Home > The Disenchantments(9)

The Disenchantments(9)
Author: Nina LaCour

The air is dusty and warm, not at all like San Francisco. I lean on the bus and look at the scattered rows of apple trees that fade into the distance.

I’ve been waiting for this for so long—something new, life after high school. I head to the orchard, walk between the rows of trees, over and down small slopes, around the occasional empty ladder stretching up to higher branches. I want an apple, but I don’t think I should pick one, so I search the ground and find one, at a spot that overlooks a river, unbruised and ripe. The river makes me think of the canals in Amsterdam that I now will not boat down, will not sit and overlook with Bev, a pair of beers in our hands. Of all of the islands in the Stockholm Archipelago that I will not discover.

I slump onto the grass and pull my sketchbook and pencil out of my backpack because drawing is the only way I’ll survive this detour before going back home to start my life over, or at least try to figure out a next step. I rough out the landscape, but I don’t get far before Meg and Alexa are here, hovering above me.

“Time to talk,” Meg says. She plops next to me, and Alexa sits gracefully, tucking her legs beneath her.

Meg takes a giant breath. “Colby, the thing is, you have to come on the trip.” Alexa nods and the bells on her headband chime, and she keeps chiming and nodding all through Meg’s speech. “I know you’re going to say we can just cancel the first show and, like, rent a van or something, and make up the time tomorrow. But we can’t rent a van.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have to be twenty-five to rent a car. Or else it costs a million dollars.”

“So you want me to stay with you because you need the bus.”

“Yes,” she says. “True. But that’s only part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

“Because we need you,” Meg says. “Because there wouldn’t be a band without you. And it’s good to have a boy with us. And because . . .”

Alexa stops nodding and fixes her dark eyes on me. “Because you’re Colby,” she says. “You’ve been with us since the beginning. You know how much this trip means to Meg and Bev and me, and I think it means the same thing to you. It’s the last time we’ll all be together. Also,” she says, choking up a little, “these are probably the last nights I’ll spend with my sister.”

“Well, there’s always summer vacations,” Meg says.

“But by then we’ll be different. We will have lived apart. It will be good, but it won’t be the same.”

“You guys,” I say. But I don’t know what to say next. They’re sitting here next to me in this beautiful place, two sisters, my friends, who look nothing alike because they aren’t related by blood, and they’re telling me that they need me and I know that they do.

“I just don’t know,” I say. And I feel actually, physically injured when I tell them, “I don’t know if I can.”

Meg leans closer to me and says, “Just so you know, we’re in shock. We can’t believe this either. She never said anything to us.”

Alexa says, “Things happen for a reason. It doesn’t make sense now, but eventually it will.”

I don’t mean to be an ass**le, but I can’t help laughing. “I’m screwed,” I tell her. “If things happen for a reason, I was meant to get f**ked over.”

She looks hurt but she nods and says, “I would probably feel that way, too.”

“So will you come?” Meg asks. “You’re screwed either way. At least this way you’ll have fun instead of moping around your house.”

“I don’t plan to mope,” I say. “I plan to figure something out.”

“But we can help you,” Alexa says. “We can brainstorm when you’re ready. There are so many things you could do. I’ll help you plan it.”

I pull a fistful of grass from the earth.

“Without you there would only be us,” Alexa says.

Just then, Bev appears in the distance, walking toward us, and I stand up and say, “There’s a river over there. I’m going to check it out.”

I leave them before Bev gets too close to us, and walk past the parked bus and over a short bridge. I hike down to the water, apple in one pocket, music in the other. A few people are down here—two women in bathing suits and wide-brimmed hats, a man with a dog. I put in my headphones, pull up the bottoms of my jeans, and kick off my shoes, wade out over smooth stones into the cold water.

Soon I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s a little kid, gesturing for me to take out my headphones.

“Can you step a little that way?” he asks.

I step to the right. He bends down and picks up a stone from where I had been standing.

“I’m collecting the red ones,” he says, and reaches into his pocket for a fistful to show me.

Then his dad is here, telling me as they pass, “It takes a lot of years for these stones to get this smooth, friend. A lot of years and a lot of water.”

They speak with an accent, Scottish or Irish, maybe. They walk a few steps downriver, and then the dad turns around.

“Hey,” he calls across the water. “I noticed you up in the orchard. You and those girls.” He squints into the sun, lifts a tan, rough hand to shield his eyes. “I have to ask. Is it just you and them? Traveling together?”

“Yeah,” I shout back.

He laughs and shakes his head as if this is something terrifically funny and hard to believe. Maybe it is.

   
Most Popular
» Nothing But Trouble (Malibu University #1)
» Kill Switch (Devil's Night #3)
» Hold Me Today (Put A Ring On It #1)
» Spinning Silver
» Birthday Girl
» A Nordic King (Royal Romance #3)
» The Wild Heir (Royal Romance #2)
» The Swedish Prince (Royal Romance #1)
» Nothing Personal (Karina Halle)
» My Life in Shambles
» The Warrior Queen (The Hundredth Queen #4)
» The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen #3)
romance.readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024