Lost Girls(78)

The mountains didn’t scare me anymore. That recurring nightmare finally faded away and now I could look at the peaks and valleys without getting short of breath. That didn’t mean I wanted to take one of Dad’s infamous survival hikes, though. Not yet.

I see Dylan every now and then, usually by accident, like at the mall or Starbucks. Like me, he’s not Goth anymore, but he still wears a lot of black. It looks good on him. The last time I saw him we gave each other a hug, a long hug, and I didn’t want it to end.

But it did.

Maybe good things are like bad things. They all come to an end sometime.





Epilogue


“You missed a spot.”

“Crap. Somebody spilled paint on the carpet.”

“Can you get me a paper towel? Hurry!”

We were painting my room, the last item on my Personal Transformation list. The dark burgundy walls were fading, one coat at a time, brightening to a pale turquoise. The shade of a summer sky or the ocean. Or a lake filled with tears.

I didn’t want to forget what had happened. I wanted to rise above it. If that was really possible.

Sammy had splotches of primer on her chin, Molly’s hair was speckled with turquoise, and Zoe’s hair wasn’t lavender anymore—it was almost the same shade as my new walls.

“We need to crack open that window. I’m dying of fumes here,” Molly said. Then she stood there for a long moment, sucking in fresh air, staring down at my front yard as if something amazing was going on down below. “What the heck?”

But I didn’t pay attention to her. I was testing out my new closet door, the one Dad had installed last night.

“Check it out, Moll,” I said, opening and closing the door over and over. No creaks, no scary sounds, and definitely no monsters lurking inside. She grinned back at me.

“It’s finally time for a sleepover, girl,” she said.

Downstairs, Dad and Mom were making lunch. It smelled like lasagna and I was starved. It had taken me a while, but I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t worry about my weight. Food tasted better and, the funny thing was, I didn’t end up gaining much. Just a few pounds. Maybe the fact that I was working harder than ever in my ballet classes was paying off.

Zoe joined Molly and Stephanie at the window, all of them goofing off, staring outside.

“Is that who I think it is?” Zoe asked.

“Yup,” Stephanie answered.

“Hey, we’re never gonna finish if we don’t keep working,” I told them. Molly glanced over her shoulder at me, a big grin on her face.

Just then, Kyle knocked on my door, Game Boy in one hand. Sixteen years old now, his boy hormones kicked in when he ran a gaze across the room at all of my friends dressed in shorts and tank tops, all of them drenched in sweat and speckled in paint. I guess it was a turn-on, because he forgot why he was here.

“Is lunch ready?” I asked.

“No, uh—” He blushed, full-on red face, stuttering when Zoe flashed him a shy grin. “It’s, um, you better come outside. There’s something you need to see.”

“Back in a sec,” I said as I set my brush down.

“Take your time, girlfriend,” Stephanie said with a wink.

I jogged down the stairs, wiping my hands on a paper towel I grabbed along the way, heading toward the front door that stood open.

“Tell him to come inside for lunch,” Dad said from the kitchen.

“Tell who?” I asked with a frown, but I didn’t slow down. I needed to get back upstairs and oversee those girls who were about ready to mutiny. There’d already been rumblings about quitting early to go see the new Liam Hemsworth movie. Paper towel scrunched up in my palm, I lifted my gaze, then slid to a stop.

The tree in our front yard, that one Dad planted last year, that one where Dylan and I had our first kiss—at least, the first one I really remembered, all the way from start to finish—was covered with paper notes, all swinging in the breeze, all tied with pink ribbons. I stumbled toward it, my feet catching on clumps of grass and decorative stones, my mouth hanging open.

“What’s going on?” I asked, swinging back around to look at the open door where Mom and Dad stood, watching me. Up in my room, all the girls crowded around the window, trying to look down.

I took a couple more tentative steps toward the tree, realizing for the first time that this was one of those Japanese flowering cherry trees, just like the ones at school. I pulled down one of the notes and opened it, then I read it.

My eyes stung, tears threatening to fall.

It was a poem about me, about how I looked when I danced, how graceful I was, how beautiful I was.

It was dated two years ago.

I blinked as I moved from one note to the next, as I opened one poem after another. As I learned that Dylan had been smitten with me since we were both in seventh grade, long before the day I dropped my pen and he picked it up.

There was a poem about our first kiss. Another one about our first date. There was one about our first fight.

And another one about that day in the hospital when we broke up. I could barely read it, because my vision was blurred by tears. I couldn’t see much, didn’t hear him when he walked up behind me. Didn’t realize he was standing right beside me until he spoke, taking my hand in his.

“Hey, girl,” he said.