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Ryan set it all back on track. Inexplicably, that man set it all right with a smile and a laugh. He had to have some magical powers no one knew about. It was the only way to explain how I was… was… how I was happy for once. There, I said it. Happy. Such a fucking shitty word with such a loaded meaning, and here I was, feeling it. Like I was fucking Snow White prancing down the main street of Blue Creek with robins and cardinals swirling around my head.
That feeling lasted with me the entire walk to Pebbles Park, where Amelia waited for me with an iced coffee in one hand and a worn-out book in the other. She leapt up from her bench the second she spotted me, running over like a comet, her brown-gold curls bouncing on her shoulders. She wrapped me up in a tight hug that felt exactly like home, a sensation that settled itself down in the center of my heart.
“One month is way too long,” I said when the hug broke.
Amelia nodded her agreement. “We can’t do that again.”
“God, I needed this.” We walked back to her bench, arms over each other’s over shoulders, my head resting against hers. When the term “besties” was created, it was created for Amelia and me. It was a fact. Well-known, too. No one else on this spinning rock could come between the ironclad bond we both shared. She was my sister, and I didn’t only mean that in the friendly way I called most of my friends and families (and acquaintances and Uber drivers and anyone else I randomly came across). She was legally my sister, after her mom opened up her heart and home and adopted me. We had known each other since we were both six, instantly becoming inseparable on the playground and beyond.
Until she met a boy, at least. We were still best friends, no doubt about that, but the boy in question lived in Boston and ended up yanking my bestie out of my arms and moving her miles and miles away from me. She came back to visit Gina Ramirez, popularly known as just Mom.
“What happened? I drove past the Queen’s Throne, and there was all this crime tape out there?” Amelia sat, big golden-brown eyes framed by a hip pair of teal glasses.
I rubbed my face, unsure if I could even tell the story. “Jeez, girl, you picked an insane day to visit… There was a murder last night. Julius, a bartender there. And they’re saying it’s a serial killer.”
Amelia’s jaw might as well have dropped to the floor and rolled down the slight incline of grass and rocks that lead into the bubbling creek. “You’re fucking joking.”
“I’m fucking not.”
She lifted a perfectly painted set of rosy pink nails up to her lips, covering her gaping jaw. “Were you there?”
I nodded and looked out at the running water, a cloud inching over the bright sun and stopping the light from bouncing off the surface like a collection of crystals. I told Amelia everything about last night, from the stalker to the murder to meeting Ryan. The story had drained me by the time I was done. I realized then that the shock I was experiencing had waned, leaving behind a raw set of emotions that grated at my very soul. Blue Creek had always been a haven, a small town protected from the dark and dangerous that seemed to loom over larger cities like an ever-accepted shadow.
Not anymore. All of that shattered last night and would remain shattered for the foreseeable and likely fucked-up future.
“I’m stunned. Literally.” Amelia’s iced coffee had melted into watered-down caramel creamer. “And this Ryan dude, you think he’s going to help?”
“Yeah, he gave me a really good feeling.” A ruby-red cardinal gracefully swooped through the air and landed on the branch of a fir tree across the creek.
“Okay, good, because I need you to be living your best life, stalker-free. This has been going on for way too damn long.”
“Yeah, sis, I know.”
She offered me an apologetic smirk and rested her head on my shoulder. “I just want you to be happy. I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve heard you laugh. Like, a real laugh.”
“I’ve laughed. And I am happy. I’m just… not thrilled. It’s different.”
“Nah, I don’t believe that.” Amelia’s coconut shampoo mixed with the earthy scent of the pines and mulch drifting in our direction. “I think you’ve hit a wall in your life, and you’ve convinced yourself to think you’re happy. But I know you. I know you shine like the fucking sun, like fifteen thousand of them. I need you to find that shine again.”
I sighed, knowing every word she spoke was true and not wanting to admit any of it to myself. Amelia knew me as a kid, when my spark was as endless as my imagination, and she grew up with me, seeing that spark slowly start to wither and dim until finally, one day it just went out.
