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Stared at you all year and done nothing, probably.

I pause at that. I guess, behind everything, that’s my biggest fear: that this is all some long con. That Ford will hurt me one day and say, “Now our families are even.”

It doesn’t seem like him.

But, again, it never seems like men on the outside until it’s too late.

Why would you have done nothing?

I’m not a fan of your church but you wouldn’t be you if you hadn’t been raised the way you have been. You’d still have been pretty, but you’d probably be a lot more like the Kendalls and all my sister’s friends.

I thought you’d like me better if I was.

I wouldn’t. Though I kinda like the rolled-up skirt

We message nonstop. He wants me to see Braveheart because it’s his favorite movie, and he thinks I look like the actress who plays the queen. He wants me to read The Hunger Games simply because I’ll love it. I tell him about dumb things, like how much I used to envy the girls on the lawn getting their Chipotle orders from DoorDash and those tall pink drinks from Starbucks.

The next morning, one of those tall pink drinks is sitting on my desk when I arrive in English.

FORD

LMK if it’s as good as you thought it would be.

I haven’t even tasted it yet, and I already know it’ll be better. Everything about this is better than I’d thought it would be.

21

The following morning, my father takes me to the post office during first period so I can get my passport.

“Do you have any plans for immediate travel?” asks the woman looking over my application.

“She does,” my father replies, as if I might have said otherwise had I been allowed to answer the question.

“I’m going to Bolivia in August,” I say, my jaw grinding. “I’m not sure that counts as immediate.”

“It doesn’t,” she says, and I take a grim sort of satisfaction in my father’s irritation.

My picture is taken, we pay the fees, and then we march silently out to the car. “If I’ve answered a question,” my father says tightly, “you don’t need to answer it too.”

“I’d already read over the application. They were asking because you need to pay extra to have it expedited if you’re traveling in the next two weeks.”

My father grabs my bicep hard, as if I’m Faith, about to run into traffic. “Continue to be disrespectful and see if you like the consequences. Part of being a good parent is making sure you don’t turn out to be a brat.”

It has nothing to do with being a good parent. He just wants to assert his dominance, and I’d love to tell him how weak it makes him look, needing this so much and over something so dumb. There was a time when I wanted to marry someone just like my dad. I’m beginning to think I’d prefer his opposite.

Ford sees me in the hall after second period, his eyes dark and his brow furrowed.

He pulls out his phone and I pull out mine.

FORD

Where were you?

ME

Getting my passport.

His gaze catches mine between our two lockers. A muscle flickers in his jaw. Maybe he didn’t want the reminder that I’m leaving, but I can’t see why it matters. There’s a reason we’re having this conversation by text. We wouldn’t be together even if I stayed, even if I wasn’t in the church...His sister would never be okay with it.