Page 43 of My Heart to Find

*

THE LIGHT IS GOLDEN, so perfect, framing Cara’s face perfectly. Her hair looks more golden, lighter in this light, and I reach across, brush her hair away from her face. The back of my hand brushes her skin, and electric shocks jolt through me.

This girl! This girl is the one. I can just tell. I mean, I suspected it before, when we just clicked. But last night, last night, hugging her as the sunset around us, with all the trees as our guards, that was when I knew.

She starts laughing.

“What?” I ask her, smiling.

“Nothing,” she says, but her laughter is infectious.

Nervous, we’re both nervous, sitting out here, on the ragged mountainside above Valldemossa, a picnic of the food we’d managed to save from the breakfast buffet spread out between us.

And in this moment, I know I never want to leave. Because this is perfection—with Cara. So long as we’re together, it just feels like everything will be okay.

*

IFOCUS BACK ON JANA, feel slightly jarred at the way the memory suddenly came back to me. It was like I was there. I can smell Cara’s perfume now.

I shake my head, trying to clear it.

Stop it, I tell myself. I’m on a date with Jana now. And Cara’s not interested. I mean, it’s like she’s a completely different person now.

I take a deep breath. Jana’s talking—something about a book she’s writing that’s set on Dartmoor—and I tell myself to concentrate. But of course as soon as I tell myself to do that, I do the opposite. I think of Cara, and I try to work out what happened.

Did I upset her somehow? Either yesterday or earlier in the week, or even three years ago?

Was it a misunderstanding? Did she think she’d given me her number and she was waiting for me to call her?

But, no, I remember it clearly. On the last day of the retreat, when we were allowed our phones again and contact with the outside world, Cara’s phone wouldn’t charge. Her charger had broken and she couldn’t turn her phone on. She’d got a new number recently, she’d said, and she didn’t know it off by heart then. So, I wrote my number down for her—on the inside cover of the novel she was reading, written in pencil of course. I’m not a monster.

No, she could’ve called me.

She just didn’t. And I even told her about my date today with Jana yesterday. If she was interested in me, that was the perfect chance to say something. And she didn’t.

I’ve got to move on.

*

“I’M STOPPING OFF ATthis library,” Jana says on the way back, a few hours later. “It’s bigger than Brackerwood’s. Want to come in?”

“Sure.” We’re in her car, and I’m surprised by how tired I am—after climbing that first tor we climbed two others—but I want to get to know Jana. Does she like reading too? Just like Cara?

I swallow hard and steer my thoughts away from her.

Jana pulls her car into a parking space outside a huge, red-brick building with tall, arching windows of tinted glass.

We get out. There’s a cool breeze setting in now, and we hurry inside.

This library is huge. Jana’s right—it’s definitely bigger than the one I saw her and her friends in last week. This one has shelves that seem to go on for miles. It’s the kind of library that makes me think of spooky stories being told in candlelight, where the flickering flame lights up the books around it.

“Oh, that’s Esme,” Jana says. “You remember Cara? That’s her little sister.”

Cara’ssister. I go cold suddenly, and I don’t know why. Because looking at the girl, who so obviously looks like Cara, is making me think of her. Someone who’s not interested in me. Why am I thinking of her when I’m with a woman whoisinterested in me?

“Hey, Es,” Jana calls out. “Is Cara here too?”

“She still won’t come here,” Esme says, rolling her eyes. “Says it’s too dangerous.”

---