On the Free by Coert Voorhees

Author:Coert Voorhees [Voorhees, Coert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fiction-Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction, Action & Adventure, Survival Stories, Survival, Survival Story, Social Themes, General, Adventure, Animals, Carolrhoda Lab, Coert Voorhees, Colorado, Crime, Danger, Death, Juvenile Corrections System, Mountain lion, Mudslide, Nature, On the Free, Rehabilitation, Secret, Survival, Therapy, Wildlife
ISBN: 9781512467390
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2017-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

27

Elena got an Orange Julius because she always got an Orange Julius. They sat on the second bench in the little sliver of park lining Cherry Creek by the mall because that’s where they always sat.

They’d been together for almost a year before she met his mom and Winslow. A year of dates and texts and calls and—ultimately, thrillingly—sex, Victor’s first. He had no intention of jeopardizing any of it by letting his family into the picture. But Elena didn’t want to be shielded from them. She wanted to be with Victor, she said, and that meant all of him.

It only took three weeks after that first meeting—a dinner that included casual references to immigration policy and repeated comments about how Denver couldn’t possibly have enough to offer a young person who was truly curious about the world—for Winslow’s poison to seep its way into their relationship. Victor and Elena had tried to hold on, had tried to fight it, but there was nothing they could do.

And the thing was, she wasn’t even mad at him. Or maybe she had moved from mad to disappointed, and that made Victor feel even worse.

“So, what, that’s it?” she said. “Because he tells you that’s it? Because your mom—”

“Don’t.”

“You’re saying she’s not part of this?”

His mom would never have been part of this if not for Winslow. Victor knew that to be the truth. Elena would have loved the woman his mom used to be, and his mom would have loved Elena. They would have laughed so much together, probably at Victor’s expense most of the time, and none of this would be happening.

“I’m telling you that it has nothing to do with either of them.” He was lying, and poorly, and they both knew it. Victor waited for Elena to call him out on it, but she didn’t even seem up for that. “I just can’t be in a relationship right now. That’s all.”

“After almost a year. Now you just can’t be in a relationship.”

He was supposed to get out of Denver, to see the world, to change it! But how could he do that if he got involved with someone? How could he do that if he got her pregnant?

The situation was simple: if he couldn’t get his mom and stepdad behind this now, if this relationship was such an issue before she even went to college, before he even finished his junior year, what chance did they actually have?

And who said he even wanted a future with her? He was only a junior!

“You’ll be in college next year,” he said.

“In Denver—”

“Doesn’t matter. We were never going to get through that anyway, so why not just break it off now, before anyone gets hurt.”

“You did not just say that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What if you just moved out?” she said.

“I’m still in high school,” Victor said. “Where would I go?”

“Come live in our garage apartment. Move in—”

“I love you, Elena. You know that.” Victor waited for a little girl on rollerblades and her mom to pass by.

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