Epilogue

 

 

 

 

Epilogue

 

 

Susie and me, we’ve decided my real age is seventeen. No more plastic bead bracelets, no more pigtails. No more cherry-scented lip gloss or strawberry-flavored gum. My real age is seventeen, we’ve said, but if anyone asks we tell them I’m eighteen.

It was like a scene from the movie, the way we drove out of town. I sat in the passenger seat with the window rolled down, and it wasn’t so cold that I needed any arms around me. I wasn’t shivering so bad I couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was better than a movie, because usually in real life nobody cares that much. All those close-ups on faces. Panic or tears in the eyes. The parents rushing to the child. The kids rallying around their friend. All those understanding expressions, those touching words and heroic promises. In a movie, the star gets to be everybody’s priority. But nobody makes another person more important than them. Nobody puts everything of theirs on hold like that, not f