’t know what I want to do.” I could barely cram pieces of my life into boxes—how could I possibly know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life? I knew who I was today, but I couldn’t anticipate tomorrow or the next day.

But I wasn’t afraid. There was one steady light in my future, and I was following it.

Glancing in the mirror, I pulled my hair out of its bun, copper curls sprawling down my back. I grabbed a purple bandana to match the flower I’d painted on the thigh of my overalls and tied it in my hair, adjusting the knot as I said, “Plenty of people don’t go to college. Auburn didn’t.”

“Your sister had a plan,” Mom countered. “There’s a difference.”

I snorted. Besides the three years between us, the only difference in our situations was that my older sister had moved to Texas to connect with some marine she’d written letters to, and she happened to know what she wanted to do with her life. “I have a plan.”

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