Read This Is How It Ends Online
Authors: Jen Nadol
This Is How It Ends (21 page)
CHAPTER 35
I GAVE THE LIGHTER BACK
to Moose the next week. Just laid it on the counter where he was rolling silverware. He and I didn't talk much anymore. Not that we'd ever been buddies.
He ignored me at first, barely flicking his eyes to what I'd put there. Then he realized what it was. Moose put down the utensils and turned to me, his eyes wary and defiant.
“You left it at the Miloseviches', didn't you?” I asked.
He didn't say anything, but the answer was in his eyes. I pushed it toward him.
“Take it,” I said. “I'm not going to tell.”
He eyed me, unsure, like it might be a trick, then quickly took it. The lighter disappeared into his pocket. “I didn't do it,” Moose said quietly.
“I know.”
“He . . . I didn't evenâ”
I held up a hand. “Don't tell me.” I didn't want the details about whether Moose and Richie had plotted the whole thing, watching outside the trailer as Galen had gone in and come out, or whether Moose had stolen Mr. Cleary's gun, maybe as a prank like the vase, or had just told Richie where to find it. I already knew more things than I should, and none of it seemed to be doing me any good.
“Butâ” I could see him dying to spill the whole story.
“Moose,” I warned. “Don't.”
He shut his mouth, eyeing me suspiciously. “You're not going to say anything?” he said. “To the cops? Or anyone?”
“No. Live and let live,” I told him. “Or whatever.”
***
It was weird being around him afterward. And around Nat. And Tannis. I knew all their secrets and more. I knew Tannis and Matt would wind up keeping the baby. And that she'd have two more and that even if there were moments of regret, there'd be happy ones too.
None of them knew my secrets, of course. The only person who did was gone.
A month has passed now, and Sarah still hasn't come back. I thought she might write again or call. She hasn't done either.
Rather than going to the cafeteria, where I'd have to avoid my friends and the table where the five of us used to sit, I started leaving school at lunch. They let us do thatâopen lunch. Sometimes I'd just walk and walk until I couldn't really feel my toes anymore. Most days I'd go to the town library, do my homework long before I needed to or noodle around on the Internet, looking up theories about the brain and hypnosis and energy. Hoping for something that'd prove Sarah wrong, show that the things she'd told me were impossible. I didn't find it.
One day, early on, I looked up Cambridge, too. Sarah had mentioned it in her letter, and I couldn't put my finger on whether it was something we'd talked about or a joke I couldn't remember.
A cityscape popped up on the computerâred brick buildings, a river spanned by arching bridges. And a building that was eerily familiar. I looked at it for a long, long time. Vast and oddly shaped, like it had been built with kids' blocks, chunks left out by accident. And row after row of little square windows stacked on top of one another. I'd never seen anything like it.
Except in my vision that very first night at the cave. The building out the window of my dorm room, against the cloudless blue sky.
Simmons Hall, it was called. A dorm at MIT.
I'd always hoped I'd leave Buford, but I'd never allowed myself to dream that big. MIT. Would I really wind up there someday? I'd taken the SATs and sent in my applications, but not there. Still, I'd seen it.
And so, it seemed, had Sarah.
What did it mean?
I didn't want to believe her story. It seemed impossible that the binoculars did what she'd said, or that her mom made them or left them with Sarah or asked her to give them to me. But I only had to look at Trip and Tannis and Nat's dad to believe the first, and Nat, and even myself were proof of the impossible situations parents give their kids sometimes.
So, was that my futureâme and Sarah at MIT? Or had I misinterpreted or misremembered something, the way we can with memories? Was it a future I'd create, now that the idea had been planted, the way the binoculars had pushed me toward the SATs and Sarah and all the things that had come after? If they had. The chicken or the egg, decision or destiny?
I keep going round and round, trying to put the pieces together. About Sarah. About the binoculars. It took me a while to even realize how she knew where to leave themâthe only way she could have guessed that I'd find them in the back of a cave. She must have seen that moment in them before.
How many other times had she looked, and what did she know?
And what had her mother known that made her think the binoculars belonged with me?
I've read and reread Sarah's letter, poring over the words for meaning. Especially the end.
Love, Sarah
, she'd written. Had she meant that? Or was that just how she signed her letters?
Would we really be together someday? And did I still want that?
That was the one question I could answer: Yes. I did. I knew how I'd sign a letter, if I knew where to send her one.
I saw an old movie once about this guy who thought he was living a regular boring lifeâfamily, job, house, all thatâbut it turned out he was the star of a reality TV show. He was the only one who didn't know. Everyone else was in on the joke.
That was kind of how I felt. Like none of the things or people in my lifeâNatalie, my mom, Trip's dad, Sarah, the copsâwere quite who I thought they were.
I don't remember how that movie ended, whether it was happy or sad or what happened to that guy. So it's kind of like my life that way too.
Except now I have a way to see how it ends.
I feel the temptation sometimes. It burns. Wanting to know if I'll see her, what we'll say. I have the binoculars. I could look.
But I won't.
And neither will anyone else.
I'm the only one who knows where they are. I'm not telling, and regardless of what Sarah or her crazy mom thought my future was, I'm not using them again.
At least, I think I'm not.
About the Author
JEN NADOL
grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, and graduated from American University with a BA in literature. She's lived in Washington, DC, Boston, New York City, and now, an old farmhouse north of the city with her husband and three sons. When she's not writing, she's probably tending to the farmhouse or the sons, reading, cooking, skiing, or sleeping. She is also the author of
The Mark
and
The Vision
. Find her online at jennadolbooks.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse edition October 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Jen Nadol
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Title treatment copyright © 2014 by Steven Bonner
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Cover designed by Jessica Handelman
Designed by Mike Rosamilia
The text of this book was set in ArrusBT Std.
This book has been cataloged by the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4814-0210-1 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4814-0211-8 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-0212-5 (eBook)