New Girl in Town

Chapter 36

I'm sitting there on the side of the road, knees to my chest, butt in the dirt, arms wrapped around my legs. My chin dips into the divot my pressedtogether knees make, my teeth gritted together to keep from chattering as I rock back and forth.

It's not cold. But it doesn't matter.

My eyes ache from crying. They've dried up, my tears, tacky and grubby down my face and chin, collecting in the span of my collarbones. But I can't get my heart to stop beating like I'm a rabbit on the run from a fox.

If I loosen my arms from my legs, I'll run. Just bolt like a wild thing, trying to seek some sort of freedom.

So I hold myself tight. A straitjacket of my own making, trying to hold it in.

But there's too much. It's too much.

All being myself has led to is pain. I tried to open up to Jennie, and she tossed me aside like I meant nothing. I tried to get to know Blake, but everything we did reminded me of someone else, and now I'm here, left behind on the side of the road.

Tossed aside.

By the time Marco pulls up, I'm crying again. He jerks the car to a stop and jumps out like I called him and told him I was carjacked or something.

"I'm okay," I say, but I can't stop crying. The more I try, the more I cry. It bubbles out of me: tears and snot and the humiliation and fear and relief.

He came to get me.

"Sweetheart." He grabs my shoulders, and I tense, thinking he's going to shake me or something. But no, he's, like, checking to make sure I'm okay. He kind of pats the tops of my shoulders like all clear! And it's so awkward that any other time, it'd be funny.

But then he pulls me close, hugging me tight, and it's not awkward anymore.

Suddenly, it's exactly what I needed, and his shirt is getting completely wet with my tears.

"Can we go?" All I want is a shower and my bed and to never see Blake or Rosé or Kai ever again. Which I know is so not going to happen because of this stupid small town and, oh yeah, school in less than two months. I love how I've cemented my reputation as an absolute freak to everyone before even stepping inside school.

"Yeah," he says. "Let's go home."

I buckle myself in, fiddling with the AC vents for something to do as he pulls back onto the road.

He's silent as we drive. For miles. I sit there, my stomach thrumming with anxiety, cheeks wet from tears. But eventually he cracks. There's a small thread of pride stitched on my heart that it's not me who breaks first.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

I stare out the window because looking at him is not an option.

"I fuck everything up." The words—the truth—are out there before I can stop them.

"Why would you say that?"

"I hate myself. I hate everything."

"Lisa," he says, voice deepening with concern.

I concentrate on the trees, picking them out in my head as we pass them. Pine. Pine. Redwood. Oak.

"She hates me."

"Your friend? Blake? What did she do?"

"No, not her. Jennie."

He falls quiet.

"I'm the one who should hate her," I continue. "I hate myself that I don't. Is that what love is? Never hating the person even when they deserve it? Because it's a crock of shit, Marco."

"I—" He glances over at me, trying to process. I just charge ahead.

"I don't know why I'm not enough for her. Why am I not enough for anyone? Mom gave up on me. She must've hated me, too. She couldn't stand to be around me in the end. Sometimes I think that's why I missed my bus that day. So I could just have a few more minutes without her hating me."

"Oh, Lisa." Without another word, Marco pulls over again on the side of the road. A truck that's been tailgating us breezes past. He turns in his seat, his hand coming to rest on my seat, inches from my shoulder.

"Your mom loved you," Marco tells me.

"Not enough."

He's quiet for a long time, the truth of it settling between us like a new scar we share.

"Maybe not in that moment," he says finally. "I don't think she was thinking about anything but her own pain in that moment. But as a whole? Every day? Your mom loved you. She fought for you. And I know she was so proud of you."

"You don't—"

"I do," he interrupts me. "Lisa, I'm the one that packed up all her stuff. Her journals. Her sketchbooks."

"Did you read them?"

He lets out a long breath. "I read the most recent one. The one that covered the last year before she—"

I want to summon some sort of outrage, but I can't. A part of me gets it. A part of me wants to read them now that he's mentioned them. A part of me never wants to touch them. Ever.

"I wanted to understand some part of how this happened. How you'd been living," he explains.

"Did her journal give you answers?"

"It gave me a lot of questions," he says. "Questions I think only you can answer for me. In time."

"And you think we have time?"

"We have as much time as we're willing to give each other, Lisa,"

Marco says sincerely. "We can start over. You and me. That doesn't mean the past is forgotten or even forgiven. I know forgiveness and trust are things that are earned. But you deserve to heal. To love yourself."

"I don't think I can do that."

"I do."

I want to believe him. Having that kind of hope... I don't know if it's possible. But I'm never going to find out if I don't try.

"How can anything get better?" I ask him.

"By us being honest with each other instead of circling each other like we're in a boxing ring," he says. "I am on your side. I want to be on your team, not fighting you. I want to watch you graduate high school and then college and, hell, maybe you'll get a master's degree."

"Uh, have you seen my grades?" I ask skeptically.

He laughs. "Okay, then I want to see you start your career. Find your partner in life. All that stuff. I want to be part of your life, Lis. I know I missed too much. But I don't have to miss any more. We can be here for each other. For the bad parts and the good parts."

"Jennie gave me the good parts," I whisper. "And then she fucked me over. She didn't just leave," I confess. "She told her friends about Mom."

"Oh, honey." He reaches for me, and then I'm in my father's arms, leaning across the parking brake, an awkward but oh-so-needed hug.

"You were the good part of whatever you had with her," Marco says fiercely. "You are the good part of everything, sweetie. We can't control what people do—how they betray us or even why. How they leave our lives. So many people are running scared. And sometimes they run back to us and earn back our trust. But the ones who don't come back—or who don't work to earn back what they lost from us—we have to learn how to let them go."

"It's so hard," I confess.

"But when you let go, you can take all that love you had, all the energy, and funnel it into yourself instead. Because there is so much for you to love about yourself, Lisa."

"I wish I could see it," I say.

"You will," he says. "I'm going to make sure of it. I promise."

Sitting there in the car with him, it feels like he means it. And he's right. He and I, we have each other. That's it.

Trust is earned. And I think, bit by bit, he's earning mine.