Run(37)

“She’s a nice girl,” he told Grandma. “And it’s sure hard to imagine she’s doing all the running around people seem to say when she’s at our dinner table most nights.”

I gave Daddy so many hugs in the days after that, he must’ve thought I’d lost my mind.

Daddy was also the one who convinced Mama to let me go out with Bo sometimes. Not to parties. They always had an excuse why that wasn’t all right. But sometimes they’d let us go grab some fries and a milkshake at Marty’s, a little fast-food place down the road. Colt almost always met us there, but we didn’t tell my folks about that. They may have liked Bo, but I wasn’t sure they could handle me spending so much time with a male Dickinson.

But the more time I spent with Colt, the more I realized how wrong people were about him. He was quieter than Bo, but obviously very protective of her. He seemed more like her brother than her cousin. And when he smiled at me—a smile so wide even I could see—it gave me this fluttering feeling in my stomach.

And sometimes, just occasionally, when our legs would brush under the table or he’d touch my shoulder for an instant—it made me think again about what it might feel like to kiss him. And I knew I was gonna be sad when he left for his new job in January.

Not that I’d told Bo that, though. It was one of the few secrets I kept.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you” had become our little game. We played almost every time we were alone together, and I devoured each detail I learned about Bo.

Like that her full name was Isabo June Dickinson.

Or that she was deathly allergic to bees and, because of that, was terrified of them.

Or how when she was eleven, her mama brought home a German shepherd puppy without any warning. She’d bought the dog from a guy in the next town, who was selling pups for cheap. Bo’d named her Utah after seeing a picture in a travel book. “It just seemed like a nice place,” she said.

But there were things I still didn’t know about Bo Dickinson. Like why, after spending the night, she was always gone when I woke up in the morning. Or why she never invited me to her house.

But I got my answer to the second question a few days before Christmas.

It was winter break, and Gracie had gotten a ride home with some boys from UK. Even though she’d been home almost a week, I’d barely seen her. At night, she went out with some of her friends from high school. During the day, she slept. But that Friday, Mama sent us shopping, giving us a long list of the things she’d need for Christmas dinner.

We made an extra stop at the Goodwill, though. Gracie said she wanted to look at the homecoming dresses people had donated because there was a spring dance coming up and she needed something to wear. While she dug through the layers of tulle and taffeta, I stayed near the front of the store, listening to the chime of the bells as people walked in and out in a hurry. A lot of people in Mursey did their Christmas shopping at the Goodwill, so this was a real busy time of year.

The donated books were up front, and I started going through a stack of them. I couldn’t read the pages in most books, but if the letters were big and bright enough on the covers, I could at least make out their titles. And since about half the stack seemed to be made up of romance novels, some of those titles were pretty funny.

But one book, a heavy, leather-bound thing, got my attention. It was beat-up real bad. I could feel the scratches and creases of the cover. But the words in thick gold cursive still seemed to shine.

Our Poems: A Collection

“All right, let’s go,” Gracie said, suddenly at my shoulder. “The only dresses in my size are maroon and yellow. So there’s no chance in hell that’s happening … What’re you looking at?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a gift for somebody.”

I bought the book for a couple dollars, then we got back into Gracie’s car and started for home.

When I knew we were getting close to home, I said, “Hey, Gracie, can you … can you drop me off at the church?”

“What for?”

“My friend lives in the trailer down the street. I wanna give her this.” I tapped the book in my lap.

The car slowed to a stop, and I heard the ticking of the turn signal. “That’s a Dickinson trailer, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Some of my friends told me they’d heard you two were friends now,” Gracie said. “I didn’t believe them, though. Not until Mama said she’d been hanging out at the house.”

“Uh … well, yeah. It’s true. So will you drop me off?”

Gracie sighed as the car turned right. “Fine. But if Mama gets pissed—”

“She won’t be mad.”

It was only half a lie. I hadn’t asked permission to do this. Not from my parents. Not from Bo. I hadn’t even known I was gonna have Gracie drop me off until five minutes ago. It was impulsive and spontaneous. And those were things I definitely wasn’t allowed to be.

But Daddy was at work, and Mama was visiting my grandmother. As long as I was home before either of them, it’d be all right. And as much as my sister might have disapproved of me hanging out with Dickinsons, I knew she’d never get me in trouble with our parents.

That’s how it had always been. Gracie and me might be different in every way—from how we looked to how we acted—but we were always a united front when it came to our parents. She’d definitely opposed them more than I had growing up, but now it was my turn to break the rules, and I knew she’d cover for me if it came down to that.