To the Stars (Thatch #2)(41)

I sat down near where she was sitting on the stretcher and made a face. “But I don’t have a cape,” I said lamely. “Superman has a cape.”

Natalie looked like I’d just given her the worst news in the world, but then gasped and held up the blanket I’d seen her gripping earlier—a blanket covered in stars. “Here!”

I gently took the blanket from her, and couldn’t stop the smile in response to hers. “But this is your cape; it helped you fly.”

“Only because you fly,” she whispered, like we were sharing a deep secret.

Most of her face had been cleaned, and I couldn’t stop smiling at the brave, dimpled girl who thought I was Superman and wanted to give me her starry blanket. “I think you should keep this.” Natalie’s face fell, so I quickly continued. “That way you can remember the night you got to fly with Superman. Besides, it looks like it’s a special blanket.”

“Cape!” she corrected with a stern look.

“Cape,” I amended.

She took the blanket back and ran her tiny fingers across it a few times before admitting, “The stars kept me safe until you came to save me.” She poked a few of the stars on the pattern as she spoke. Without waiting for me to ask what she meant, she gave me a shy look, slowly placed the blanket around her mouth and nose, and took a few exaggerated breaths.

“That was a very smart thing to do.”

Natalie nodded and removed the blanket, then looked up toward the night sky, which was blocked by what little remained of the fire and the dark smoke. “Do you like stars, Superman?”

My lips twitched into a smile. “The stars and I are old friends.”

She gasped excitedly and asked, “You’re friends? What do they say to you?”

Without missing a beat I said, “That you’re the bravest little girl.”

“I am,” she responded seriously, and patted my arm with her tiny hand; her head was still tilted back in a vain attempt to see the stars. “And you’re my bravest Superman.”





Chapter 10


Harlow


Summer 2010—Walla Walla

I STARED AT my phone for a few seconds once it stopped spinning, then put my fingers on the screen and gave it another spin.

“Just call him,” I whispered to my empty dorm room for probably the twentieth time this afternoon. “He’ll answer this time . . .” He has to. I thought the last words to myself, unable to voice them.

Slamming my hand down on the phone, I brought the screen to life and tapped on it a few times until it was dialing Knox. The small pieces of my heart that had been cracking over the past month broke off as the phone continued to ring.

When his voice mail began, I hung up without leaving a message.

I’d only been gone from Seattle for a month, and already it felt as if I’d lost him. It had felt like that within the first two weeks. He hadn’t answered any of my calls, and had only called me twice. They had been short conversations, of him asking if I was having fun, and pushing me to go have more fun. “Go experience everything you can,” he’d said before the last call had ended.

For the first time in more than two years, he hadn’t told me he was waiting for me. The only hope I’d clung to was his parting phrase of “To the stars, Low.”

His few texts each week didn’t seem like the guy who was always dying to talk to me. None of it was like Knox at all, and I’d cried myself to sleep every night since leaving Seattle—much to my roommate’s frustration.

She just didn’t understand—not that I’d attempted to explain it to her, since she wasn’t what you would call friendly—that it felt like I was losing what I knew would be the greatest love of my life. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t even eighteen yet, and it didn’t matter if I’d never been allowed to be with Knox.

It’s impossible to find the other half of your soul and not recognize it for what it is. So how do you explain to someone that the other half of your soul is pulling away? How do I explain it to myself?

Knox’s texts just kept prompting me to go have fun . . . to live it up. I didn’t want to live it up without him. When he finally did text me I didn’t want to only talk about what party I had been to. I wanted to tell him how much I missed him and to know that he was missing me.

Instead, I was now stuck between a place of knowing I had to get in touch with him and hoping I wouldn’t hear from him, because I didn’t know how to tell him what was going on in my life.

I’d been grabbing coffee on campus my first week here, and nearly every seat had been taken. Two guys who were starting their junior years walked in and asked if they could use the remaining chairs at my table. Somehow I’d ended up talking to them for a while, then only one of them, and then I’d found myself at an all-night diner with him for hours after. I’d seen him regularly over the past weeks, the first few times refusing to admit I was on a date with someone. And now . . . I looked at my phone for the time and released a nervous breath when I saw I only had a few minutes before he showed up to take me on another date.

It’s just a date, I reminded myself. It’s just a date. You and Knox have both had dates. You’ve both been in relationships. I tried to ignore the fact that it’d been well over a year for both of us as I kept chanting. He’ll be okay with some dates . . . if he ever decides to call again.