“Would he want to be the reason stopping you?”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out, her words taking me by surprise. I don’t know how to tell her that it just feels… impossible. Too big. Too risky. I haven’t even left Huckabee for a single day in the past three years.
I put my hands on my hips. “I thought we were here to unpack your stuff, not my problems,” I say, and Blake laughs, chucking the balled-up hunk of packing tape at me. I swat it away with a grin.
We peel off the rest of the tape and start to unpack the boxes we brought up. I sit on the floor, handing stuff to Blake for her to put away, one of her Spotify playlists playing softly in the background. She likes a lot of the same stuff I like. Indie. Folk pop. Some Billboard Hot 100 hits. She hums along to “Alaska” by Maggie Rogers, her head moving back and forth to the beat as clothes and shoes give way to art supplies and sketchbooks, sand embedded in the bindings.
From the bottom of a box I pull out a pile of pictures, and… I’m not sure if I should look. It feels super personal. Like each one is showing some small part of the life Blake lived before coming here.
And I know better than anyone that some parts you just don’t want to show.
But she smiles, sitting down next to me, her leg close enough for me to feel the heat radiating off it. The two of us flip through the photographs of sandy beaches and surfing and happy faces.
“These are my friends Jay and Claire,” she says as I take in a picture of her sitting on a curb, a girl with brown hair next to her, a guy in a gray T-shirt on the other side, all of them clutching Styrofoam cups. “We would always get shave ice at this spot down the street from my house on Fridays after school. It’s pretty big in Kauai. The tourists, thankfully, don’t know about this particular spot. You flavor it with a bunch of syrups, and real fruit and stuff.” She flips to the next picture, a close-up of a yellow and orange shave ice, covered in mango and guava.
“This is Jay when we all skipped school on his birthday and went kayaking,” she says, handing me a picture of the gray T-shirt boy, shirtless and paddling a lime-green kayak. “And Claire on the back of his bike on our way to a Valentine’s Day dance our school has every year.” She hands me another one, Claire’s brown hair and striped dress flowing in the wind, her hands clutching Jay’s shoulders, the both of them laughing against a sunset.
Everything she shows me is so fun and exciting. A place I’ve never been before. A place so different from Huckabee. I’m surprised she hasn’t complained more about being stuck here.
I study a picture of her on a surfboard, her smile somehow a little brighter than I’ve seen it.
“Do you miss it?”
“Yeah,” Blake says simply, her eyes dark and serious. “I miss the sand. And the sun. And the water.” She lets out a long sigh. A sigh that says the dirty Huckabee public pool definitely does not come close. She shrugs, squinting at the picture of Jay and Claire on the bike. “And my friends and family, most of all. We did everything together. It feels kind of impossible to picture a senior year without them.”
I couldn’t imagine leaving here before my senior year of school. Leaving Kiera behind. Leaving the familiar hallways of Huckabee High.
Then again, that sounds like it could be a miracle after the past few weeks.
But Blake isn’t running from a ruined social life.
“My grandma back there is doing a lot better than Grandma Carter though.”
“Is that why you moved? Because of your grandma?”
Blake shifts, leaning her head back against the wall. “Yeah, she hasn’t been doing so well since my grandpa died. And my aunt Lisa lives way closer than Hawaii, but still a bit too far away to check up on her regularly.” I think about seeing her downstairs. The cane. The hollowness of her cheeks. “Plus, I didn’t want to feel like I didn’t spend enough time with her, you know? Like I did when my grandpa died. I think my dad felt the same.”
There’s a loud bang from somewhere down the hall, Johnny and my dad up to no good. “That, and I think he wanted to be close to her when I go away to college.” She stands with a stretch. We hear another bang followed by some laughter, the two of us smiling at each other. “It’ll probably be a good thing for your dad when you head to college too,” she says, doubling down on her confidence in me getting out of here. “Not sure about anyone else, though. The two of them together might just bring about Huckabee’s demise.”
I nod and don’t say anything, continuing to look through the pictures. I stop on one of Blake and her friends from back home sitting atop a huge cliff, the jagged edges of the rock illuminated by the sunlight, the distance to the water enough to make me feel dizzy just looking at it.
I spin the picture around to face her. “Did you jump off this?”
“Yeah,” she says as she stoops down to look at it, her eyes flicking up to meet mine, a mischievous grin on her face. “You ever been cliff jumping before?”
“Have I ever been cliff jumping?” I snort. “Blake, that’s like asking if I’ve ever robbed a bank, or solved pi.”
I push down the initial wave of excitement I had upon seeing the photo. I’ve definitely read articles about cliff-diving accidents. People breaking their necks, or losing their balance and smacking their head on the way down.
I don’t need to test my luck falling off anything.
She turns back to me,
