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I duck out of Mina’s room, closing the door quietly

behind me before hobbling into the kitchen and grabbing a

glass from the cupboard.

Footsteps. I glance up at him as I turn the faucet on and

fi ll up the glass. I swig the water, trying not to look suspi-

cious. “Water’s supposed to help with the muscle cramps,”

I explain, rinsing out my glass and putting it in the sink.

“Still doing the all-natural stuff?” he asks as we make

our way into the living room. I sigh in relief; he doesn’t

notice that I’m out of breath. One of her books from the box

lies open on the coffee table.

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F A R F R O M Y O U

“Mostly it’s yoga and herbs. Cortisone shots in my back.

Non-opiate pain pills.”

We sit down on the stuck-in-the-seventies couch, a care-

ful amount of space between us. Other than us, the only

thing that’s changed in the room is the mantelpiece. All

through our childhood, candles and crucifi xes had sur-

rounded a large black-and-white picture of Mina’s dad,

beaming down at the room. When I was little, spending the

night, sometimes I’d watch Mrs. Bishop light the candles.

Once I’d seen her kiss her fi ngers and press them to the cor-

ner of his picture, and something sick churned inside my

stomach, realizing that we all go away in the end.

Mina’s picture is next to her father’s now. She stares back

at me from her mass of dark curls, that sly, secretive smile

fl irting at the corners of her mouth, her explosive energy

just an echo in her eyes.

Some things can’t be contained or captured.

I look away.

“Your mom—” I start.

“She’s in Santa Barbara staying with my aunt,” Trev

says. “She needed . . . Well, it’s better for her. For right now.”

“Of course. Are you going back to Chico State in the

fall?”

He nods. “I have to repeat last semester. And I’m gonna

commute. When Mom comes back . . . I need to stay close.”

I nod.

More excruciating silence. “I should go,” I say. “I just

wanted to give you the box.”

“Sophie,” he says.

T E S S S H A R P E

103

He says it so much like she used to. I
know
him. Every

part of him, probably even more than I ever knew Mina,

because Trev’s never bothered to hide from me. He’s never

thought he had to. I know what he’s going to ask. What he

wants me to do.

“Don’t,” I say.

But he’s determined. “I have to know,” he says, and it

comes out so fi erce. He looks at me like I’m denying him

something necessary. Oxygen. Food. Love. “I’ve spent

months with police reports and newspaper articles and

rumors. I can’t stand it. I need to know. You’re the only per-

son who can tell me.”

“Trev—”

“You owe me this.”

There is no way I’m getting out of here without answer-

ing his questions. Not without running.

Running from Trev used to be easy. Now it’s impossible.

He’s all I have left of her.

I rub at my knee, digging my fi ngers in the sore muscle

between my kneecap and bone. I can feel the bumps of the

screws if I press down deep enough. It hurts, doing this, but

it’s the good kind of hurt, like a healing bruise. “Go ahead

and ask.”

“The doctor who examined her . . . he said it happened

fast. That she probably didn’t hurt at all. But I think he was

lying to make me feel better.”

I don’t want to be near him while he does this to me—to

both of us. I move to the end of the couch, tilting my body

away from him, protecting myself from the onslaught.

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F A R F R O M Y O U

“It wasn’t like that, was it?” Trev asks.

I shake my head. It had been the opposite, and he’s

known that all along, but when I confi rm it, I can see how

it breaks him.

“Did she say anything?”

I wish I could lie to him. Wish I could say that she gave

a proper good-bye, that she made me promise to watch out

for him, that she said she loved him and her mom, that she

saw her dad waiting for her on the other side with open

arms and a welcoming smile.

I wish it had been like that. Almost as much as I wish

it had been over instantly, so she wouldn’t have been so

scared. I wish that any part of it could have been peaceful

or quiet or brave. Anything but the painful, frantic mess we

became in the dirt, all breath and blood and fear.

“She kept saying she was sorry. She . . . she said it hurt.”

My voice breaks. I can’t continue.

Trev covers his mouth with his hands. He’s shaking, and

I hate that I agreed to this. He can’t handle it. He shouldn’t

have to.

This is mine to bear.

It would be so easy to drown all of this with pills. The

urge snakes through me, it’s right below my skin, waiting

to lash out and drag me down. I could make myself forget.

I could snort so much that nothing would matter anymore.

But I can’t let it take over. Whoever did this has to pay.

Ten months. Two days. Eighteen hours.

“I tried, Trev. I tried to get her breathing again. But no

matter what I did—”

T E S S S H A R P E

105

“Just go,” he says tightly. “Please, go.” He stares straight

ahead.

There’s a crash that makes me turn around before I can

get to the front door. He’s kicked the coffee table over, spill-

ing the contents of the box onto the fl oor. He meets my

eyes, and I throw the words at him to break him, because

I want to in that moment. Because he made me talk about

it. Because he looks so much like her. Because he’s here and

so am I, but she’s not—and that’s so unfair, I can barely

breathe through it.

“Still can’t hate me, Trev?”

22

A YEAR AND A HALF AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)

“What do you think of Kyle Miller?” Mina asks. We’re making the

hour-and-a-half drive to Chico, where Trev’s working on his bachelor’s

in business. Mina likes to drag me with her on these monthly trips. I

never put up much of a fi ght because it’s usually nice to see Trev. Mina

had wanted to leave early, so I haven’t had a chance to take anything

extra and it’s making me jittery. I wish I hadn’t said I’d drive, but I

hate being the passenger, especially for long distances.

