Page 84 of Can't Help Falling

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Is my purple bag still in your guest room?

FINLOOKEDDOWN at her phone and again experienced that disorienting up and down of thinking a text was from Tyler and then realizing it wasn’t.

Normally, Fin wouldn’t leave her brew on the kitchen stove unattended. It was a special tincture she was making for Matty, who’d come down with a stomach bug and still wasn’t 100 percent. But Fin could sense the palpable anxiety emanating from Kylie’s text and she figured that if there were such a thing as a purple bag emergency, Kylie was currently in the throes of it.

She jogged to the bedroom, checked and then jogged back, eyeing the tincture critically and deciding that no harm had been done.

Yup. It’s here. Do you need it tonight?

Instead of texting back, her phone rang.

“Hey,” Fin answered.

“I’m such an idiot,” Kylie groaned.

“For leaving a bag behind? Trust me, little sister, that does not an idiot make.”

“No. I’m not an idiot for that. Well, yes, I am. But mostly I’m an idiot for thinking this stupid trip was going to be fun.”

“Ah.” Kylie’s class was taking a two-night trip to Albany to see the state capitol, among other things. And though Kylie had been pretty excited about it not two weeks ago, ever since they’d gotten their room assignments, she’d been a wreck. Apparently, she’d realized that Anthony was her only friend, and she had nothing in common with any of the girls with whom she’d be rooming. And she didn’t have the purple bag. Which was, apparently, the last straw. “Okay, well, I don’t think the lack of a purple bag will ruin the trip.”

“No, but my lack of having any friends will.”

“You have friends, Ky.”

“I have old-people friends. No offense. But you and Mary are not going to be on this trip with me. It’s just going to be me and a bunch of catty fifteen-year-old girls talking about bras and blow jobs and TV shows I’ve never even heard of.”

Fin opened her mouth to deny the probability of those actually being the topics of conversation, and then she reflected on her own teenage years and conceded that Kylie was probably right.

“Ky, you don’t have to make friends with all of them. Just make friends with one of them. You said you’re staying in a room with three other girls. I guarantee that at least one of them would rather talk about books or movies than blow jobs.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Bring your headphones and your Kindle. Worst comes to worst, you’ll just end up being the antisocial chick who is super into music and reading. That’s not the worst rep a girl could have, all right?”

“Fin, none of them know about me.”

Ah. Now they were really getting to the heart of the matter. “None of them know about your mom, you mean.”

“I really, really don’t want to be a freak anymore. Not like I was in Columbus.”

Fin, who had a glass to the door of most people’s energy, happened to know that everybody was a freak in some way or another. But she didn’t think that was what Kylie really needed to hear right now. “You’re not a freak, Ky. Your mom kind of is, but you’re not.”

Kylie laughed, knowing Fin’s story about her own mother and not taking offense to Fin’s words. But the laughter dimmed quickly. “You know the worst part, Fin? That I don’t even know the story.”

“What story?”

“She left...to go do drugs? With a new boyfriend? Was she part of a cult? Did she just give up? Hate Columbus? Hate me? What was it? These kids at school find out that my mother abandoned me and that I hid it for all those months. Can you even imagine the stories they’d make up about it? And the worst part is that I couldn’t even deny them. Because I don’t know what actually happened.”

“Ky—”

“Mothers leave kids sometimes. That’s not that freaky. But do kids usually hide it from social services when they get abandoned? No. If they find out at school what I did... I’m the freak. No question. And I just...don’t want that. It’s been cool to be the boring new girl from the Midwest.”

“Kylie, little sister, please trust me when I say that you leave high school and you start to realize that you’re the only one who gets to decide what you are. Freak or not. It’s not up for debate with your peers. I know it’s excruciating to not know what the hell your mother was thinking, that you’re still waiting to understand. But just know that even if she wrote you a fifty-page letter explaining every last detail, the only thing that you can ever really know is your own story. Your own experiences, your own choices and reasons. You don’t have to explain why you did what you did to anyone but yourself. Tyler is here to help you with figuring it out. I’m here to help you with figuring it out. But you’re the only one who gets ownership over that story. Not gossips at school, not me or Ty, not even your mother.”

Kylie was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you’re right. But, God, this trip is still gonna be a disaster.”

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