Page 2 of Our Hearts Knew Better

The street’s left and right ends led to two different parts of town.

I wiped at my ass, though the small amount of dirt I’d gotten on my shorts was already gone, and pressed the soles of my shoes into the gravel at the end of the driveway, scanning the neighbors’ dark windows as I glanced back and forth down the line.

Left or right.

To the right was the bay, and my entire body lifted to get a better peek through the trees, at the section of the cliff and the top of the lighthouse.

I wouldn’t know what they were like up close.

My foot shifted to the right before I did, like an arrow on a compass, and I followed its pointing toward the water.

Welcome to another summer, Summer. Let’s give no bothers now, and maybe this one won’t be as lonely.

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Not a single house I passed had a light on inside. It was late into the night, but it was the weekend, and school was out, and no one was even pulling in late after a night of…partying, maybe? Were there party spots around here? For sure, somebody had a party house, some popular guy who invited everyone over when his parents were out of town. They did in the fiction I lived vicariously through.

The neighborhoods were almosttooquiet. I could hear the low hum from the streetlights, and my flip flops sounded like they were echoing from every direction. I was smiling with each step, my lungs even lighter feeling, but I looked behind me whenever I heard the slightest rustle or crack ofsomething. But nothing was as scary as my dad creeping at my back all the time, so nothing could make me turn around. And he had bragged about this being a crime free town. He did his research. Rosalee Bay was as safe as could be for a newborn wanderer like me.

But I still wished I hadn’t forgotten my phone. I couldn’t play my music or finish my audiobook.

I now sighed over that second idea, this wash of indifference for something I loved—and I still did—that put a jerky shrug in my shoulders, a bit of shame making my breezed skin warmer.

I shifted the sensation to my forgotten phone. It wasn’t smart, but my head was overruled by my heart, and I’d remember to bring it next time.

One house caught my attention, because it had a garden out front, outlined by small glowing bulbs sticking up from the ground, and I stopped to stare. The squeezing feeling in my throat was sudden, the lights from those bulbs streaking out and blending together.

My mom had talked about having a garden. She loved squash. That was to be her cream of the crop.

I thought,she would’ve loved this. Maybe I would’ve too.

I took another big breath and let my focus drift to the birdbath, then the dog statue, my imagination taking off. . .

I already had a life here. A best friend—who wasn’t just at school and whose house I could visit—andthisis where she lived. Clara was her name. And Clara’s mom could have never replaced my mom, but she treated me like I was her daughter too. She planted squash and the three of us chopped and ate them every summer.

This was the home where I felt safe to express myself and talk through any thoughts I had. Tobesomeone I could get to know, and to be able to surprise myself. Like I did tonight. And that was all I really wanted.

Those two chairs on the porch had the softest cushions, and Clara and I spent a lot of time sitting there, gossiping, laughing, crying over nothing serious, but still thinking it was the end of the world.So manybreakups. A couple Cs on tests. Our first night getting sick on the wine her dad forgot to put back up after dinner.So manydinners.

So simple andnormalthat we never once realized how good we had it.

The squeeze squeezed more as all the ghosts I let haunt this yard dissolved away.

I was tired of being in my imagination, but I held to it, because it was what I had. My brain was built for fantasy. You wouldn’t catch me reading the fantasygenre, though. My brain capacity there was limited to the paranormal.

I wasn’t able to get close enough to a girl any of my ages to call her a best friend.Boyfriendwas the word that should never be said. It helped him that boys didn’t even look at me. I wasn’t unattractive—at least I didn’t think I was—I just didn’t look like what all the boys I liked were attracted to. And I didn’t act like them. My head was in the books, being a prized pet for most of my teachers. And we moved around too much for me to keep or become attached for any school friends I did manage to have. It seemed like when I’d start getting comfortable, we’d relocate again.

A window on the side of the house lit up so bright, I jumped.

A silhouette approached the curtains, and I shot off down the street with more adrenaline-rushed giggles, my flip flops slapping my heels in my next escape.

Once I comforted myself with the thought I hadn’t been caught, the few extra thuds in my still thudding heart slowing down, I stopped at the fenced-in fairground, sliding my fingers between the chain-links.

It would shut down soon, until next year.

I wasn’t waiting another year.

I chewed the shake in my lip as both stretched to a smile with my newborn determination, my other hand slipping between the chain-links and tugging the fence toward my chest, the wires there, too, now being tugged away one at a time.

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