Far From You

19

NOW (JUNE)

Dad drops me back off at home. He stays at the curb, the car idling until I’m safe inside the house. I wait until he’s gone, then I get in my car and drive to Sweet Thyme Nursery.

I try to distract myself among the rows of plants, leaning too hard on the cart as I push it along. I breathe deep, gulping in the scent, rich and earthy and green, and it loosens something inside my chest that’s been there since I stepped inside David’s office.

After paying for my marguerite daisies and organic soil, I smile and shake my head at the girl at the counter who asks if I need help. The cart’s heavy, but I put my weight into it, gritting my teeth as my muscles spasm.

By the time I get to my car, my leg’s hurting enough that I’m steeling myself to go get someone to help me load the bags of soil into the trunk. Someone honks behind me, and I pull the cart out of the way.

“Hey, Sophie, is that you?” Adam Clarke peers out at me from his pickup. I’ve known him, like nearly everyone else at my school, for most of my life. He’d dated our friend Amber for almost a year, and she used to go on and on about how he looked like a country music video version of a Disney prince. Pair the worn baseball cap, his shit-kicker cowboy boots, and a fondness for ­Wranglers and John Deere T-shirts with his green eyes, straight nose, and perfect smile, and Amber had a point.

“Hi, Adam.”

He looks from my trolley of soil down at my leg, and understanding filters through his face. “You need help?”

When I finally was allowed back to school after the crash, Mina had assigned all our friends jobs to make sure my comeback went smoothly. There’d been a calendar with color blocks and code names and everything. Amber had been my bathroom buddy because Mina had a different lunch period than we did. Cody was in charge of reminding me when to take all my medications, because he was the most punctual. And because they were the biggest and in all my classes, Adam and Kyle had carried my stuff for me and made sure I didn’t fall down.

I’d hated Mina’s little army of helpers at first, but after the fourth time I got the stupid walker I used back then stuck in the handicapped stall, I knew better than to refuse the help. I learned to be grateful for Amber and how she’d slam the bathroom door shut if anyone tried to come inside.

“That’d be great. Thanks, Adam.”

Adam pulls his truck up next to my car and hops out. “Planting a garden?”

“Yeah, gives me something to do.” I pop my trunk open, and he grabs the first bag of soil, placing it inside. “What are you doing here?”

“Mrs. Jasper buys venison from me and Matt. She makes jerky out of it.”

“Good season this year?”

Adam smiles, pushing his baseball cap back, black hair curling against his forehead. “Yeah. It’s been great for Matt. He’s been getting healthy.” He hefts another bag easily over his shoulder, dumping it in my trunk.

“What about you?” I ask, because I don’t want the conversation veering to me. “Are you going for the soccer scholarship still?”

“Trying.” He grins. “Pretty much the only way I’m gonna get out of here. But Uncle Rob thinks I’ve got a good chance. He’s been on my ass about it. Making me run suicides.”

I wince in sympathy. “I remember he used to have us do those. My dad thought we were too young. They used to argue about it.”

“I forgot you played soccer.”

“I lasted a season, and then swimming took over. And after that, you know…” I shrug.

Adam reaches out and squeezes my arm, and it takes an effort not to flinch. If I don’t see it coming, I tend to jump when people touch me now. I’m sure David would have loads to say about it.

“I know things have been tough. But it’ll get better,” he says earnestly. “You just need to stay clean. You know, my brother went through the same thing. He relapsed, too. He really screwed up, stole money from our mom—she almost lost our house because of it. But my uncle got him on the right track. Matt made amends, and he’s doing really good on the program now. Healthy, like I said. He and my mom are even talking again. So I know if you take it seriously, stick close to your family, you’ll be okay. You’re strong, Soph. Just think about all the stuff you’ve gotten through.”

“That’s really nice,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

Adam smiles. “So, listen, I’m glad I ran into you. Kyle mentioned that you two kind of got into it last week.”

“Is that what he’s saying?” I ask, trying for casual.

“Look, I know you guys have had your problems. But really, Soph, that fight he had with Mina—”

“What fight?”

“I thought that’s what you guys were…” He stops abruptly, red creeping along his cheekbones. “Um, maybe I shouldn’t—”

“No, you can tell me,” I say, maybe a little too quickly, because it makes his straight black brows scrunch together, forming a solid line.

“Look, Kyle’s my best friend—” he starts.

“And Mina was mine.”

Adam sighs. “It’s not a big deal,” he says. “They just—they had a fight the day before she died. Kyle came over to my place shitfaced afterward. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but he was really upset. Dude was crying.”

