Beck made a tired face, as if the conversation was suddenly boring. “My parents are no fun to talk about.Let’s talk aboutyours. What’d you fight with your dad about?”
I didn’t want to take him up on the subject change, but there was no pushing Beck on something he didn’t want to talk about.Thatmuch I remembered. “College.” It was partly true. Less embarrassing than saying we were fighting about my sister. “My… ego.”
“Yourego.” This seemed to amuse him. “Your dad had thoughts about that, did he?”
The blissful warmth that’d cradled me in the convertible began fading into something colder. “He found out I was the one who destroyed the garden.”
Now Beck was the one who stopped walking, his expression serious. “He found out? How?” And then, quieter, “Did you get in trouble?”
“That’s why I ran away. To avoid culpability.C-U-L-P-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.” I smiled a little. I wasn’t sure I’d ever spelled that one before. “I’m sure it’s waiting for me when I get home. So, don’t worry. I’m sure my parents will have me clear your name soon.”
There was something almost comforting in the fact that my parents knew my biggest secret. Apparently, in the hours since I’d left home, I’d been able to work through all the stages of grief and end up at acceptance.
Beck, though, frowned. “I don’t want my name cleared. If I cared about that, I would’ve come clean four years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?” It was the first time I had the courage to ask. “Why didn’t you tell everyone thatI was the one who’d set the fire? Because you thought they wouldn’t have believed you?”
Beck stared at me for a long moment, silent. His eyes were so green, and the sunlight was catching in his blond hair, making it almost a golden color. “You were scared,” he said at last, quietly. “And I wasn’t.”
“What does that?—”
“Do you really want to be a lawyer?” Beck asked suddenly.
“Yes.” The knee-jerk response came out like a snap, probably because it was still a touchy subject after this afternoon with Dad. “This isn’t the sad sob story of a girl who follows in her parents’ footsteps even though she doesn’t want to. I want to. I want to help people and fight for people when no one else wants to step up to bat.” I’d been waiting for Dad to ask me the same question. “I’m not a silly girl with silly dreams she hasn’t thought through. I want this. I just wish—” I stopped.
Beck let my silence draw out as we continued down the path, waiting to make sure I wasn’t going to finish. “You wish…”
He would just be proud of me for it.“They wanted Destelle to be a lawyer,” I told Beck. “My parents. They were almost neurotic about it. When I was little, and when Destelle was still in school, I remember how hard they pushed her toward it. They never asked her what she wanted. They wanted itforher. And it made herso mad.”
I could still remember the night she’d argued with my parents. I’d never heard her yell at them like that before, and remembered being scared by it.One day, when I don’tcome home for holidays and never call you on your birthday, think of this moment. I’d cried to Jamie after I heard that, because I’d been so afraid Destelle would leave us all behind because she was so angry with our parents—even us.
She’d hugged us both. Told us that’d never happen.
The irony.
“But me—I want what they wanted for her. Iactually want it. I’m exactly what he wanted, and he just… doesn’t care.”
“Whydoyou want it? Because you think it’ll make him proud of you?”
“No,” I said quickly, my throat suddenly squeezing tight. “No. That’s not why. I want it because… I just do.” I barely registered that Beck started walking slower, falling behind me. “But it would be nice if they appreciated it, you know? I’m the perfect daughter. I don’t party, I don’t drink, I don’t sneak out. I don’t break the rules. I don’t do anything that would disappoint them. I’mperfect.”
There was a strange quality to Beck’s voice when he spoke from behind me. “You don’t have to be perfect for someone to be proud of you.”
I was already shaking my head. “You don’t know.”
“Perfect is soboring.”
B-O-R-I-N-G. Beck used it so often that I wasn’t sure he knew what the word meant anymore. “It isn’t. Not everything in life has to be fun, anyway. Not everything in lifewillbe fun. You don’t get that, and Destelle doesn’t get that, but I do. That’s why it’s important to me.” I started to turn around to face him, because Beckseemed to have stopped in the path behind me. “That’s why I?—”
Something firm slammed into my chest, causing me to jerk back. Beck crouched in the middle of the path, his wrist propped on his knee, fingers dangling toward the mud. Even from here, I could see the darkness of their tips and the slow smile curving over his mouth.
I looked down at my white sweater, finding mud splattered all over the front of it. My jaw dropped as a chunk of dirt fell from the fabric and directly on top of the toe of Jamie’s sneaker.No. Freaking. Way.
I lifted my head when another fistful of mud I hadn’t seen Beck scoop up hit me in the stomach.
“There.” Beck shook his hand off to the side as he stood, slinging the rest of the grime off. He tried—and failed—to stifle a laugh. “Who’s perfect now?”
For a moment, the middle of the trail was almost peacefully calm. There were no letters in my head. Just silence. Beck stood there smirking, and I stood still, trembling as the pressure within me built. It felt like someone was holding a match to my skin, waiting, waiting.
