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arms. Any blowback would be worth it.

I packed up my bag. Tossed in the uneaten chips and Cokes

I’d brought and then rolled up my blanket. When I glanced

up, Monroe was staring down at me. I couldn’t quite read her

expression, and my gut twisted.

“What? Are you okay?” I asked, trying not to show panic, but

man, she ripped me apart without even trying.

She nodded, a small, tremulous smile on her face. “I think

so,” she said almost carefully, as if she wasn’t sure she should say anything at all. “I mean, I feel…lighter.” She moistened her lips.

Slowly, I got to my feet. “Last night…” Shit, I needed to get

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this right. “I just want to make you better, Monroe. I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”

She stepped forward, slipped her arms around my waist, and

rested her head on my chest. As soon as she touched me, my

heart sped up and I buried my nose in her hair, loving the way

she smelled. The way she felt.

“I haven’t talked to anyone about Malcolm. Not even my

therapist.” Her breath hitched and my arms tightened.

“After it happened, I just wanted to forget everything about

him. I wanted to forget how the sun made his hair look like

liquid gold, or how, when he smiled, his dimples appeared like

tiny little craters that I wanted to kiss. I wanted to forget how he’d made me so angry, and I wanted to forget how sorry I was.

How guilty I was.”

“It’s okay.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Nate. I couldn’t

even tell my parents the things they wanted to hear. The little

details that told them he would be fine. After he died, they kept waiting for me to start talking…to start moving. I can see now

how they existed in a state of nothing. They weren’t moving

forward. They weren’t going back. They were just stuck in this

horrible place, and they needed me to lead them out, but I

couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. Instead I cut my wrist, which

wasn’t so much an attempt to kill myself as it was a way to make

myself feel.”

“Shit, Monroe.” I lifted her chin. “I’m glad that you didn’t…”

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She sniffled. “It proved that I didn’t feel anything. My parents

sent me to therapy and they tried to get out of that place they were in. My dad started acting like everything was normal when it was

so screwed up, and that made me angry. My mother…she just

didn’t know what to say or how to act, so she started avoiding me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I get now that they were waiting for me. Waiting for me

to come back to them. That they needed me before they could

start to heal.” Her eyes were shiny again, and she reached for me.

She kissed me then, her mouth soft and tentative. I tasted the

salt from her tears and the pain from her heart.

It was a slow, lingering kind of kiss that I wanted to keep

going, because I could kiss this girl all day, but she pulled away and slipped her hand into mine. “We’d better go.”

The birds sang as we trudged through the damp grass. We’d

just rounded the corner of her grandmother’s house and I was

picking a twig out of Monroe’s hair when the front door banged

open and we both froze.

“A little early in the morning for a stroll, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Blackwell leaned against the railing in a blue and white

housecoat that fell almost to her feet. Matching slippers tapped

along the floorboards, and she stared down at us with an expres-

sion that wasn’t exactly pissed off, but it was something. What

that something was I couldn’t say at the moment.

She arched an eyebrow and pinched her lips when neither

one of us answered right away.

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Yeah. Okay, maybe she was pissed off.

“Mrs. Blackwell, I can explain. There was a meteor shower

last night and I wanted Monroe to see it.”

Her eyebrow arched a little higher.

“I called late and she, uh, I guess you were in bed and…”

Damn, that eyebrow was even higher now.

“Well, we kinda fell asleep in the maze,” I finished, a smile

pasted to my face. Usually a smile was enough to get any sort of

female to melt a little bit. But she wasn’t budging.

Though her eyebrow relaxed a bit, which made me feel a

whole lot better.

“It’s not Monroe’s fault, so I hope if you’re upset with anyone,

it’s me.”

“I see,” she said, eyeing my backpack and the state of our

rumpled clothes. “Well, come on in then. I’ll make you breakfast.”

Breakfast.

“It’s okay, ma’am. I’ll just be heading home— ”

“No, Nathan Everets, you will not. If I’m going to be upset

with you, I’d rather do it over a pot of coffee and some bacon

and eggs.”

She gave us each a good long look and then slowly turned

around, disappearing inside the house.

“Come on.” Monroe tugged on my hand. “I wouldn’t argue

with Gram. She’s pretty fierce and even though she looks sweet

and maybe more frail than, say, a,” she paused dramatically,

“dragon, she’s not.”

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“Is she pissed?”

“She’s gotta be. At least a little.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Probably.” She tried to hide a grin. “Definitely.”

Okay. Good to know.

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There are things in this world that will never surprise you.

Things that are absolute. The sun rises each morning and sets in

the evening. No surprise there.

The four seasons fall, one after the other. Again, no surprise.

I’ve learned in my sixteen and a half years that there are things that will surprise you because you don’t see them coming. They

can be hard, painful things, and it’s those ones that will live with you forever, bound to your soul in layers that grow thicker each

year. Hopefully those layers will eventually dull the pain.

There can also be awesome surprises. Again, ones you don’t

see coming, but when they find you, you wonder how you ever

lived without them.

And sometimes, someone surprises you in a way that kinda

knocks you on your ass. Nathan was one, but this afternoon it

was Gram who held that honor.

