“Harper, when is Mama coming home?”
“Sunday, bud.”
“Why is she gone for so long?”
Because she’s an inconsiderate, immature asshole who thinks of no one but herself.
“She just is,” I said. “I wish I had a better answer.”
Dash nodded, looking so small in his bed. He brightened slightly. “When is Orion coming back? Can you ask him to come over tomorrow?”
Tears threatened, but I pushed them back. “I don’t think so. Maybe next week. We’ll have to see.”
His face fell. “Why? Did you get mad at him too?”
I stiffened. “I…it’s complicated.”
“Doesn’t he like me anymore?”
“Oh, buddy.” It took everything I had to keep it together. “It’s not your fault. Nothing is your fault. Orion and I are having a disagreement.”
“Will you try to fix it?”
“I’ll try, but it’s not that simple.”
Christ, how to explain to a seven-year-old that my relationship with Orion wasn’t about him when he was already invested? In love with Orion. I added that guilt to the weight on my back until I thought I was going to crumple.
The only fuel I had left was hatred for my mother. That I had in endless supply.
“Everyone leaves.” Dash rolled over on his side, away from me. “Everyone.”
“Not everyone,” I said. “I’m still here.”
But Dash didn’t say anything, so maybe that wasn’t enough.
***
The following day, Thursday, Orion was absent from school when I knew he couldn’t afford to be absent from school, and a terrible fear began to squeeze my heart. After history class, I shot him a text.
Are you okay? Where are you?
No answer.
My thoughts went back to the night he took those awful pills out of desperation. What if he’d tried again? Or something worse? The stress I carried on my back was a mountain, but it paled in comparison to my worry for him. If something happened to Orion…
“Harper?”
I turned in the hallway. Tessa Carlyle was petite and pretty in a green dress that highlighted her auburn hair. By contrast, I felt dark and bleak in my black skirt, black tights, and black blouse.
“Can we talk for a second?”
“Sure.”
Tessa pulled me aside, out of the flow of traffic. “So this might be out of line, but I think you’re the person I should give this to. Not Callister, that’s for damn sure.”
She pulled a piece of notebook paper from her bag and handed it to me. The top half was a jagged mountain range of words, each letter looking like it was trying to run away from the last. Shaky and uneven. Below that, beautifully accurate sketches of a wheel, a row of crops, and a tablet with strange writing carved into it. As if the two halves of the page were two halves of the same brilliant mind, revealing where it struggled and where it did not.
My heart seized because I knew exactly what this was, and who it belonged to. Then I glanced up at Tessa in a panic.
