In Place of Never (33 page)

My friends stared through the steamed window as Will jogged around the hood of his truck and climbed behind the wheel. “Until I can convince you of our seamless compatibility and destined union, how about we visit your family for Thanksgiving dinner as planned?”

I snapped my seat belt into place. “Well, we do have an eight-hour drive. I’m open to hearing more about this destined union of ours.”

His blessed dimple caved in.

The pickup roared to life and Will shifted into drive. I smiled at my hero, the one who’d saved me from myself. The one who’d met me where I was and pulled me out of the blackness. He’d given me hope and freedom when I’d forgotten what either word meant.

The world outside his truck looked like a snow globe, pristine and polka-dotted in white. I wove my fingers with his on the seat between us. It was an anything-is-possible kind of day.

Keep reading for a special sneak peek of Julie Anne Lindsey’s next novel:

A Lyrical e-book on sale June 2016.

Learn more about Julie Anne at http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/31621

What did I have to offer?

I’d answered the question dozens of times over the past two years. Colleges around the country all wanted to know.
What can I contribute to their campus?
The accurate answer was nothing. My bumbling essay answers weren’t much better. I needed what they had and not the other way around. Not that it mattered.

I swiveled in my desk chair, crossing too-long legs under a too-short desk. Sweat ran over my temples, despite the wildly spinning ceiling fan overhead. The brutal summer heat had dried up local creeks and forced Mark, my grandpa, to turn off the air conditioner while he was at work. He couldn’t afford to keep the house livable at these temperatures. He hated the electric bills. Mark hated everything.

I fingered a stack of rejection letters and tossed them at my best friend, Heidi. “I thought this summer would be amazing. So far, it’s just hot. And depressing.”

She flopped back on my bed, scattering pillows and raising the rejections overhead for inspection. “It’s not too late to come with me to Kent State. You have the grades, and they have a great film school.”

“Not this year.”

Mark had conveniently forgotten to apply for my federal student aid or complete any of the other financial aid paperwork I needed to leave town.

“Maybe next.”

Packing boxes lined the far wall, filled with winter clothes, tattered books, and keepsakes from my time at Roosevelt High School. “I’m not applying anywhere else until I’m eighteen. Once I’m on my own, I can do the paperwork.”

Heidi set the letters aside and lifted onto her elbows. Concern lined her freckled face. “Your grandpa didn’t finish the financial aid? He promised.” Her dead tone and sad eyes stung my heart. She still had hope for Mark.

“To be fair, he never promised. He grunted and left the room.”

Mark didn’t make a habit of speaking to me. Despite the fact I was his only family, we shared the century-old farmhouse in deafening silence. Him wishing I hadn’t been born and me in complete agreement.

I hoisted my camera from its bag and plugged it into my laptop.

Heidi rolled onto her front and crawled to my headboard, where I tacked and taped a few of my favorite photos. “Graduation.” She touched a trio of recent shots. “Look at Mr. Rand. He’s crying.”

“He wasn’t the only one. A few teachers were too. I guess they cared.”

“Small towns,” she whispered.

“Yep.” I let the p pop on my lips. “It was a good day.”

She pulled one photo loose and turned back to me. “I’m sorry your grandpa couldn’t make it.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah. Well, Mom didn’t get to graduate.” Stubborn emotion clogged my throat. Everyone knew whose fault that was. Mine.

I turned stinging eyes to the computer screen and added a few new photos to my picture journal. “Did you see the butterfly garden opens this weekend?”

“I love that place. My mom’s taken me every summer since I was in diapers. Hey, you want to come? We can go opening day and get ice cream after.”

“Yes,” I spun to face her, “but guess who gets paid to go this time? Three hundred dollars for enough shots to make a publicity brochure.”

Heidi pounded her feet. “Shut. Up. That’s almost enough for your security deposit.”

“Yep.” I disconnected my camera and stuffed it back into its worn leather bag. The desktop image snapped back in place. New York Film Academy. A place I’d dreamed of attending since I learned of its existence in fourth grade.

I grabbed the packing tape and bounced to my feet. “I already have enough in savings to pay the difference plus first month’s rent. I just need to hurry up and turn eighteen so I can sign that lease agreement.” I dragged a line of tape across the top of one unsealed box.

Heidi squealed. “We’re going to have so much fun in your new apartment this summer. It’ll be even better in the fall, when you go to Kent with me.”

“There won’t be room for another freshman in the dorms by the time I have my birthday and apply. Kent’s too far to commute.” I glanced at my laptop. The flags outside the New York Film Academy billowed in the wind. “Next year, okay?”

She deflated. “At least try.”

“As soon as I move out, I can apply for financial aid based on my income and expenses, but there are no guarantees about space being available, and I’m awful at essay writing.”

“I’ll help.” She shoved the picture from my headboard at me. “Was this taken in town? I don’t think I know this place.”

“It’s in Cedar Creek. I went there to sell some of my old comics.”

“Oh.” She tapped the photo of a young mother and child against her palm. “You want to get out of here?”

“Can’t. I have to make dinner. Mark will be home soon, and he’ll be cranky.”

He worked as many hours as he could to make ends meet; though, it wasn’t clear where the money went. Most of my wardrobe was three years old, and I bought whatever I needed with money from the photography studio. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t bought anything new in eighteen years. More likely, money was another excuse to avoid the replacement daughter he never wanted.

“I’ll help. I mean, I can’t cook, but I can entertain.”

I swung the bedroom door open and cursed the stifling air. “Deal. Whatcha got?”

“How about some juicy gossip?”

Heidi followed me down the steps and through the house, rattling off details from the big bonfire last weekend. A town tradition for graduation night. “And…” She paused for dramatic effect as I lined hamburger patties on aluminum foil. “Guess who’s home for the summer?”