We pass by another roadside fruit stand, a crooked sign marked

Closed For Winter
teetering in the wind. Miles and miles of almond

and olive orchards whiz by us on both sides, the branches stark and

black against the pale gray sky. Tractors rust in the empty fi elds, along

with the faded for sale signs on the wire fences that have been hang-

ing there forever.

“Soph?”

“Huh?”

“Stop zoning out. Kyle Miller? What do you think?”

“I’m driving. And why are we talking about Kyle Miller?” I don’t

know why I’m playing dumb. When Mina gets bored, she toys with

boys.

“I dunno. He’s sweet. He used to bring us brownies when you were

in the hospital.”

T E S S S H A R P E

107

“I thought his mom made those.”

“No, Kyle did. Adam told me. Kyle bakes. He just doesn’t broad-

cast it.”

“Okay, the brownies were good. But he’s not smart or anything.”

I wonder if that’s the point. That he won’t be smart enough to notice.

I’m always worried Trev will.

“Kyle’s not dumb,” she says. “And he’s got those big brown eyes.

They’re like chocolate.”

“Oh come on,” I snap, too on edge to hide my annoyance. “Don’t

tell me you’re gonna start dating him just because he looks at you like

he wants to be your love slave.”

She shrugs. “I’m bored. I need some excitement. This year has

been blah. Trev’s gone, Mom’s got her charities. Not to mention the

biggest thing to happen in school all year was homecoming court.”

“The look on Chrissy’s face when Amber hit her over the head

with the scepter was worth the week in detention.”

Mina snickers. “You’re the one who broke her crown.”

I don’t bother to hide my grin. “I didn’t mean to step on it! That

fl oat was totally unstable. And I was already at a disadvantage.”

“Uh huh, I believe you, Soph,” Mina says. “Homecoming was

fun. Detention not so much. But I don’t want fun. Or detention. I

want something interesting to happen. Like when Jackie Dennings

disappeared.”

“Don’t wish that! That’s twisted.”

“Abductions and unsolved cases generally are,” Mina says.

“Please tell me you aren’t getting into that again. The fi rst time

was creepy enough.”

“I’m not being creepy.
Something
bad happened to her.”

“Stop being so morbid,” I scold. “Maybe she ran away.”

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F A R F R O M Y O U

“Or maybe she’s dead.”

My phone trills, and Mina picks it up, turning the alarm off . “Pill

time?”

“Yeah. Hand me my case?”

She grabs it from my purse, but doesn’t give it to me. She looks at

me out of the corner of her eye, turning the case over and over, the

pills clacking together inside.

“What?” I ask.

“Sophie.” That’s all she says. One word but she can infuse it with

such frustration, such worry.

We are experts in each other. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been

dodging the inevitable confrontation, because if she asks me outright,

she’ll know my answer’s a lie.

“I’m fi ne,” I say, with as much truth as I can muster. “I just need

my pills.” My skin crawls under her scrutiny. I’m sure she can look

right through me, see the drugs fl oating through my system.

I focus on the road.

She tilts the case back and forth in her hand. “I didn’t realize they

still had you on so many.”

“Yeah, well, they do.” It’s like I’m on the edge of a cliff that’s crum-

bling, the ground beneath my feet breaking free, slipping from me. I

keep glancing at the case in her hand. She’s not handing it over.

What am I going to do if she doesn’t?

“Maybe you should think about getting off them. Do a tapering

thing or something. It’s been forever, and that stuff isn’t good for you.”

“I think my doctors would probably disagree.” I can’t keep the

edge out of my voice, the warning. Won’t she just drop it already?

But she won’t. She hears the warning and breezes past it, because

that’s the way Mina is.

T E S S S H A R P E

109

“Seriously, Soph. You’ve been acting like . . .” She huff s out a

breath. She won’t say it out loud. She’s afraid to. “I’m
worried
about

you. And you won’t talk to me.”

“It’s nothing you’d understand.” She can’t. She came out of the

accident with a broken arm and a few bruises. I’d come out with metal

for bones and a dependence on pain pills that had morphed into a

hunger I couldn’t—didn’t want to—ignore.

“Why don’t you try explaining it to me, then?”

“No,” I say. “Mina, drop it. Okay? Just give me my pills. The rest

stop’s coming up.”

She chews on her lip. “Fine.” She tosses the case into my lap and

folds her arms, staring out the window at the rows of bare trees that

blur by faster as I press hard on the gas.

We drive the rest of the way in silence.

The party Trev takes us to later that night is crowded. The apartment’s

too warm with bodies, the smell of beer mealy in the air. I lost Mina in

the crowd about twenty minutes in, but we’d barely spoken since we

argued in the car, so it doesn’t really matter.

That’s what I keep telling myself.

The music’s awful, some top-forty hit blasting so loud it makes my

head ache. I want nothing more than to get out of here, walk to Trev’s

apartment, lie down on his couch, close my eyes, and fade out for a

few hours.

I weave my way through the crowd, narrowly avoiding an ass grab

by some frat boy wearing his baseball cap turned sideways. I sidestep

him and slip out onto the empty balcony. Fishing a few pills out of my

pocket, I down them with what’s left of my vodka.

It’s cold outside, but quieter, with the rumble of the crowd and

110

F A R F R O M Y O U

the thump of the music muffl

ed. Buzzed from the vodka, I press my

elbows against the railing, waiting for the foggy feeling of the high to