“Your uncle Scott would crucify me.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

I glance over my shoulder and watch as she weaves through the flowing grains to reach me.

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“I swear I have more to lose than you do.

He won’t know.”

Mud spots her face, cakes in her hair, and stains her clothes. Half of that mud Beth gained on our trip in. I should have told her what she looked like before we went to the party, but Beth was laughing. Smiling. I

selfishly held on to the moment.

On top of that, Isaiah said I made her cry. I assess the small beauty in front of me. There’s more to her, I know there is. I saw it in her eyes when she laughed with me in the Jeep.

Felt it in her touch as we danced.

I must be losing my mind. “One beer.”

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Beth

STRAW IS SOFT TO LIE ON.

Sort of scratchy.

Comfortable.

Great for weightlessness.

It smells musty and dusty and dirty. The

corners of my lips flinch in a moment of joy.

Musty. Dusty. And dirty. Those words flow well together. Staring at the shadows from the light created by the camping lantern Ryan found in the corner of Scott’s barn, I inhale deeply. I’m finally high.

Not pot high. Ryan’s too straitlaced for that.

Airy in alcohol would be a better description.

Three beers. Isaiah would laugh his ass off.

Three beers and I’m floating. Guess that’s what happens when you stay sober for a couple of weeks in a row.

Isaiah.

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My chest aches.

“My best friend is pissed at me and I’m

pissed at him.” I’m the first to break the silence beyond the crack and hiss of beer cans popping open and the rustle and cooing of birds in the rafters. “My only friend.”

In slow motion, Ryan rolls his head to look at me. He sits on the ground with his torso sloppily supported by a stack of baled hay. A glaze covers his light brown eyes. I give him major props. At six beers, the boy has drunk me under the table. Correction—under bales of hay. “Which one?”

“Isaiah,” I say and my heart twists. “He’s the guy with the tattoos.”

“Is the other one your boyfriend?”

I mean to chuckle. Instead it comes out more of a snort and a hiccup. Ryan laughs at me, but I’m so weightless I don’t care. “Noah? No, he’s helplessly in love with some insane chick.

Besides, Noah and I aren’t friends. We’re more like siblings.”

“Really?” The disbelief oozes from Ryan.

“You don’t resemble each other.”

I wave my hand frantically in the air. “No.

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loves me. Takes up for me. Like siblings.”

Love. I purposely knock the back of my

head against the ground in frustration. Isaiah said he loved me. I search the cobwebbed

corridors of my emotions and try to imagine loving him back. All I find is a hollow

emptiness. Is that what love is? Emptiness?

Ryan narrows his eyes for a deep-in-thought expression, but six beers in an hour tells me he probably spaced out. “So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“Nope.”

Ryan cracks open another beer. I start to protest as he has infiltrated my stash, but decide against it. I want weightless, not puking. I have to return to Scott’s in three hours and coherency will be required.

“Why is Isaiah mad at you?” he asks.

“He loves me,” I say without thinking, and immediately regret it. “And other things.”

“Do you love him back?” That’s the fastest Ryan has responded since his second beer.

I sigh heavily. Do I? “I’d throw myself in front of a bus to push him out of the way.” If it would save him. If it would make him happy.

That’s love, right?

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“I’d do that for most people, but it

doesn’t mean that I love them.”

“Oh.” Oh. Then I have no idea what love is.

“What other things?” he prods.

Other things? Oh yeah, Ryan asked why

Isaiah is mad at me. I shake my head back and forth, causing the straw to crackle. “You wouldn’t understand. My problems…” My

mom. “My family isn’t perfect. We have

problems.”

Ryan chuckles and sips his beer.

I rise on my elbows. “What’s so damn

funny?”

Ryan tilts back the beer and I watch his

throat move as he swallows. He crushes the empty can in his hand. “Perfect. Family.

Problems. Gay brothers.”

We’re obviously not talking about me and

Isaiah anymore. “You’re drunk.”

“Good.” Even inebriated, the ache I saw

earlier while he was carrying me out of the Jeep darkens his eyes.

“Is that why you got defensive with the

football asshole?” I ask. “Because you have a gay brother?”

Ryan tosses the can near the other empty

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ones and rubs his eyes. “Yes. And if you

don’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk about it. Or talk at all.”

“Fine.” I can do silence. My arms fall over my head as I plop back onto the straw. Isaiah would let me talk. I could rattle on about anything…ribbons and dresses, and he’d

placate me when I questioned whether I was too harsh with Noah. Sometimes I think about what life would be like if I gave Echo a break.

I mean, she does make Noah happy and Isaiah likes her. Sometimes she’s cool.

“You’re talking,” says Ryan. “In fact, you’ve been talking since you finished your first beer.”

I blink and close my mouth, not having

realized that I had verbalized a thing.

A black bird flaps its wings overhead,

creating a shadow on the ceiling. Images of a deadly archangel coming to destroy us all enter my mind. The bird grows more agitated and the other birds fly to a beam on the opposite side of the barn. He takes off into the air and smacks the wall, dips down, flies across the barn, and rams into the opposite wall. My heart thunders with every hit. I watch with wide eyes and shaking hands. “We have to help him.”

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I jump up and stumble toward the barn

door. Struggling for balance, I force one of the doors open with a loud creak. I lean against the frame and wait for the bird that’s damaging itself over and over again to escape. “Go! Get out of here!”

“Shut the door,” Ryan says. “Birds are

stupid. If you want it out, you’re going to have to trap it and drag it out.”

I gesture wildly into the open night. “But the door is open!”

“And the bird’s so panicked that it’ll never see the opening. All you’re doing is inviting your uncle to come in here and find us. Unless you’re ready to go home, close the door.”

The bird smacks itself into the wall again and flutters to a nearby beam. He ruffles his feathers over and over again, then finally draws in his wings to rest. My stomach rolls in torture. Why can’t the bird see the way out?

“Who’s Echo?” asks Ryan.

“But the bird…” I say, ignoring his question.

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want the bird to find freedom, but I’m not ready to go back to Scott’s. Thanks to my impaired state, I half walk, half trip back to my bed of straw. Damn bird. Why can’t something be easy? “Noah’s girlfriend.”

“That’s a screwed-up name,” he says.

I giggle. “She’s a screwed-up girl.” I stop giggling and remember how Noah looked at

her: as if she was the only person on the planet, the only person that mattered. “But Noah loves her.”

That must be love: when everything else in the world could implode and you wouldn’t care as long as you had that one person standing beside you. Isaiah has it all wrong. For many reasons. He doesn’t love me. He can’t. For starters, he doesn’t look at me like Noah does Echo. Besides, I’m not worthy of that type of love.