just need to go.”

She quickly nods, understanding what’s going on inside me,

and she leads me outside. I stop to shut the door, watching the

room slowly disappear, inch by inch by inch until the lock latches

into place and the room vanishes.

We walk back to the truck and climb in. Callie sits on my lap,

and even though everything seems about as shitty as it can get, I

know it’s not. Because I’m not lying on the floor bleeding to death,

giving up my will to live. I’m here, sitting with her, and she’s

amazing and keeps my heart beating. She gives me a reason to

live without pain, without sadness. And she gives me hope that

maybe this will work out somehow.

Chapter 20

One month later…

#6 Take a leap of faith

#38 Finish Get somewhere with a major project

#44 Eat chocolates, have a lot of sex, and enjoy Valentine’s

Day, the day of LOVE!

Kayden

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Seth comes running

up to me shrieking like a psychopath. The library is pretty empty,

but the librarian, a younger woman with square-framed glasses

and fluffy brown hair, scowls at us from behind the counter. There

are paper hearts all over the shelves and walls and even hanging

from the ceiling. Valentine’s Day is in a few days and I’m still trying to figure out what to get Callie, because I want it to be something

special, something perfect, something that will represent her.

“Seth.” Angling my chin up, I nod my head at the counter.

“Watch the shrieking.”

He’s holding a crinkled paper in his hand. I’ve been searching

the library for about an hour for a book on Darwinism. Usually, I’d

use a computer, by Professor Milany is totally old-school and

always requires one book reference.

“Who gives a shit?” he says and then scrunches his face at

the librarian, who tsks, tsks him in return. He unfolds the paper and shakes it out, trying to get rid of the creases. “I got fantastic

fucking news.”

I put the book I’d been holding back onto the shelf. “No,

there’s no way you’ve found him yet… Fuck. You have… no…” I’m

kind of stuck on words because it’s unbelievable. It can’t be

possible. But the look on his face says otherwise. “Shit.”

Grinning, he hands me the paper. It’s been printed up from

the computer and has an article beneath it. Above the article is a

face that resembles an older version of the brother who left my

house years ago: dark hair that’s thinned a little, the same green

eyes as me, and a nose still crooked from when he broke it from

getting slammed into a wall. I’m stunned beyond words as I stare

down at the picture of him.

I hadn’t expected this to happen so soon. I’d returned from

the therapist only yesterday evening and told Callie that I think I

was ready to start searching. My therapist, Jerry, an older guy who

wears a lot of Hawaiian-print shirts and loafers, suggested it might

be time for me to start searching for Dylan. I put up a pretty good

argument about why I shouldn’t, including the fact that I’d slipped

up the other night and kind of rammed my fist against the door in

a fit of rage when I got a call from my father’s old boss who was

looking for him. No one knows where they are, why they left, and

it’s surprising how little people care. My dad’s boss was only

looking for him because he said my father had something of his. I

don’t even know how he got my number and the call reminded me

of everything wrong outside my Callie-Seth-Luke-school world. I

messed up, but I told the therapist. And Callie. And somehow Jerry

thought it’d be a good idea to start searching for Dylan, even

though I was worried of what he might be, or what he might not

be.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, chewing on an Altoids, which he

always has on him. “It’ll be good to have someone to talk to about

what you’re going through and maybe he can help the

abandonment issues you’re dealing with.”

“What abandonment issues?” I’d played dumb. “I’m glad they

left.”

“Yeah, I know you are,” he replied and scratched down some

notes on a piece of yellow business paper. “But I think you also feel abandoned. Even if they’ve done terrible stuff to you, they’re still

your family and I think you feel connected to them.”

“Or stuck to them,” I muttered in response, slumping back in

the lumpy leather chair I always had to sit in.

He wrote down something else and then shut the manila

folder and shoved it aside with a stack on the corner of his desk.

“How about this?” He overlapped his hands on top of his desk.

“How about we just try to look for your brother? It doesn’t hurt to

try, right?”

I rolled my wrist until it popped and gave a burning

aftershock, something that’s been happening ever since I cut them

open. “And what if we find him?”

He opened the tin of Altoids on his desk and popped one

into his mouth, leaning back in the chair. “Well, that’s really up to you.”

After sitting in silence for about fifteen minutes, listening to

the wall clock tick and the traffic rush outside, I’d agreed. When I

went out to dinner that night with Callie, Seth, and Luke, they

decided to take it upon themselves to look for him.

I just didn’t expect Seth to find him so quickly.

“He kind of looks the same,” I note, taking in his green eyes,

which resemble mine in an eerie, uncomfortable kind of way.

“He’s married,” Seth says, tapping his finger on the top of the

paper. “And he’s a teacher.”

I gape at him. “A teacher? Fuck, really?”

Seth’s eyebrows knit. “Why are you so surprised?”

I shrug and then head for the exit, winding around the book

cart blocking the path. “I don’t know… It just seems so fucking

normal.” I slam my palm against the door and push it open. The

area around and underneath my scars aches a little and I massage

my thumb across it as I walk out into the sunlight with the paper in

my hand. The sun is gleaming and melting the snow off the grass

and the sidewalks. It’s nice to see, but it makes everything a

watery, muddy mess. The gutters near the streets are flooding the

sidewalks and the grass looks like a pond.

“So what are you going to do?” he asks, hopping over a

puddle and then he kicks a rock off the sidewalk.

I shake my head and sidestep a large hole in the sidewalk

filled with murky water. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t.”