Chapter 1My first memory is of blood. I was maybe four, playing outside with my friends underneath the old elm tree on the edge of the empty lot that probably belonged to the Presbyterian church next door, but the neighborhood kids have always treated it like it was ours. Jesse lived around the corner, and with his shaggy curls and Converse sneakers, he was easily the coolest boy I knew. In my recollection, he’s much older—practically a teenager—though since we eventually went to the same high school, he couldn’t have been more than seven or eight.All the same, I loved him. We all did.While my friends and I would play with our dolls, building houses among the roots, he’d climb high onto the branches above us. Sometimes I’d catch a flash of his blue eyes between the leaves; other times he’d call down suggestions for our play. Most involved taking off the Barbies’ tiny halter tops, but I ignored those. Wasn’t it enough that he wanted our attention? This older, shining boy who climbed so close to the sun, who was wild and free and used the word “boobs” without so much as a giggle? He was a star above us and we were content to bask in his presence back on earth.And yet I wasn’t as shocked as he seemed to be when he plummeted from a weak branch and landed at our feet. Even as a preschooler, I understood the basic properties of gravity. What goes up comes down. You climb a tree, eventually you will fall. Even cute boy-gods. And truthfully, I was a little bit thrilled. He’d never joined our game before and now here he was, so close I could count the freckles on the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. But this was Jesse. He was invincible. I wasn’t happy that he’d fallen, but I certainly wasn’t scared.Not until I saw the blood. Thick and rusty, soaking his jeans and pooling beneath his leg, which we later learned was broken in two places. He tried to sit up, shooting a dazed look in my direction as I rocked back on my heels, clutching my Barbie doll. He grabbed at his leg, then reached out to grab my hand, his own slick with blood. He missed, catching Barbie’s golden tresses instead, streaking them crimson.That’s where the memory stops. Because that’s when I fainted.A crash jerks me from my daydreaming, and I tear my gaze from the kitchen window, where the elm tree is just visible at the corner of the lot. The movers must have dropped something. Again. Their voices echo loudly through the house as they reassure Mom that nothing’s broken.I rub the throbbing space above the bridge of my nose. I’m never at my best in the morning. Waking up is brutal, like clawing my way out of a deep, dark cave, leaving me raw and achy and emotional, even on a good day. And today is not a good day.As the Keurig burbles to a stop, I dump sugar and nondairy creamer into my travel mug before heading to the front porch. One of the movers, a scraggly Men at Work wannabe in denim shorts and an orange running vest, nods as he holds the screen door. This small act of chivalry pisses me off and I glare at him, resisting the urge to toss my coffee cup in the bushes and chase him down before he can load the truck with all of my worldly possessions.“Wow, it’s early. Who knew there was a six o’clock in the morning?” Mom’s voice is husky with fatigue as she joins me on the porch swing.It’s an old joke, but I force a smile and take a gulp of coffee. Neither of us is a morning person. Left to our own devices, we’d probably sleep till noon. But Kurt says you waste half the day that way, so he’s gone ahead and booked the movers for this ungodly hour. And Mom, being her usual supportive self, has tried to rally behind him. She’s already dressed and pulled her hair back into a ponytail instead of the wild tangle of curls she usually sports right out of bed.I turn away from the door, ignoring the movers, and try to focus on the sunrise as it paints the sky in hues of softest pink. The night shadows slink back to reveal Mom’s hydrangeas bent low, as if in prayer, the blooms so full they drag on the ground.My throat aches for all this beauty. For all the time I’ve wasted. For all that we’re leaving behind.Behind me, I hear a scrape and a crash, followed by a muttered curse word.I wince but refuse to look. “I dreamed about Erma’s,” I say instead, clearing my throat. “I wish we’d gone last night. One last time.”When Mom doesn’t comment, I turn my head in time to see her dash a tear with her index finger as the movers drag her bedroom vanity down the steps.“Never mind,” I say. “No big deal. I’m sure they have ice cream in Colorado.”She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I’m sure they do. But not like Erma’s.” She smiles, and for a second, things feel like they used to—me and Mom against the world. Life may knock us down, but it wasn’t anything a watermelon freeze or a peanut butter sundae couldn’t fix.“I’ll bet we’ll find something even better than Erma’s. Something dairy-free and delicious!” Kurt lets the screen door slam behind him as he comes to stand in front of us, hands on hips, a ridiculous grin plastered across his face.Then again, some things even ice cream can’t sweeten.Mom gives my hand another squeeze before dropping it and hopping up to wrap her arms around her new husband. I can barely think of the word without gagging.It’s not that I didn’t want her to ever get married. I just thought she’d choose someone more like her. From the tip of her wild curls and his military-precision crew cut down to her thrift-store Crocs and his Air Jordans, they’re polar opposites. He’s also ten years younger and almost an inch shorter. Mom says none of that matters, but I think we both know she’s lying.