“Kyle was crying?” I can’t even picture giant, lumbering Kyle in tears.

“It was weird,” Adam admits, shaking his head.

“Did he say anything? Tell you why they were fighting?” She hadn’t been taking his calls that day. What had they fought about that would drive him to cry on his best friend’s shoulder? Was it enough to make him want to kill her?

“He was so drunk, I could barely understand half of it. He just kept saying that she wouldn’t listen to him and his life was over. I think it’s hard for him, you know, because they fought and he never got to say he was sorry.”

“Yeah,” I say, but now I’m the one with the furrowed brow, absorbing this information.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Adam says when the silence has stretched out too long. He grabs the two bags of soil left in the cart and dumps them in the trunk for me, brushing his hands against his jeans. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” I say. “Thanks for telling me. And thanks for helping me with all this dirt.”

“You have someone to help you unload at home?”

“My dad’ll do it.”

“Text me sometime,” Adam calls out as he hops into his truck. “We’ll hang out.”

I wave at him as he drives off. I get into my car and press hard on the gas, like if I drive fast enough, I can leave all the questions behind.

When I get home, I leave the bags of soil in the car and head into the house. After I take a shower, I do what I’ve been dreading. I’ve put off searching Mina’s room for too long. If Trev won’t answer my calls, I’ll have to trick him. But that means I have to wait until my dad’s home so I can use his phone. So I force myself to grab a cardboard box and go upstairs to my room to start filling it with her things. They’re my ticket inside the house.

Through the years, her clothes and jewelry had mixed with mine. I have the folders full of newspaper clippings and printouts of online articles that she’d page through while we’d lie on my bed, listening to music. Books, movies, earrings, makeup, and perfume, they all mingled until they weren’t mine or hers anymore. Just ours.

Everywhere I look, there she is. I can’t escape her if I try.

I take my time choosing what to put in the box, knowing that Trev will thumb through every book, every article, as if they hold some deeper meaning, a message to comfort him. He’ll place her jewelry back in the big red velvet box on her dresser, and the clothes back in her closet, never to be worn again.

I’m sliding the last book into the box when I hear my dad open the front door.

I go downstairs. “Good day?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “Yeah, honey, it was okay. Did you stay here the rest of the day?”

“I went to the nursery and got some more soil. And some daisies.”

“I’m glad you’re still gardening,” Dad says. “It’s good for you to be out in the sun.”

“I was gonna call Mom and see what she wanted to do for dinner, but my phone’s charging upstairs. Can I borrow yours?”

“Sure.” He digs in the pocket of his charcoal trousers, coming up with it.

“Thanks.”

I wait until he’s disappeared into the kitchen before going out onto the front porch. I call my mom first, just so I’m not lying, but it goes to voice mail. She’s probably in a meeting.

I punch in Trev’s number.

“It’s Sophie,” I say quickly when he answers. “Please don’t hang up.”

There’s a pause, then a sigh. “What is it?”

“I have some of her things. I thought maybe you’d want them. I can bring them by.”

Another long pause. “Give me a while,” he says. “Around six?”

“I’ll be there.”

“See you then.”

After I hang up, I get antsy. I can’t go back inside. I can’t just sit upstairs, next to the scraps of her I’ve dumped in a box. I go around back to my garden, because it’s the only distraction I have left.

Dad’s pulled the bags of soil out of the car and lined them up next to the beds for me already. I wave at him from the yard, and he waves back from the kitchen, where he’s washing dishes.

I collapse in an awkward heap on the ground, reach out, and dig through the soil of the last neglected bed, rooting out stones and throwing them hard over my shoulder. The summer sun pounds down, and sweat collects at the small of my back as I work. Bent at this angle, my leg is killing me, but I ignore the pain.

I tear open a bag of soil and heft it over the edge of the wood, spilling new dirt into the bed. I dig my hands into the moist soil over and over, letting it filter between my fingers, the rich smell a little bit like coming home. I mix it deeper and deeper into the bed, turning up the bottom soil, combining old and new. The tip of my finger brushes against something smooth and metallic, buried deep. I grasp it and pull a tarnished, muddy silver circle out of the ground.

Astonished, I lay the ring on the flat of my palm, brushing off the dirt.

It’s hers. I remember she thought she’d lost it at the lake last summer. Mine is in my jewelry box, locked away, because it doesn’t mean anything without its match.

I curl my fingers around the ring so tightly, I’m surprised the word stamped into the silver doesn’t carve its way into me the way she did.