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

It never got old, knowing someone was going to show up, actually be there for me, no matter what.

That was the person Becca used to be for me. She was always there. Always. Even when I tried to push her away. Now I need to be that person for her.

The door opens, but instead of Becca, it’s her Bubbe, with her same curly gray hair and huge pearl earrings. She smells like cinnamon challah French toast. “Emma!” she exclaims. “It’s been so long since I last saw you. Rebecca didn’t mention you were coming. Are you joining us for breakfast?”

There’s laughter in the background. Off to the side in the back of the living room, I see them. Four girls still in their pajamas, sleeping bags spread out on the floor. But I don’t recognize any of them from school. Are they friends she made at camp?

Right behind Bubbe, coming down the stairs, is Becca. Her legs are right on the edge of sunburned and tanned. Her normally curly hair is straightened, and she’s wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and pajama shorts, but not her glasses. Did she finally get contacts this summer?

Bubbe heads back to the kitchen, and Becca squeezes past her. “What are you doing here?”

“I… I…” I’m stammering, still holding the box. Do I give it to her now? What will she even do with it? Throw it in the trash? Show it to her new friends and laugh over it? Just Emma O’Malley and another one of her weirdo craft projects. “I’m…” But the “sorry” catches in my throat.

“Who is it?” one of the girls in the living room yells.

“Hurry up, Becs. You’re going to miss the best part!”

Becca stares back at me, waiting for me to say something. Anything. And that’s when I know, know for sure, that I’m too late. Maybe I had a chance if I’d thought of something like this back in June. But it says something—says a lot, actually—to not reach out at all. To leave town entirely for a whole month, never even saying where you’re going.

I abandoned her. Not just once, but again and again and again.

She holds up one finger and then closes the door softly in my face.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I stand there a second longer, not entirely believing what just happened. And then it sinks in.

As I’m fleeing Becca’s house, I trip on that loose brick, tumbling to the ground like a little kid. As I’m going down, I let out a yelp, but nobody comes to save me. The shadow box cushions my fall, but my body crushes the shadow box and it’s ruined, just that fast.

You can build something beautiful—a shadow box, a life—and squash it in an instant.

I pick myself up off the ground. My knee isn’t scraped too bad, but the palm of my hand sure is from trying to stop the fall. Tiny bits of gravel are pressed into my skin, and there’s a light sheen of blood coating my whole palm. I press it to my shirt, but that only makes it sting worse.

I walk down Becca’s driveway, bloody palm prints on my pale gray shirt. I glance back, sure someone has to be watching this in a window. Becca and her new friends, laughing at me. But there’s nobody in the window, only curtains.

I make it to the shady spot beneath the magnolia tree where Becca’s driveway meets up with the sidewalk and dump the smashed shadow box in the trash bin, and that’s when I lose it. The ugliest of ugly cries. Huge sobs rise up in my chest, and I can’t swallow them back down.

This thing with Becca—I can’t fix it. I was stupid to think I still could. Too much time has passed, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me. And the worst part is that it makes sense. Why would she come crawling back to me after how I treated her? She’s not dumb. Of course she’d move on. Of course she’d find new friends, find her people at Harvard. Of course.

A woman pushing a jogging stroller barrels down the street right past me. She doesn’t even stop to ask why I’m all bloody or try to help. It’s like I’m invisible again, like back at the beginning of sixth grade. How quickly I forgot that feeling.

I reach into the pocket of my shorts for my phone, my palm stinging against the denim. I’m about to call Tyler when I hear something. It sounds like my name, but it can’t be.

“Emma, wait!”

It’s Becca, her flip-flops slapping on the sidewalk as she jogs to catch up with me. “I closed the door to tell them I’d be right back, and then you were gone and—oh my gosh, Emma, what happened? Your shirt. Your—your hand.”

“I tripped.”

“On that brick again?”

She remembers. Of course she does. “You should really get that fixed,” I say with a laugh.

“You’re the only one who ever tripped on it. We always go in through the garage.” We’re both walking in step now, though I don’t know where we’re going. “Why did you come over? I haven’t seen you since school let out. I was starting to think you’d vanished.”

“I’ve been in Wyoming.”

“Wyoming?”

I don’t get it—how we’re having a normal conversation right now, almost as if nothing happened, when something did happen. And that something was all my fault. “Aren’t you still mad at me?”

Becca goes quiet for a second. Old Becca probably would’ve adjusted her glasses or something, but this new Becca doesn’t have them anymore. I wonder what else has changed. A month seems like such a short time, but it can be a long time too. “A little,” she says. “I mean, I was really mad about what happened at Camp McSweeney—”

“Becca, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry.” My eyes are smarting again. “I made you this special shadow box—back in Wyoming—to show you how sorry I am, but then I didn’t get to