Page 54 of Lose You to Find Me

That realization smacks me head-on as I sit in my bedroom surrounded by silence, knees drawn to my chest as I stare at the corkboard full of a collage of pictures from over the years.

My light-pink room, with frilly curtains, decorative pillows, and random stuffed animals lingering on the dresser, shelves, and bed, screams innocence when I’m anything but. I’d like to think the good intent behind the reason I’m not a saint makes up for the feelings I hurt along the way.

I’m not sure that’s enough though.

Lowering my feet to the floor, I walk over to the corkboard and touch one of the pictures hanging there. It’s ripped down the middle because I didn’t want to see the other person whose arm is still seen around me next to the pool in Radcliff.

It was summer, and I’d been excited to see my friends in Virginia but sad that Caleb wasn’t going to be there. We were new, nothing serious, so I told myself it was good to miss him, good to have our space. People who are always near each other tend to get on each other’s nerves from what I can tell.

“Come on, Raine,” Collin teases, lowering his phone to look at me. “I know you can smile. Let’s see it.”

The boy next to me, Cody, puts his arm around my shoulder and tugs me into his side. He’s more muscular than Caleb, and it makes me wonder if he plays sports too. Is he a football player? He seems like the baseball type. I think I heard him and Chris talking about the Yankees and Red Sox game earlier.

I also notice that he smells nice. Whatever cologne or body spray he’s wearing isn’t too strong. I can’t help but take a small breath to try figuring out what scent is coming from him. It’s woodsy and floral at the same time. New compared to what I’m used to.

“Did you just smell me?” he asks, a lopsided grin on his face.

Instantly, my face blossoms with heat. “I…uh… Sorry.”

He winks, causing my face to pinken even more. “Don’t be. You can do whatever you want to me.”

There’s no doubt he’s flirting, which makes a nervous laugh bubble past my lips.

I think briefly about Caleb. We aren’t officially dating yet, so flirting isn’t against the rules. Right? I see girls flirt with Caleb all the time, especially the cheerleaders who go up to him after the games. It doesn’t make me feel great when I see him laugh at whatever they’re saying, but I know I’ve got no claim to him.

Maybe that’s why I settle into Cody’s side and grin at Collin as he lifts his phone to snap more photos of the group.

Cody is cute—a blond surfer wannabe compared to Caleb’s dark-haired, dark-eyed, all-American thing. They’re both cute in their own ways, and they both seem to like me. It strokes my ego a little because there’s nothing particularly special about me. My hair is a frizzy dark red mess that I usually don’t know what to do with, I barely wear makeup because I have no idea how to apply it much less make it look good, and I’m not the best at making conversation without coming off as awkward.

Yet here’s an attractive boy who keeps smiling at me, finding tiny ways to touch me whenever we’re near each other, and flirting enough to make me blush regardless of how I see myself.

It feels good to be wanted, and that makes me feel like any other teenage girl. Suddenly, I understand why those cheerleaders want the athletes’ attention so much. It’s fun.

That’s why after a while I stop thinking about Caleb altogether and stay in the moment with my summer friends.

Which is why I follow Cody inside that night when he asks if I want to go somewhere quieter to talk. And we do. We talk about our favorite music and listen to some of their best songs on YouTube, talk about movies, hobbies, and everything in between.

We never bring up what our lives are like outside summer—what or who we’re going back to. It’s easier that way. Safer.

That night, I lose my virginity to the smooth-talking summer boy who I’d never see or speak to again.

It was awkward and fumbled, and it’d hurt. When all was said and done, I lay in bed alone after he got dressed and left, claiming he couldn’t be caught out past curfew again. I wondered if anybody would notice the difference in me. I heard sex could do that to people.

A few months later, I did notice a change. When I woke up in my own bed at home in an excruciating amount of pain and blood covering my sheets and legs. I’d had bad periods before, but this didn’t feel the same as normal, and I’d had plenty of experience since starting my cycle at eight years old. Then again, it’d been over two months since I’d had one at all, which I chalked up to stress.

I’d felt horrible for sleeping with Cody—for giving him what I should have given Caleb.

But when I drove myself to Planned Parenthood the next morning all by myself because I didn’t want to ask Mom or Dad to take me to the doctor, my world completely stopped.

“You suffered a miscarriage. I’m sorry for your loss,” the woman in the lab coat tells me, putting her hand on mine in comfort.

Life hit me harder than it ever did that day, and I couldn’t tell anybody. Not Mom. Not Dad. Definitely not Caleb. And there’d been no way to tell the boy who was the father to my unborn baby, because it wasn’t as if he was in my life. I didn’t have his number. Didn’t know his last name. One decision with him led to a life-altering reality for me.

It was all downhill from there. I just didn’t know it yet.

Blinking slowly, I grab the picture from that day in Radcliff, study what’s visible of Cody’s arm, and grind my teeth. I crumple the print and toss it into my wastebasket. Then I do the same with another picture from that summer.

And another.

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