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

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Even though I’m exhausted, there’s something I need to do, and if I have to stay up all night to finish, well, that’s just how it has to be.

Sure, the Becca box back in Wyoming was going to be perfect. But Becca knows I’m far from perfect, and maybe a box that’s honest about that is just as good as a perfect one. Maybe imperfect is even better.

I grab my sketchbook from my backpack and dig the boxes out from under the bed. Drag out anything—everything—that reminds me of Becca and all the things we used to do together. Playbills from musicals we saw in Boston with her parents. A photo of us on the Swan Boats after years of begging my parents to let us go on them by ourselves. Seashells from the summer before fourth grade, when Becca’s family rented that house on Nantucket and I got to tag along. All the small moments and memories—years of them.

I dig through my closet for the right box, and it’s surprisingly easy to find. The box from the gift Becca brought back from Paris. The last gift she gave me before I messed up everything.

My hands are covered in glue, my floor a patchwork of cut-up photographs and magazine clippings, when there’s a knock on my door. “You’re still up?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I say. Not that I was trying, but it’s technically true. I can’t. Not when I still need to make things right with Becca.

Mom lets herself in, stepping across the few bare spots on the floor until she’s on my bed, sitting crisscross applesauce. “What are you making?”

“A box for Becca. I’d started one back in Wyoming, but by the time they get back from Yellowstone to mail it to me—I can’t wait. I just… I can’t.”

Mom reaches down and grabs a photograph of me and Becca from when we were in first grade. She and Dr. Grossman had enrolled us in dance class. We were little bunnies, with pink paint on our noses. We were supposed to be cute, I guess, except no one gave Becca the memo and in this picture she has the worst death stare ever. At the recital Becca tripped, knocking over me and three other girls and one boy. Yeah, that was the last time we ever took dance. (Probably for the best.)

“Oh, you girls were so sweet then.”

I grab a photo of me, Becca, and Austin at a Red Sox game last summer, a candid Dad must have taken when none of us were paying attention. And I see it, for the first time maybe, how Becca looked at Austin like he was so much more than her BFF’s older brother. Was that why she could never tell me who she liked? Because she liked my brother?

“I should’ve done this more,” Mom says. “Peeked in on what you and Austin were up to. I always wanted to give you privacy—something I never had sharing a room with two sisters. But if I had, if I’d just kept closer tabs…”

“Mom, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, Em. It’s really not.” She hands the photo back to me. “There was something you said earlier, about Kennedy and Lucy. Something I can’t get out of my head. That they got you. Do you think Dad and I, that we don’t?”

“Of course not,” I say. But it comes out too fast. I set down the scissors and glance up at her. “Maybe a little?”

“Oh, Em.”

“It’s not your fault or anything. Just… you and Dad and A, you’re all kind of the same. You like the spotlight. You like being around a ton of people. That’s just not me, not who I am.”

Mom reaches down for a photo of me wearing a crown made of flowers. That would be a normal cute picture of a three-year-old, but no, I had also painted my own face. Messy black-and-white stripes, like a zebra.

“You have been your own person from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I’m sorry it hasn’t felt that way, and I will do better, but believe me, I see you, Emma. Every day. The beautiful person you’re becoming.” Mom wipes at her eyes, and I hate that I made her cry again today, after everything. But maybe this kind of crying is different.

“What I said before—about you being a good kid… I don’t expect you to always be good. I don’t expect that you won’t make mistakes. You and Austin, both of you are good kids, hon. Your goodness always outweighs your mistakes. I wouldn’t want anyone else as my kids.”

I spray some glue and sprinkle glitter over all of it. A tiny dusting so that the whole box sparkles, and then I hold it up to show Mom.

“Beautiful,” she says.

“Can you sleep in here tonight?” I ask her.

Mom nods, already pulling back my sheets, and I see in her eyes how far she is past the point of exhaustion. “The mess can wait till the morning.”

And she’s right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The brick walkway is exactly how I remember it, right down to the loose brick I once tripped over, skinning the bottom of my chin. Yeah, that was a real good look to start fifth grade.

Becca’s house is one of the largest on the block, but it never felt as tall as it does to me this morning as I stand on the front step, reaching up for the brass knocker and holding her shadow box with my other hand.

Sure, I could’ve called first. That’s what the old Emma would have done. Knock, knock, knock. I hear footsteps inside. Someone’s coming. Will be here any second now.

I think about how it felt on the other side, back in Wyoming. That feeling someone had come over to see me, unannounced. Me? Really? Are you sure? Each time Tyler’s face appeared on Delia’s doorstep, that was how it