Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
I look around. “You don’t think he’s here, do you?”
“Who?” Amon looks confused for a moment. “Oh. Erol, you mean? No, he’s not here.”
“How can you be sure?”
Amon blows out a breath, then takes my arm and leads me over to a more private area under a large sugar maple. “I was gonna tell you this last night, but… whatever. I didn’t. And I don’t really wanna tell you now because it’s not fair. But it’s always gonna be the wrong time and the sooner you know this, the better.”
“Wrong time for what?”
“To tell you that Erol Cross is dead, Rosie. He didn’t go missing twelve years ago. He died.”
For a moment, these words don’t make any sense and I just blink at him.
“Rosie? Did you hear me?”
I nod my head because I did. But… “Dead?”
Amon presses his lips together and nods his head as well.
My sight narrows down into a little tunnel surrounded by hazy grayness and then it’s like time flies backwards and I’m that scared teenager standing in the cafeteria at Trinity High, looking down at the puddle of water at my feet.
Erol had been missing for weeks at that point. So I had kinda gotten over the initial shock of… well, abandonment, I suppose, and was well into panic territory. What was I gonna do with this baby, how was I gonna live, what would people think of me?
And then—
My foggy vision clears and suddenly I’m looking straight into Amon’s blue eyes. But he’s not a grown man like he is now, he’s a teenager, like me. He was the first person I saw when I looked up from the puddle. It was like we were the only two people in the world for a second there. Just him and me. And I just remember staring at him, and him staring back, and then a sense of peace flooded through me and suddenly I knew what to do.
You will just do your best, Rosie. And it came to me in Amon’s voice for some reason. Probably because he and I were looking at each other. A moment later people rushed in, the contractions started, and all I knew was pain and I forgot all about that moment when I heard his voice in my head.
But I remember now.
“It was you,” I say.
Amon’s brow furrows. “What?”
“I was looking right at you that day when my water broke in the cafeteria.”
He lets out a huff of breath. “Yeah. I was walking by and you had a weird look on your face and then your water broke and—”
“I heard your voice in my head, Amon.”
He makes a face of confusion. “What?”
“I looked at you and you looked at me and then… I knew it was gonna be OK. Because all I could do was my best. And that would be enough. And this bit of comfort came to me as your voice in my head. You helped me that day. You truly did.”
“But I didn’t do nothing, Rosie. I just stood there. I was closest to you and I wanted to go over to you and help in some way, but—”
“But then a crowd of people rushed in and blocked you out.”
“Yeah. And they took you away in someone’s car, I think.”
I laugh out loud. “Mr. Damian drove me to the hospital. I had forgotten about that.”
“Tenth-grade English?”
I nod. “He was the last teacher to come over and someone pointed to him and yelled, ‘Get your car! You’re taking her to the hospital!’ I screamed the whole way there and he just kept mutterin’, ‘I don’t get paid enough to do this. I just don’t get paid enough to do this.’”
Amon laughs again. His smile is bright.
But I sigh and shrug my shoulders. “Even though I can laugh about it now, I was horrified, and scared, and sad all in the same breath. And then, after Cross was born, I was all those things, plus happy too. And it made no sense at all, Amon. But there, in my head, were those words that you never said, but found their way to me anyway. You will just do your best. And that’s all I did. That’s all I’ve been doing this whole time, and now…”
I look away because I’m gonna have one of those cries. The ugly kind. Which I don’t normally partake in, but nonetheless I can feel the lump in my throat and the grimace on my face as I try to hold it in.
Amon pulls me into a hug and I rest my cheek on his shoulder until I’ve got it back under control. Then I sniff real big and push back. “I’m not really crying about Erol.” I wipe my eyes, but the tears are big and ploppy, so it doesn’t do much good. “I’m just… sad, I guess. Because even though I tried to tell myself he was dead. That was the only way he’d abandon me like that, I never really believed it. I always had that little bit of hope, ya know? And then, these letters came and—”