“Erma’s is our happy place,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder.“Was,” Kurt says, kissing the top of her head. “New town, new start, remember? And who knows? Maybe the mountain air will be so healing, Lola can try a regular diet again. With real ice cream!”My face flushes. I’m right here, you moron. But my new step-dick’s superpower is the ability to make me feel invisible—even when the conversation is about me.“The diet helps,” Mom says, smiling brightly at me. “It’s just so restrictive. But maybe you’re right.” She pats his chest. “We can try reintroduction. Slowly. Depending on what this new doctor says.”“Or maybe it’s time you took a step back. Like we talked about. See what happens when you give her some breathing room.”“I’m her mother!” And then, maybe feeling guilty for her tone, she adds, “I know you mean well. But you don’t know what it’s been like this past year, since she’s gotten sick . . .”She’s right. He has no idea. Not only because he wasn’t even in our lives a year ago, but also because he hasn’t bothered to ask what it was like. I cannot listen to his bullshit one second longer. I jump up, slamming the swing against the porch rail, and push past them into the house.“One hour!” Kurt hollers over the slap of the screen door. “As soon as the movers get the truck packed, we’re heading out.”We’re heading out. He says it so casually, like we’re running to the store, not leaving the only home I’ve ever known.I lean unsteadily against the newel post of the stairway, my skin puckering at the sight of the living room, empty save for the dusty outlines where the furniture used to be. The curtains are gone, and the bay window spills sunshine across the bare cherry floor like a stain. I need to say my goodbyes. Or try, anyway. I run my fingers over the scratch marks in the kitchen doorway where Mom had marked my height over the years. The new owners will paint over that first thing, so I snap a photo.These guys work quick. The rooms are already so empty, my echoing footsteps all that’s left of the life we lived here. Soon strangers will move in, painting and decorating and changing, putting all their things on top of our memories.I walk slowly up the stairs and push open the door to my bedroom. Everything is gone, packed away into the van downstairs. All my books, all my clothes, my desk. My dresser. My favorite quotes, printed and framed. The only one remaining is the one Mom and I stenciled onto the sloped ceiling when I turned ten and she declared it was time to give me a more grown-up room. Ten-year-old me was hovering somewhere between childhood and now, because when it came time to choose the words for my wall, I picked Winnie the Pooh: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.I still love reading these words each night, which comfort me when my courage fails. Remind me that I’m a fighter.And now I have to leave them behind.I reach behind the door and grab the carryall I’ve packed for the drive. A few days of clothes, pajamas, toothbrush, hairbrush. A few books. My laptop.Another bump and another curse from somewhere downstairs. I stick in my AirPods and use my phone to pull up my Spotify playlist, settling on “Blues for Annie.” Supposedly, my dad suggested naming me after this song. Instead, Mom named me Lola Joy after each of my grandmothers, Dolores and Joyce, two more dead relatives I’ve never met.All of my grandparents died young.I sometimes picture the moment my parents met, wandering the Michigan campus, both orphaned and alone before they found each other and became a family. Until my dad died in a car accident, leaving Mom alone, eight months pregnant. By the time I was born, he was gone. So all the memories I have of him are not my own. They belong to my mother; to the stories she’s told me, over and over, until I had them memorized and could play them like a movie in my head; and to the photographs—stories themselves, of moments captured in time. I used to carry them around the house and match them up, the existence of that chair or lamp or bookshelf evidence that these moments happened. He sat on our oversized chair with my mother on his lap, his hand wrapped protectively around her pregnant belly. He lit a fire in our fireplace, on some long-ago night so cold the window in the corner had frosted over. He drank coffee leaning against our kitchen sink, out of a mug that read world’s greatest husband.The mug is long gone, and just as well; Kurt would have chucked it in the move.Sometimes I imagine I can feel my dad’s presence—looking over my shoulder as I walk down the hallway, or a whiff of cologne in the bathroom. But those phantom memories are all tied to this house. And this house is no longer ours.The song ends, and muffled reality trickles back in. Kurt is still harping on my medical problems, loud enough that I can hear him from the stairs. I pull out an earbud in time to hear, “All I’m saying is, she’s nearly an adult. What if you stopped fighting all her battles for her? Maybe that should be your new goal. For our new start.”I shove the earbud back in, readjust my backpack, and gulp my lukewarm coffee, trying to push back the bile in my throat. Kurt is very invested in our “new start.”He works from home, some kind of internet broker thing that I