Far From You

66

TEN YEARS AGO (SEVEN YEARS OLD)

At lunch on the first day of second grade, I’m eating with Amber and Kyle when I notice the new girl at the far end of the courtyard, sitting alone at a picnic table in her purple dress. Mrs. Durbin had put her next to me in class, but she hasn’t said a word all day. She’d kept her head down even when she was called on.

She still seems sad, so I grab the rest of my lunch and walk over to her.

“I’m fine,” she says when I get to her table, before I can even say anything.

Her face is wet. She scrubs at her cheeks with a fist and glares at me.

“I’m Sophie,” I say. “Can I sit?”

“I guess.”

I slide onto the bench next to her, setting my lunch down. “You’re Mina, right?”

She nods.

“You’re new.”

“We moved,” Mina says. “My daddy went to heaven.”

“Oh.” I bite my lip. I don’t know what to say to that. “Sorry.”

“Do you like horses?” Mina asks, pointing to my sticker-covered lunch box.

“Yeah. My grandpa takes me riding on his land.”

Mina looks impressed. “My brother, Trev, says that sometimes they bite you if you don’t give them sugar.”

I giggle. “They have big teeth. But I give them carrots. You have to make your hand flat.” I hold my hand out, palm up, to show her. “Then they won’t bite.”

Mina does the same with her hand, and our fingertips bump. She looks up and smiles at me.

“Do you have brothers?” she asks. “Or sisters?”

“No, it’s just me.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I wouldn’t like that. Trev’s the best.”

“Sophie!” Amber waves at me. The bell’s about to ring.

I get up, and there’s something about Mina, about the way she’s been crying and how she looks like she’s lost, that makes me hold my hand out to her again. “Come with me?”

She smiles, reaches out, and takes my hand.

We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it’ll end before it’s truly started.