“He doesn’t have his GED.”
“I know, but we’ll think of something. Maybe he can find work for a year and try for his GED again.”
“He’s sixteen. Where is he going to work?”
“I don’t know, but Rosalie said she would help him. She promised.”
Rei looked skeptical.
I was beginning to feel agitated. “I won’t leave without Amir.”
“It might be best if you went without him. You are ready for something more than this life. You have been given an opportunity—a gift. You should be free to accept it, wholly, without anything, or anyone, holding you back.”
“Amir’s not—”
“Listen to me, Merrow. I will look after him. You know how I care for Amir.”
“You don’t understand.” I leaped from my seat and paced the length of the porch. My words rushed from me, a familiar sense of shame heating my body as they did. “I won’t leave without Amir. I can’t. It would be like leaving a part of myself behind, a part of myself that I need to survive, to breathe. I’m in love with him, Rei!” I stopped and faced her, my cheeks burning with the confession, a secret thrill spinning within my chest. I’d said it! I’d said it. I was in love with Amir. There was nothing that couldhave made me take the words back. “I’m in love with him! I won’t leave him.”
I would never forget how Rei looked at me in that moment—her expression shocked, her skin drained of color. My declaration left me raw; I could not stand to feel her stunned eyes on me. I ran into the house, slamming the back door behind me. Inside, I grabbed the sandwiches I’d made and ran out the front door toward the orchard.
But Amir was not there.
I wandered through first the orchard and then the grove, calling his name. Eventually I left the sandwiches nestled in the roots of a tree and ran to the shed. Its door swung open easily. He wasn’t inside. I walked through the garden, around the chicken coop, and through the horse paddock. I peered up at the empty roof of the lean-to. I scanned the bluffs and down the coast, the wind roaring in my ears. I stood at the edge of the cliff and looked out. I walked down the path to the beach and called Amir’s name into the caves. My own voice returned to me, a solitary sound.
When I trudged back to the cottage, Rei was gone. I sat on the back porch and looked out at the sea. There were countless places at Horseshoe Cliff to hide, and I knew them all. Where was he?
The television fell silent. I heard the fridge door open and close. Bear walked out on the porch.
“I can’t find Amir,” I told him.
“Good riddance,” Bear said, but if I hadn’t known better I would have sworn he scanned the land around the cottagebefore he took a slug of his beer and walked back inside. I wondered why he’d come to that side of the cottage at all. He hated the back porch, with its view of the cliffs.
I looked out toward the sea until the sun began to lower. Still, even then for a time, I looked to the horizon, waiting. Finally, when the sun was so low that it threatened to blind me, I closed my eyes.
IT WAS DARKwhen I awoke. I looked around the porch, disoriented and hungry. I straightened, rubbing my eyes so hard that red spots appeared behind my eyelids.
I thought of the red bird I’d seen. Rei had said it was just for me. I thought that it was a sign that I was doing the right thing. But what if it had been a sign of something else? I remembered the sounds I’d heard just before I saw the bird, when I’d wondered if Bear had crept around the side of the house.
Amir. Had he stood just out of view, listening?
I thought back, trying to remember what he would have heard. At the point when I heard the noises on the side of the house, I was telling Rei how Rosalie wanted to help me go to college. If Amir had been listening, would he have thought that I planned to leave without him? If he had left then, he would not have heard me tell Rei that I loved him.
I needed Rei. She would help me find Amir.
I hurried inside. The house was empty. On the front porch, Bear drank a beer and tore fist-sized hunks of bread from the loaf that Rei had brought. He didn’t turn to look in my direction even when the screen door slammed.
“Can you take me to Rei’s?” I asked.
He took a drink of his beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand before tearing off another piece of bread.
“Please,” I said. “It’s important. I’m worried about Amir. It’s getting darker and I don’t know where he is.”
“Did you check the shed?” Bear’s laugh was hard and mean. He had a glint in his eye that told me he was itching for a fight. He hadn’t really hurt me since Amir had arrived, but now Amir was gone, and it was just the two of us.
I turned and went inside. I waited a beat, ready to sprint for the back door if Bear followed me. He didn’t. I looked around the kitchen, trying to decide what to do, and saw that Bear’s jacket hung from the back of a chair. I sunk my hand into its pockets and fished out the keys to the truck. I hadn’t driven since my father used to give me lessons on our long driveway. I hoped I remembered enough to get me to Rei’s house.
I went out the back door and snuck around the side of the house. The truck was parked in plain view of Bear. There was nothing to do but run.
I had my hand on the door handle when Bear grabbed me around my waist. I managed to wriggle free and shove him away. I was stronger than I’d ever been when we used to fight, and he was drunker. I was halfway into the cab when he grabbed my leg. He fingers dug into the wound on my calf. I screamed, kicking at him again and again. I managed to get him far enough away from me that I could slam the door shut. I locked it.
He pounded on the window. “Merrow!” he roared. “Get out of my truck!”
I jammed the key in the ignition and turned it. The truck sped down the driveway toward the road, and I didn’t lift my foot from the gas pedal until Bear was finally small in the rearview mirror.
