Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Mom was standing in the kitchen when I walked in, making a sandwich—most likely for Dick. She glanced up at me. “You’re here early.” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t happy about that.
“It’s Wednesday. I’m always home at three fifteen on Wednesday,” I told her.
We were the second stop on the bus route.
She scowled. “Whatever. Since you’re here, get the laundry done, would ya? It’s piled up and smelling sour.”
“Okay,” I replied, then waited to see if she said anything else. Perhaps remembered that she’d given birth on this day seventeen years ago.
“What?” she snapped. “Why are you just standing there?”
I thought about letting it go, but this was the last birthday I’d spend under her roof. I decided to point out that she’d forgotten it—again.
“It’s my birthday.”
She frowned. “So? What are you wanting from me? A cake?”
Laughter from the living room area came out in Dick’s annoying bellow. “Yeah, she wants a cake. One she can eat all by herself in one sitting!”
Momma smirked. “God knows she’d do it too. Eat an apple,” she told me as she walked past me with the sandwich and into the connecting room to hand it to Dick.
It no longer stung. The fat jokes. I was used to them from both my mom and Dick. They were far worse than anything I heard at school.
Turning, I headed toward the short hallway and to the only place in this awful rectangular metal box I found some solace. My bedroom. At least I had that.
“Hey! You’re still doing the laundry! Don’t care what day it is!” Mom’s voice called out.
I’m well aware, Mom.
Noa
Age Eighteen
Ransom: How’s the snow? Ready to move back South yet?
I had been staring out the window of my dorm room, watching the snow fall just before he sent this.
Me: It’s beautiful, and I might never leave.
It was true. I’d worried about moving to Rhode Island, but the full-ride scholarship thousands of miles away from my mother had been hard to resist.
Ransom: I’d ask if you were dropped on your head as a baby, but your brain is the reason I passed British Lit and graduated on schedule.
“Who has you grinning like that?” Jellie Watts—my roommate and, dare I say, friend—asked.
I glanced back at her. “A friend from back home.”
Me: You should have built a statue in my honor.
“What friend? You’ve not mentioned one before.”
Because other than Ransom, there was no one in Madison, Mississippi, I could remotely consider a friend.
Ransom: I’ll look into that.
Me: You do that.
Not only was Ransom the only person I could label as a friend in Madison, but he was also the only contact I had there. My mother didn’t check in. The few times we’d spoken, I had called. I wasn’t planning on going home for the holidays. She wasn’t going to pay for my plane ticket, and I saw no reason to spend my hard-earned money on seeing her when she didn’t want me there.
Instead, I was going home with Jellie to New Hampshire. Unlike my mother, Jellie had two parents who worried about her. They called often, and I’d met them both on Parents’ Weekend last month. Her mother invited me to dinner with them and included me in the other things they did. I tried to decline because I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me. I hated to be a charity case, but the way she’d insisted made it impossible.
I’d come here in hopes of getting a journalism degree and writing a book, like the many I’d lost myself in over the years. But I had never imagined I’d find somewhere that I fit. It was as close to feeling at home as I’d ever felt.
Noa
Age Twenty-Two
Ransom: How’s the college graduate?
Of course he’d know the exact moment that our commencement ended. He’d have looked it up, taken the time to think about it. Remember me. We rarely went a week without texting. If I went more than six days without sending him a smart-ass comment, he’d check in with me, asking if I was alive.
Me: Not sure if she’s ready to be tossed into the adult world.
I answered him truthfully. If I thought about it too hard, my anxiety would take over. The diploma in my hand had gotten me a position as a junior editor at a publishing house in New York City. They’d helped me find an apartment that I could afford, and the senior editor I’d be working under was friendly, helpful, and not difficult to look at. Arden Neilson was four years older than me—tall, tanned, blond, and charming.
Ransom: You, of all people, are ready to adult.
Me: At least one of us believes that. Keep telling me more lies. It helps.
Jellie waved me over to where she stood with her family. She’d gotten a position at a digital design company in Boston, and we’d be parting ways for the first time in four years. That was also causing a bit of panic.