After an amazing breakfast, spent watching Nathan do every-

thing in his power to charm Gram, he left to go home for a

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quick shower and I’d been told that I was spending the day with

Gram in
New
Orleans
.

She said we were going to have a girls’ day. That she wanted

to shop for some new furniture, stuff for her porch and the

newly refurbished one at the main plantation house.

Surprise number one. I was excited to go.

Surprise number two came just after we’d finished lunch at a

cute little bistro and settled back into her old Matlock. She fired up the engine and turned down the radio.

“So, Monroe. Tell me something.”

I buckled my seatbelt, smoothed the hem of my yellow

sundress, and glanced up.

“Yes?”

“Are you on the pill?”

Wait. What?

“The pill,” I repeated. “Like the…” Jesus, I couldn’t even say

it. What was I? Twelve?

“Yes.” She nodded. “The birth control pill.”

Shit.
Was I really gonna have the birds and the bees talk with Gram? First off, we covered that stuff in fifth grade and

secondly,
seriously
?

I opened my mouth to say something, but since this was

one of those surprises that rips into all of your normal thought

processes, I didn’t have anything. There were no words. There

was just…

Hot cheeks, a sweaty brow, and suddenly a very dry mouth.

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Gram pulled out into the road, signaling her turn, and

stepped on the gas in precise, measured movements. She acted

as if everything was normal and nice and as if she hadn’t just

asked me about…

“I’m just wondering is all. You did spend the entire night

alone with a boy.”

Now that I thought back, surprise number one had occurred

at breakfast when she hadn’t said one word about the fact that

Nathan and I had spent the night in the maze. She’d let Nate

ramble on and on about meteor showers and comets, and I

spent the entire time watching him…just watching him.

Because he made me feel light.

So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she’d decided to

corner me for the big “talk.”

“Gram, that’s…I’m not…I mean, we didn’t.”

“I’m not saying you did, honey, but as a young woman, you

should be protected and so should he. And birth control pills

aren’t the only thing a young woman should have.” She glanced

at me and arched her eyebrow. “Condoms. You should have

condoms as well.”

Oh. My. God.

“Monroe, are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m good. I’m okay.” I was so not okay.

I took a moment and then, well, I had to take another one.

Gram had always been open with me, but still, hearing the word

“condom” come out of her mouth was just
wrong
.

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“So, if we did…I mean if I wanted to, you know, do that

with Nathan, you wouldn’t have a freak out?”

“Monroe, stop putting words in my mouth. I would very

much have a— ” she navigated a turn and then glanced at me,

“freak out. But I also know that hormones, emotion, and a hot

Louisiana night are a recipe for all kinds of things.” She shook her head. “I may have gray hair and more than a few wrinkles on my

face, but I remember what it feels like to be young and in love.”

Jesus!

“I’m not in love with Nathan Everets,” I said hotly. I mean,

I couldn’t be, could I? Didn’t you have to know someone a lot

longer than a few weeks to fall in love?

Oh God. Was that what all the heat and emotion and burning

inside me was about? Was I in love?

“How do you know when you’re in love?” I asked before I

could stop myself.

Gram’s eyes were straight ahead, the radio on low. “If you

can’t picture your tomorrow without a person in it? Then you’re

in love.”

“Oh,” I said shakily.

I glanced out the window, at the storefronts that blurred as

we drove by, and tried to calm my suddenly frantic heart. It took a few moments, but eventually I settled against the seat.

“I told Nate about Malcolm.”

Gram’s eyes were on the road. She didn’t say a word, but her

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didn’t let go until we got to some old, rickety store that suppos-edly sold the finest antiques in the state of Louisiana.

With one hand, she maneuvered her big car into the smallest

spot imaginable, something any trucker would be proud of.

She cut the engine and squeezed my hand once more before

letting go.

When she turned to me, her eyes were soft and pretty…but sad.

“I’m glad,” she said haltingly.

“Me too.”

I swallowed hard. “I miss him so much, Gram.”

“I know.”

The one question that haunted me since that awful day

pressed in hard. I tried not to think about it. I tried to concentrate on the sound that the fan made as it blew out cold air into the car. The radio was still on, the volume low, an old Elvis

Presley song played. “Heartbreak Hotel.”

Kind of appropriate.

“I want him to forgive me,” I whispered. “Do you think he can?”

Her hand was on my cheek but my eyes were squeezed shut.

“Your brother loved you, Monroe. There was never anything

to forgive. Remember that.”

She stroked my hair and I let out a long, shuddering breath.

It felt so good, her touch, her smell.

“Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?” I

asked suddenly. I’d been given that line of bull from a lot of

different people, and every time I heard it, I wanted to scratch

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their eyes out. I used to think they said something like that

because they just didn’t know what else to say.

I got that. What do you tell a teenager whose brother died on

her watch? There were no words, no right thing to say.

“I believe in fate,” Gram said softly. “And I believe in choice.

Sometimes the two connect and sometimes they don’t.” She

shook her head fiercely. “But Malcolm’s death wasn’t your

choice, Monroe. Do you remember what I told you back then?”

Slowly, I nodded. I hadn’t thought about that in forever.

“You told me that I would be fine. That Mom and Dad were

going to be fine. That we would all get through this.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “And what else did I tell you?”

I had to think hard for a minute. There was so much about