never bother to try to understand whenever he explains it. Basically, it means he could uproot himself from Ann Arbor when he and Mom hit it off as easily as he can pack up and move to Colorado. Especially now that he has a stepdaughter with her own house there.I step onto the porch and they break apart, faces red. “Ready? Finally?” Kurt asks.It’s that last word that does it. I don’t answer; I just take off.My hometown is small. Just a lot of foursquare houses and two-lane roads. We didn’t even have a traffic light until a few years ago. Probably because Foxfield, Michigan, isn’t on the way to or from anywhere. Smack dab inside a triangle formed by three highways, but no direct exit from any of them. We’re like the Bermuda Triangle, minus the boats.I don’t have a conscious destination in mind, but I’m not surprised when I end up at the tree. I lean up against the rough bark, panting and trying to catch my breath. I haven’t moved that fast in ages, and even though I was barely jogging, my body is not going to thank me for it. Already, my joints are screaming in protest, but I ignore them as I trace the crude heart carved into the trunk. LB + JP. Lola Boyd and Jesse Parker. Not to be confused with the half dozen other hearts. MA + JP. TC + JP. CD + JP. The poor tree didn’t deserve our abuse any more than Jesse probably deserved our adoration.But don’t most things live on bright and shiny in our memories, long after life has tarnished them? Happy or not, after today these memories are all I’ll have.When I’ve caught my breath, I cross the street and walk on past the high school, then cut through the empty parking lot. Not only is it early in the morning, it’s August. School doesn’t start until next week, and for now, the grass is still untrampled, the sidewalks free from litter, the building dark and shuttered. Not that I care—I said those goodbyes a long time ago.It’s the track I need to visit one last time.I’m sure the cross-country team has already started their practice season, but thankfully, they aren’t meeting this morning. I slip through the gates and across the grass, and once my feet hit the rubberized surface, my calves contract as if by reflex. My body aches to sprint down that long stretch, proving my muscle memory is just as out of touch with reality as that little girl who defaced the tree.I dig in my heels and clench my fists, taking in as much of the mix of hot pavement and fresh-cut grass as my lungs will hold. The morning is silent, so sweltering and muggy not even the birds have the energy to chirp. But when I close my eyes, I can still hear the excitement of competition days. The laughter of my teammates, the calls of the crowd. It used to annoy me, how hard I had to fight to drown it all out. Once I did, though, once I found my rhythm? Pure bliss. The sound of my own breath, the rhythm of my heart pumping in my ears, the thump of my feet against the track as I hit my stride. It’s that feeling that I’ll miss—that I already miss—more than anything.I’ve always been a runner. I took it for granted, the ability to make my body do whatever I wanted. Back then, I could push myself to extremes with only minor muscle aches as punishment.It was a no-brainer for me to join cross-country and track my freshman year.The first time I remember feeling not quite right was during a 400-meter dash, when I got hot and woozy and then went down hard.Coach and I chalked it up to dehydration.I was out for over a week with that first bout of whatever, dizziness and body aches ravaging my body and leaving me so spent I could barely lift a spoon to my mouth. When I returned to practice, I was weak and shaky but determined to push myself back to where I’d been. Better, even.But that didn’t happen. What did was a season of confusing lapses, of itchy pain in odd places and fatigue I couldn’t shake. I stopped pushing myself in practice in hopes of being able to push myself in my events, even when it meant I wouldn’t be able to function for the next week. I started skipping classes the days of our meets, hoping that sleeping fifteen hours before I ran would be enough rest to get me through.It wasn’t.It was Coach who pointed out that I was in violation of the code of conduct. That my class attendance had dipped too low to allow me to compete. It wasn’t fair to the others, she said, if I was allowed to be “lazy.” What about the rest of them, who were giving it their all? Who had to show up to school and run? Why did I think I was so special?That was the part that stung the most. I was barely holding my head up by then, between the fatigue and the brain fog that never quite lifted. I felt worthless and awful and terrified. I definitely didn’t think I was special.Even so, track was the thing I clung to longest, my last pillar of normalcy. I could still participate, Coach finally decided. But I couldn’t compete, not when I’d be taking a spot from someone who deserved it more. Who’d worked harder.If only she knew the effort it took to get out of bed most days. I worked as hard as all of them, if not harder. But I didn’t fight it. How could I? I knew how it looked. At that point, my own doctor barely believed me. Why should she?I quit the team, and without that last bit of hope keeping me anchored, nothing else mattered.I open my eyes and blink against the glare of the sun, the track wavering in front of me like a mirage. I long to run, one last time, but I’m not that girl anymore. Instead, I huff out a choking