Page 52 of Library or Lattes?

“So?” Theo shrugged.

“So? Theo, this is Jo. Jo who’s known me since forever. And she knows everyone in this town. By tomorrow everyone will know.”

I put on a voice: “Oh, did you hear about Mike Taylor’s daughter and that boy? They’ll be talking about it in church, at the grocery store, at—”

“You’re overthinking this.” Theo cut me off. And he was trying not to smile.

“I’m not!” I grabbed my bag and noticed that my hand was shaking slightly.

Theo caught my wrist. “Breathe. It’ll be okay.”

I dropped my bag on the floor. “Everyone is going to know. Everyone.”

“Let them,” Theo said gently, and moved his fingers from my wrist so he was holding my hand instead. “Let them talk.”

“It’s easy for you. You don’t live here. Not really.”

He really looked at me then. Like he was taking it in. “I bet it won’t be as bad as you think.” Then he leaned in and kissed me again, gently this time, calming my racing heart.

I was trying to figure out what this all meant. What to say. Were we a thing now? Then Theo spoke: “You’re not going to make me wait until next weekend to see you again, are you?”

My heart made a weird flutter. “You couldn’t wait six days to see me?” I smiled. The panic dissolving as quickly as it had arrived.

“Six days? No chance. Way too long, Doc. I’ll have forgotten what you look like by then. Your little turned-up nose, the way your hair tries so hard to escape from behind your ears, that freckle on your left cheek. Gone. Wiped. Willa who?”

I bit my lip. “Well, maybe this week I could swing by after school.”

“Good.” He nodded like we’d just signed a contract. “And I’m going to come to your house sometime and look at those beams, okay?”

My heart swelled and dropped at the same time. That meant Pop meeting him. It meant walking down Main Street together and opening myself up to questions from anyone I’d ever known. And my house? He’d see everything. The rotting beams, the chipped paint, how small my life really was up close.

I shook my head. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

Then we heard the unnaturally loud jingling of keys from Jo’s desk and smiled at each other.

“We’d better go.”

Pop was asleep on the couch when I got in, and I was relieved. I didn’t want to relive our fight.

I went into my room as quietly as possible and took out Mom’s notebook, picking out a random page.

Lisa May called from Prague today. 2 a.m. her time! She was drunk on cheap wine and laughing about getting lost in some castle. She said she met some guy from Australia. Or maybe it was Austria, hard to tell with the connection.

She asked when I’m coming to visit. I told her maybe next year even though we both know that isn’t true.

Willa’s asleep beside me right now. She has her little fists balled up by her face, like she’s ready to fight the world, even in her dreams.

Why would I ever want to leave?

I closed the notebook and held it to my chest. Like she’s ready to fight the world, even in her dreams.

I was ready to fight the world. To fight my way out of this place and see the world. I thought about Theo, about the kissing, and how much I needed to tell Lennie all about it. There was an ache in my gut when I thought about how much I missed her already. But also … was Lennie right? I remembered what Theo had said about change.

Maybe I had made her feel uncomfortable, maybe I had been talking too much about Theo and about London, and maybe I hadn’t been listening when she was talking. I guess I’d always been an Oak Falls cheerleader. She was the one who always wanted out of this place. So maybe, maybe for Lennie, my change of heart was kind of out of the blue? I missed her so much. I swallowed my pride.