I lifted a shoulder. “Everyone?”

She poked me then pointed a silent finger at my backyard.

“Oh.” I stared through the kitchen window at a yellow cottage in the distance. “No.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Butterflies assaulted my stomach like a hoard of angry bees. “Great.” I lifted the tray and moved toward the back door, hoping she’d take the hint and open it.

She did.

We filed onto the back porch.

“Well?” she asked.

I set the tray on our patio table and lit the gas grill. “Well, that’s good. I’m sure his mother missed him while he was at school.”

Heidi swung her chin left and right. “You’ve had a crush on Dean Wells since eighth grade. He’s the literal boy next door, and you’ve never had a conversation with him. Don’t you think this is finally the time for that? You’re leaving town in a couple months.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re the only one who thinks I still have a chance at starting college in the fall. Plus, he’s leaving too. He doesn’t live here anymore. He’s only visiting.”

“We’ll see.”

Whatever that means.
I went back inside and opened the fridge.

Heidi perched on the counter, swinging bare feet. “Do you have any lemonade?”

“I can make some.” I piled lemons on the American cheese I pulled from the fridge.

“I’ll get the pitcher.”

Heidi rounded the corner to the dining room, her satin baby-doll blouse flowing behind her. “The blue one or the yellow?”

I followed. “Doesn’t matter.”

The china cabinet groaned with mismatched cups, plates, and serving things remnants of another life. “Yellow.”

She hefted one in each hand. Yellow would make the lemonade look more lemony. Blue would create a nice punch of color.

I opened and closed one palm in the universal sign for “gimmee.” “Art majors are the bane of my existence.”

She deliberated several seconds before handing me the yellow pitcher. “We also make the world more beautiful.”

“Uh-huh.” I turned for the kitchen.

Heidi wandered into the living room, where my mom’s senior photo hung over the mantel beside a picture of Mark and Grandma on their wedding day.

Heat rose up the back of my neck. “Don’t say it.”

“It’s just that you look so much like her.”

She always said it.

I kept moving.

Grandma died of breast cancer when Mom was a kid. Mom died of leukemia when I was one. She was seventeen.

Looking like Mom probably added to the list of reasons Mark didn’t look at me. I was a sad reminder of what he’d lost. What she’d sacrificed. I was already older than Mom ever had a chance to be. I got to graduate. If she’d agreed to treatment when they found out about her cancer, she might’ve lived. She’d watched her mom struggle through chemo and radiation. She didn’t think I’d make it. Stupidly, she’d bartered with Mark until he gave in. She’d agreed to any treatment they wanted
after
I was born. Mom was his world. Now he was stuck with me.

I cut lemons in half and dragged the sugar bowl to the sink.

“It’s not your fault.” Heidi filled the pitcher with water. “I know what you’re thinking. What you’re always thinking. No one knows what would’ve happened if she started treatment sooner. My mom says they didn’t find the cancer until it was already bad.”

The sleek blond hair in Mom’s photo was a wig. Her sunken cheeks and haunted eyes were doctored by the studio, but technology sucked then and the efforts were obvious. “If she hadn’t been hiding a pregnancy, she would’ve gone to the doctor and found out about the cancer in time to do something.”

We’d had this conversation so many times I’d memorized the script. I let it play out because I needed to hear it again.

“Katy.” She placed the pitcher gently beside my lemons. Her voice softened to a reassuring whisper. “It wasn’t your fault. None of this is your fault. Your grandpa’s not a bad guy. He’s just stubborn like you. He’s grieving a seventeen-year-old heartache and missing out on his chance to know an amazing, talented, hysterically funny you.”

I ran the pad of my thumb along the bottom of both eyes. “I’m hilarious.”

“Yep.”

“His loss.”

“Totally.”

My stomach knotted.
Totally.
“I think the grill’s ready.” I went outside and moved four hamburgers to the heated grill while she finished the lemonade. Heat rose from the lid like an apparition.

“There you are.” Mark’s gravelly voice scared the crap out of me. “Dinner ready?”

I pressed a palm to my chest. “Just a few minutes.”

He stepped onto the porch and the screen door banged shut with a smack. Beside me, he drove a rag around his face and over sweat-slicked hair. The factory where he worked was hotter than anyplace in town. Guilt raced through me for whining about our lack of air-conditioning. I could walk outside and enjoy the breeze or make lemonade with my friend. He had to work over molten steel inside a building that reeked of crude oil and Kerosene. His navy coveralls were lined in grease. The soles of his work boots were worn to the ground, smooth and flat where thick rubber used to be. He’d get them resoled again soon.

He caught me staring and lingered his gaze over me, as if he might say something more. My heart jumped into my throat. Maybe he was sorry he didn’t finish the FASFA papers or was thankful I made dinner.

“Mark?”

He batted bloodshot eyes and turned the corners of his mouth into a sour look. “I’m not hungry. I think I’ll go out to my shed.” He lumbered off the porch and across the lawn, rubbing his arm and occasionally the back of his neck.

Heidi opened the screen door and poked her head out. She scanned the yard where Mark was unlocking the padlock to his shed. “What do you think he does in there all the time?”

“Besides avoid me?” I flipped the burgers and dropped a slice of cheese on each. “I hope you like burgers. I suddenly have plenty.”

She slipped black cat-eye sunglasses over her nose and ferried two glasses of lemonade to the patio table.

I held my breath, praying she didn’t have to leave. Something in Mark’s eyes had unsettled me. Maybe because he seemed to see me for the first time.

Heidi dropped onto an empty seat and smiled, tucking tan legs beneath her. “Make mine a double.”