Where We Used to Roam Jenn Bishop (red white royal blue TXT) 📖

“Sadie!” Delia sighs. “Sorry, Emma. She knows your name; she just has a weird sense of humor.”

“Oh,” I say. Already I like Delia, but I’m not so sure about Sadie. “Okay.”

Sadie presses a finger to her temple. “Sorry, I’ve got this raging headache right now, which hopefully the caffeine will fix. You drink coffee?”

I shake my head. What twelve-year-old drinks coffee?

“You’re missing out.”

“How… old are you?”

“I’ll be fifteen in October.”

Fifteen?

For a second my eyes well up. How could Mom not have said that? Sadie wasn’t just a little bigger than me in the picture; she was older. More than two years older. It was one thing for a three-year-old and a five-year-old to play together because their moms were friends, but there’s a huge difference between seventh grade and high school.

I hope that’s the only key detail Mom left out.

We’ve got about forty-five minutes left on the drive to the town where Delia and Sadie live when something up the road catches my eye. Something huge and brown and…

“What’s that up ahead?” I ask, pointing.

From the back seat Sadie says, “You mean the bison?”

As we get closer, I can see that’s what they are. Bison. Buffalo? I don’t know the difference, only that they’re Austin’s favorite animal. When he was little—before I came around, obviously—he had this stuffed animal he took with him everywhere. He called it his “buffy.” By the time I was born, he’d outgrown it, but he was still obsessed with bison. I swear, the only reason he even likes that band Modest Mouse is because they have buffalo on all their stuff.

Now that I think about it, did Delia give him that stuffed animal?

I reach for my phone to text him, but then I remember he doesn’t have his. Won’t for a whole thirty days. “Are they always there like that? Just hanging out by the side of the road?”

Delia laughs. “Their terrain’s a lot bigger. As far as you can see, out that way. Huge ranches in this part of the state.”

Huge ranches. “Wait. People eat them?”

“Where’d you think bison burgers and bison jerky came from?” Sadie pipes up from the back seat.

“Oh.”

Delia peeks in the rearview mirror to see if there’s anyone behind us, but the highway out here is quiet—the complete opposite of Boston. She slows the car to a crawl as we pass them. There are five of them. Two big ones, three little. A family? The largest has clumps of fur falling off him like he’s shedding. His head has got to be as big as my whole body. Hey there, I say in my head.

I take a quick video with my phone to share with Austin later. I want him to see them, just chilling by the side of the road.

“Kind of majestic, aren’t they?” Delia says.

“Kind of smelly if you ask me.”

Delia takes a hand off the steering wheel and playfully swats Sadie’s knee.

We’re past them now, but I watch in the side mirror as they get smaller and smaller until they’re just a smudge of brown against the blue sky.

In the back seat Sadie cracks open a library book, and I can hear the spine breaking. Becca would kill her for that, if she were here. Call her a book murderer. She did that once to Ethan Shaw back in Mrs. Katsoulis’s fourth-grade ELA class. The entire class cracked up, and it became an inside joke for the rest of the year.

Of course, that time they were laughing with Becca, not at her.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When I pull up the shade in the guest room, the moon casts shadows on the wall. Delia’s sewing machine, the pile of quilt squares, the old jam jar filled with pencils and markers and scissors. Something tells me most of their guests lately haven’t been people so much as quilts.

My phone’s still plugged into the wall outlet. When I grab it, the bright screen blinds me for a second. Five twenty-five.

I want to crawl back into bed, but I’m wide-awake.

Of course I am. Back home it’s 7:25. Back home I’d be eating breakfast, getting ready to head to the store with Mom. Back home I’d—

I guess it doesn’t matter what I’d be doing back home. I’m here now, right?

Still in my pajamas, I creep down the hallway. Delia’s house is a split-level, and her former craft room/guest bedroom is on the lower level. Across the hall from me is Sadie’s bedroom. The door is covered with posters for bands and Broadway musicals—Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, even Cats. This one band Lucy got obsessed with right before school ended is on there too. Just thinking about Lucy makes my stomach pinch. She texted me a bunch of times yesterday, but I still haven’t responded.

It always felt like she and Kennedy shared one body, one brain. But I know she doesn’t really. She’s her own person. She didn’t do what Kennedy did.

But there’s no way to be friends with her without also being friends with Kennedy. Not even over text. I’m sure she’d tell Kennedy whatever I say. So I guess I shouldn’t text back. At least, not yet.

I pad up the carpeted stairs to the living room. Their cat, Dumbledore, a fat gray thing with one fang sticking out, is curled up on the sofa, peering at me with glowing green eyes. I grab a glass of water from the kitchen sink and tiptoe over to him.

“Hey,” I whisper.

I don’t know why I wait for him to say something back. Of course he doesn’t. He’s a cat, Emma. Good grief.

I reach out cautiously, but he surprises me by leaning into my hand. I scratch under his chin. “Aw, hey, buddy.” I stroke down his back and his tail, the only sound his purring and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining room. “You’ll be my friend here, right?” I’m leaning down to rub my chin against the top of his head when he swipes