Borrowed by Lucia DiStefano

Author:Lucia DiStefano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elephant Rock Productions, Inc.
Published: 2018-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

The iris on the seat beside me, I drive around, going way out of the city limits into Dripping Springs in order to stay away from home and remind myself there’s still a world out here, with roads and trees and houses.

I end up back in town. At the cemetery.

A caretaker’s on a riding mower a couple of acres away. I brush loose grass off the edge of Harper’s gravestone. I remember some long, rambling poem we studied in sophomore English. Something about grass being the uncut hair of graves. I test the ground with my foot. Solid. What did I expect? Sod rumpled like a slept-in bed?

“I miss you,” I whisper.

I see her in black skinny jeans and her ash-gray three-quarter-sleeve sweater and her engine-red cowgirl boots. New guy, she says. Just for kicks. She tells me to cover for her with Mom. She checks her hair in the bathroom mirror, winks at me, and grabs her keys.

“I really miss you.”

I lower myself to the ground. The smell of green lining my nostrils, I lean against the back of the stone.

Maybe Florabelle is right. It’s time to accept. Accept that reality is reality, whether or not I like it. I set the iris down.

The lawn mower engine stops. There are footsteps at my back. The crazy girl stands above me. “I need answers,” she says.

I spring to my feet. She needs answers? How can the boys heal if she peels back the scab?

I slap her across the face.

She presses her palm against her cheek. Looks at it and me. I’ve shocked both of us. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You had no right to involve my brothers. You’ve messed them both up now.”

She raises a hand. I flinch. But her hand doesn’t come toward me. Instead, she grasps the collar of her shirt and tugs down. “How could Mom let them give up on me? Let them cut me open?”

I flinch again. I look away, but not before I see the scar in the same place nurse Tina wouldn’t have seen one on me.

“Max?” she says. Her voice seems very far away all of a sudden. “Max? Did you … ?”

I don’t say anything. But, apparently, that’s enough.

“You had no right,” she keeps saying to me, over and over. Pacing. Pacing that unsettles my stomach. “You had no right.”

“Don’t you remember?” I’m sitting again, because I’m sure my legs won’t work if I try to use them. “We talked about it. Remember?” I’m asking a girl who looks nothing like Harper to sift through Harper’s memories. Now who’s the crazy one?

“I was thirteen, Max. I was a kid. You can’t hold me to a childhood fantasy.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said! I said if I died, I wouldn’t want my heart thrown away.”

That’s exactly what she said. So is this Harper I’m talking to? Or have I officially lost my mind?

She finally stops pacing, but she’s staring at me with such ferocity I wish she’d go back to churning up the lawn.

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