Page 33 of Pieces Of You

One minute she was there, and the next, she was gone.

It was 3 a.m.

I don’t know why I wait until the same time to check the message from Holden. After my run-in with Dean, I’d come home, and I did something I rarely allow myself to do: I cried. And I’m not sure what I was crying for or about. I just… felt like I needed to cry. So I did. There were tears and snot and a lot of sobbing into the paper napkins I steal from work. It was awholeexperience. One I don’t plan on repeating anytime soon.

And now, reading Holden’s text, I kind of wish I hadn’t read it at all.

Holden: So… what’s with the mood rings?

I take a while to come up with a response—one with enough truth that it can be defined as a solid answer. After I hit send, I crawl into bed, and I let the day’s exhaustion consume me. I fall into a deep sleep and dream about stupid mood rings.

The day after Mom died, I found the box beneath the sink with the card addressed to me. There were no words to accompany the card—just my name. The box was filled with dozens of the mood rings I’d grown up watching her wear, alternating between them every few days, sometimes every few hours. They were all cheap, the type that stained your fingers green.

My mom had loved the movieMy Girl, and the rings were an homage to that love. It was kind of sad, in a way, because if she thought about,reallythought about it, Vada’s stupid mood ring was the reason Thomas J went into that forest in the first place, and we all know what happened to him.

But she had loved those rings, treasured them. Because they were the only things she owned that was hers and hers alone, and so she protected them.

Almost as much as she protected me.

* * *

There are stillremnants of her existence in the place I tried so hard to make our home. Her bed was the first thing I got rid of, followed by her clothes and then everything else. One by one, I took them all to the field behind the trailer park, ignoring the looks of the other residents.

And then I set every single piece of her memory ablaze.

It wasn’t until that very moment, as the heat from the flames floated across my cheeks that I realized I was officially an orphan.

And then I smiled. Not because she was dead. But because for the first time in years, I was no longer my mother’s keeper.

16

Holden

Jamie:They were my mom’s. They’re the only pieces of her I want to hold on to.

The replyto my text came through just after 3 a.m., and it was the first thing I looked for when I woke up.

I try to make sense of it through my morning brain fog, but I can’t. And so I read the words, over and over, and every time I do, they lose more and more meaning.

The truth is, I don’t even know where to put that piece of the puzzle.

It feels like it doesn’t belong.

Superficially,Dean and I are the same as always. On a deeper level, I can tell that he’s feeling some type of way toward me. I just don’t know what that way is. And now, sitting opposite him in one of our teammate’s back yard, I can tell he wants to say something. Even the fire pit burning between us is nothing compared to the amount of heat I’m getting from his glare alone. Tonight he can be found doing only one of two things:

one: downing enough alcohol to kill a small horse.

Or two: avoiding Bethany at all costs.

It’s been a shitshow of a Friday night, and since I’m not drinking because I have to be up at the ass crack of dawn to drive Mom to the airport, I, too, have been in my feelings.

Confusion mainly, mixed with a little apprehension. Both things completely unrelated to Dean. Or maybe not. I haven’t quite mentally deep-dived into the events of my and Jamie’sbarelykiss. Overthinking it would be pointless and ignoring it would make it seem like I didn’t want it to happen.

I did.

Ido.

And the more I think about her—which, lately, seems to be frequent—the more I want to do it again.

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