Page 77
His loud laugh vibrates through me, and I shift closer, making sure he doesn’t miss a single point I’m trying to make.
“And you’re the guy who doesn’t kiss girls with unresolved relationship issues. But since I don’t kiss every guy I hitchhike across the country with, I guess that makes us perfect for each other.”
Grinning, Dash glides his hands up my thighs and rests them on my hips. “As long as we’re on the same page.” He drags me closer, bringing his lips to mine again, stealing my breath with a searing kiss.
Definitely on the same page.
21
Jump They Say
“Where is that?” Dash peers over my shoulder at Mom’s picture, taped to the page.
“I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look like Boston Harbor.”
His chin brushes my shoulder. Even after hours of being cooped up in the car, he still smells like fresh laundry and rosemary. “Why is she soaking wet and holding balloons and a charred muffin?”
I burst out laughing. “I have no idea why she’s wet, but I’m pretty sure that’s a lit match in a Little Debbie cupcake.”
“That’s weird.”
The air in my lungs freezes as I zero in on the date scrawled on the photo. Just a few days from now.
“It was her nineteenth birthday.” My throat squeezes shut. She won’t be here to celebrate this year.
Dash reaches across the console, his warm fingers prying mine from the loose threads on my tattered shorts.
According to her diary, they hit all the cliché tourist attractions—the Harbor, the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall. Mom even dragged G-Lo to a museum and a Shakespeare festival. But before they headed to Detroit, they met up with some locals and went hiking, and . . .
“Holy shit! Listen to this!
“July 8
“For my birthday, Mom decided to get high with a few of the locals. This guy Shane and his girlfriend Kim talked me into taking a hit off their joint, ‘since you only turn nineteen once.’ Their logic was flawed, but what the hell, I did it. I figured, even with all the shit she smokes, Mom’s still alive. Though I’ll be shocked if she makes it to forty with enough brain cells left to count that high. Officially my first time doing drugs—not counting the time I accidentally took too much cough syrup and passed out in the backyard. I swore I’d never do that again after getting the worst sunburn of my life. And yet, there I was, high as a cat in a sycamore tree, walking through the woods, following a set of railroad tracks on some old patriot trail, like a scene straight out of a horror movie. We hiked for what felt like an eternity before coming to a huge lake and a rusty old trestle on concrete pillars. Not even the pair of No Trespassing signs stopped Shane, Kim, and their drunk-ass friends from walking across the narrow bridge. I inched my way behind them, careful not to trip over the train tracks or fall through the wide cracks where the boards didn’t meet, until we reached the center of the bridge. Being up there felt a lot like playing the game Perfection, with the train whistle blowing in the distance taking the place of the ticking timer counting down. While Shane and Kim helped Mom scramble over the side and down a ladder to the top of the concrete pillar directly below us, the rest of us waited our turns, hoping like hell the time wouldn’t run out and send our pieces scattering through the air. The old boards beneath my feet rattled as the train got closer, and I screamed so loud, my ears may never stop ringing. This cute guy, Ryan, helped me, and we barely made it over the side before the train came flying overhead, blasting its whistle as it screeched along the tracks. The sound was deafening, and the bridge shook so hard I thought I’d fall headfirst into the lake. Even with Ryan holding my hand, I’d never been so scared in my entire life. Until the moment I jumped . . . Shane went first, then Kim, then Mom and this guy everyone called Scooter. I didn’t catch all their names as they dropped like stones from the pillar into the dark water below. When it was my turn, I closed my eyes. With my heart clawing a hole in my chest, I pushed off the side. Then my chest went cold as I fell for what felt like forever . . .”
Dash’s mouth drops open. “She jumped?”
“She freaking jumped.” I wipe my slick palms on my shorts. My risk-averse mother had jumped. I would’ve never believed it, had I not read the words, written in her own hand.
“From a train trestle? With a train on the tracks?”
I nod, my pulse rocketing through my veins. “That’s where I need to spread her ashes.”
“How will we even find it?” Dash eyes the open diary as if searching for the answer, buried somewhere between the lines.
“I don’t know, but we have to try.” Thoughts racing, I skim the pages again, looking for clues. Anything that might point me in the right direction.
Swapping the diary for my phone, I search for patriot trails and railroad tracks running through the woods outside Boston. And come up blank.
“I think it’s time to call my grandma.”
Despite Mom’s prediction, G-Lo had plenty of brain cells left to tell me how to find the patriot trail and the train tracks. Bright and early the next morning, Dash and I set out to test her memory, skipping all the other Boston attractions listed in the diary to focus on the only one calling to me.
Of all the places I’ve scattered Mom’s ashes, this is the spot that weighs heaviest on my mind. Jumping from the bridge had been an actual turning point, not just for Mom’s trip, but for her life. She’d gone from visiting David Bowie concert stops to taking a literal leap of faith into adulthood.
“You okay?” Dash’s brows furrow as he pushes thick brambles out of my way.
The deeper into the woods we trek, the harder it is to follow the overgrown trail, as if no one has come this way in a long time.
