Breaking The Rules

Her words land like a blow to the gut. “Little late, don’t you think?”

Carrie picks up a napkin ring and rolls it between her hands before setting it back down. Her anxiety twists the coil within me.

“Let me forward you the email. They say...” She trails off, and her cheeks puff out when she exhales. “They say that when we contacted them two years ago about adopting Jacob and Tyler, they thought we were asking to adopt you, too. There’s been a misunderstanding. They thought we were taking care of you.”

Fuck. Me.

Echo (#ulink_b68a857a-4466-5d4c-919d-63a0e3aa0c35)

Noah sits inside, and I sit outside. It’s not unusual for me to give him space while he talks with his brothers, but what is unusual is the silence between us before he went in. I’ve got nothing to say to him, and he obviously has nothing to say to me.

My hand flies over the page and what typically erases the unease and melts the apprehension doesn’t smooth away anything. My grip tightens on the chalk, and each swipe across the paper becomes more clipped and less thought out until the markings represent disoriented lines on a page and not an image or a picture or anything.

I toss the sketch pad and the chalk onto the table and rub at the wetness forming in my eyes. Freak. The guy called me a freak, and that’s what I am.

Noah and I are heading back home, and the nightmares I thought I was running from lurk behind every corner and coffee shop in America. In less than a month, Noah and I will start college, and I’ll have a roommate in the dorms and new classes, and a ball of dread knots in my stomach. This summer was supposed to change me, and nothing has changed.

Noah (#ulink_8ef16027-dcd5-54c2-ab8e-2c3da71a57ad)

Back at the parking lot of the campsite, Echo sets her sketchbook into the passenger side of the car and riffles through her duffel bag of clothes. She hasn’t spoken to me since the incident at the café. It’s not the first time Echo’s been pissed at me, but somehow this anger feels different—weighted.

I drop the packed tent next to the open trunk and lean my hip against the car, praying Echo will at least make fleeting eye contact. It’s not like her to go this long without acknowledging me. I’ve been hoping she’d talk—give me an idea of what direction to take.

If she said, “I hate you,” then I can say, “I’m an asshole, so you should, but I love you.” If she said that she’s mad at me then I can respond that she should be, but it doesn’t matter because I love her. But she gives me nothing. Silence.

Echo tosses the duffel bag in the backseat and rummages through another. With her clothes stacked to the side, Echo withdraws a light white button-up sweater. She jams the clothes back in and closes the car door.

Fuck. Plain and simple fuck.

It’s nine in the morning and close to eighty degrees. She’s covering her scars again.

As Echo walks down a trail leading to the campground and the dunes, she slips the sweater over her arms and draws the sleeves over her fingers. I haven’t seen her do that since March. And Echo wonders why I don’t think she should talk to her psychotic mother. One phone call along with the wrong words from a stupid-ass bastard and she spirals.

The memory of the way her face paled out when I told the bastard to apologize circles my brain. Echo has a habit of making me feel like a dick, and this is one of those moments, but damn it, I went after that guy for her.

Screw it. We’ll get on the road, and she’ll calm down after some distance. I pick the tent up and try to cram it into the small space I left for it in the trunk. When it won’t fit, I push harder, and the sound of material ripping causes a rip within me. Possibly my sanity. “Shit!”

I slam the trunk with a thunderous bang. For two months, Echo and I didn’t worry about our messed-up lives in Kentucky. She didn’t focus on her mom or dad or her newfound memories or the scars on her arms, and I didn’t think twice about how in June I turned eighteen.

Eighteen. Out of foster care, out on the streets, pack your shit, get out of my fucking house, eighteen.

Soon Echo and I will be heading home and back to our problems.

Once Carrie sends the email, I’ll have one more problem to add to this list: deciding whether or not to read it and what the hell to do with the message.

My head falls back, and I focus on the crystal-blue sky overhead. I blow out a rush of air then inhale slowly. Mrs. Collins told me to do that whenever I was hit with the urge to tell her where to shove her annoying questions. I’d never admit it, but sometimes, as in now, it works.

I need to go after Echo, but I’ve got no clue what to say. Desperate for help, I pull out my cell, scroll to a familiar number and press Call. Two rings and I smile at hearing the voice of my best friend and foster brother on the other end. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the middle of nowhere?”

“S’up, Isaiah. What’s going on there?”

“Watching Beth’s back...as much as she’ll let me. Right now she’s picking up her pay at the Dollar Store.”

I met Isaiah and Beth over a year ago when social services placed me into a new foster home—the same home as Isaiah. He had been placed at Beth’s aunt and uncle’s house years ago and because of Beth’s messed-up home life, she often crashed there with us.

“Watching her back how?” I ask.

“Some shit’s going down with her mom.”

“How bad?” Beth’s mom is a nightmare, plus her mom’s boyfriend makes serial killers look like cuddly puppies.

“Bad.” The short answer creates chills. “But Beth doesn’t know, and keeping her in the dark is becoming complicated.”

“Should you keep her in the dark?”

Isaiah pauses. “It’s Beth. If she knew what her mom is mixed up in, she’d try to fix it, and then she’d end up in trouble that I couldn’t fix.”

This is the kind of guy Isaiah is: loyal to the end and a fixer. Even if the person he loves doesn’t want to be helped.

“Yeah. I get it.” There’s not much I wouldn’t do for Beth. She’s the closest thing I have to a sister. “We’ll get Beth to move out with us. The more distance she puts between her and her mom, the better.”

“Thanks, man. So why are you calling?”

My gaze roams back to the path. “I fucked up with Echo.”

“When don’t you fuck up with Echo?”

My best friend’s a comedian. “A guy called her a freak, and I threw him against a wall.”

“Good for you.”

“She’s pissed. Won’t even look at me.”

“Why?”

Exactly. “I love her, but I never said I understood her.”

“Have you said you’re sorry?”

“No, and I’m not sorry.” Not in the least.

“Try it. Who knows, it could help.”

“It could.”

“And people say you’re smart.”

“Fuck you.” I let sincerity into my voice.