breath, bending to wipe my sweaty palms on my knees. Everything has an ending. This is the mantra I’m supposed to repeat when I’m dealing with a wave of pain that feels like it won’t ever stop. But it applies to good things, too.Nothing lasts forever.A brown rust-bucket Mazda wheezes to a stop beside the fence and my best friend climbs out, the slam of a car door shattering the quiet. Bryn’s blood-red hair is spiky, more likely from bed than styling, and they’re wearing a flannel coat and rhinestone-studded sunglasses despite the fact that it’s already eighty degrees out and barely daylight.Bryn and I met in middle school, when they were the only person to attend the family history club I tried to start. Eventually, we stopped holding meetings and just started hanging out at our houses. We’ve been best friends ever since. They’re the only one who stuck by me after I quit track at the end of freshman year and then switched to virtual school last year, with the rest of my so-called friends promising to keep in touch even as they were deleting me from our friend group chats.“What are you doing up this early?”“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day!” they cry with a sweeping gesture.“Thoreau,” I call. “And you drove.”“Shut up,” Bryn says, closing the remaining distance between us and throwing their arms around me. “Like I wouldn’t come to say g—” They catch a look on my face. “Au revoir?”I hug them back. And find it hard to let go.“Damn it,” I say, pulling away. “This is why I told you not to come. I didn’t want to do this.”Bryn pulls their sunglasses down. “I swung by the house. Inert Kurt’s worked himself into a bit of a snit.”I roll my eyes. “Pissed I took off?”“Nah. He was more worried about showing the movers how to properly do their jobs.”“Of course he was. Probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone yet.” I brighten. “Maybe if I stay away long enough, they’ll just leave without me.”“Aren’t you the dreamer?”“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” I reply.“Eleanor Roosevelt!” Bryn crows.“Damn it. You set me up for that one.”“I did. And you fell for it. We make a perfect team. Which reminds me.” Bryn pulls out a slim, square box. “I brought you something.”I tear off the bow and open it. A copper bangle bracelet is nestled on a cotton pad, a single filigree leaf gleaming in the sunlight.“Wow,” I say around the lump in my throat. “Thank you. It’s gorgeous.”“Easy to put on,” they say, showing me how the two ends of the bangle wrap around. “Just slides over your wrist. So you don’t have to bother with the clasp. I know you have trouble with those lately.”Trouble. Meaning sometimes my fingers are so swollen, I can’t bend them.“It’s a leaf from my family tree,” Bryn continues. “So when you wear it, you can remember that no matter where you go, you’ll always have family back here.”I slide it on and touch the leaf.A hot, dry wind rushes over me, searing my face and pushing out the mugginess of the day. At the same time, pain pierces my lungs. I stumble and claw at my chest, struggling to take a breath. Roaring fills my head and I have to push to get the words out: Help me! I can’t breathe.Instead, I say, “As sure as this tree will shade you, so too will these waters heal you.”My vision goes red and I begin to shake, not with fear but with rage. “You bastard,” I hear myself hiss.Bryn grabs my wrist and my body jolts, as if jerked back into place. I blink in the sudden brightness of the day and take a deep, gulping breath before I go down on one knee.“Shit. Do you not like it? Or is it the pain? Has it come back? Shit. I’ve got a water bottle here. Somewhere.” They yank open the passenger door and lean in.I clutch the cotton of my tank top. My breath comes easy again, but my heart is racing. “I’m . . . fine. Just . . . give me a minute.”Bryn shoves a lukewarm Fiji water at me and watches closely as I gulp from the bottle. “Are you all right? That was . . . weird. Bastard?” They wrinkle their nose. “That’s so patriarchal.”I choke on a mouthful of water. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I was . . . thinking about something else.”“Right. As sure as this tree . . .” Bryn rolls their hand. “I give up. Where’s the quote from?”I swallow hard as I stand up. I remember saying the words, but they’re already fading, like a memory too old and tenuous to grab on to. “I don’t remember. It just popped into my head. Because I’m thirsty, I guess.” I can also feel a killer headache coming on.“Come on,” Bryn says. “I’ll drive you home.”Home. But it’s not anymore.“Don’t,” Bryn warns, snapping their fingers in my face. “If you lose it, I’m going to lose it, and what fucking good will that do us? Trust me, if there was a way we could live in this moment forever, I’d make it happen. But I’ve got no working knowledge of space-time physics or temporal realities, and besides, you need to get to Colorado and find your dad’s people. So let’s just get in the goddamn car.”I’m hovering on the lip of a deep well of grief, on the brink of falling apart, but I trust Bryn to pull me back. And they’re right. As usual. I can keep wallowing, or I can pull myself together and say a proper goodbye to my best friend in the whole world.So I lean my head on Bryn’s shoulder and close my eyes, willing this memory to stay. I have a feeling I’m going to need to hold on to it in the days ahead.
Copyright © 2025 by Shannon Schuren. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
