Page 13 of The Sun
“Mississippi?” My mouth dropped.
“Yep.” She grabbed the car lighter, holding the red-orange butt to the end of her cigarette. Her cheeks sunk in when she took the first pull, and a stream of smoke sifted through the cracked window. “You got an Uncle Tommy Jo now. Real nice fella I met at the Jet Pep right across the state line. So yous and your brothers gonna live with us until we find your momma. Which ain’t likely.”
Crossing my arms over my chest with a huff, I sank down in the seat, while some guy on the radio sang about more than words and his heart being torn in two.
4
Sunny
August 1996
Drew, the ninth foster child to come through our house, had colic. Bad colic. The kind where all he did was scream until he was beet red and Momma had to blow in his face to make him suck in a breath.
Daddy was busy taking care of my brother, Simon, who at the age of three had just had open heart surgery, so I tried swinging Drew on the porch while Momma took a shower, but that didn’t help; he only yelled louder. From my parents’ frazzled state, I felt he may be the last infant to grace the Lower household.
Momma came out on the porch in her tattered robe and a towel on her head. After Drew had been passed to her, I asked if I could go to Daisy’s house. Placing him on her shoulder, Momma looked off the porch toward the field. It was already dusk, and while she usually wouldn’t let me out after seven, that night she did. She nodded while bouncing the hollering bundle in her arms, kissed me on the cheek, and told me she loved me.
I almost felt guilty when I grabbed my bike from the garage and swung my leg over it. I wasn’t going to Daisy’s. I was going to my haven. The place I went when I needed to think when I wanted to remember what it was like to be close to someone the way I was Elias.
Of course, I had my friends, and at fifteen, maybe I should have developed that unmatched bond with someone else, but I hadn’t. Not even with Daisy. So every once in a while—when I really wanted to contemplate losing a foster kid to their real family or boys or why people like Jenny Smith hated my guts—I went to the secluded part of the beach Elias had taken me all those years ago.
I was out of breath by the time my tires hit the sand and the pedals locked up. After I hopped off and hid my bike behind a clump of sea oats, I slipped out of my shoes and then took off toward the shoreline, the sand squelching underneath my bare feet. I didn’t stop until warm water rushed around my ankles.
Dropping my head back, I inhaled the briny scent of damp sand and the warm, rising tide. All I could see was the blank canvas of night scattered with glittering stars that danced around the nearly full moon, its silvery-white reflection catching on the waves as they tumbled in.
Over the years, I’d memorized each crater, every shadow in that giant orb, how it waxed and waned throughout the months. I had realized that even though it shared the sky with the sun in the early morning, the two celestial bodies were never close.
They simply chased one another infinitely.
The moon and the sun. The first star-crossed lovers doomed to an eternity of almost.
My gaze dropped to the ring on my hand, and an eerie blue gleam to the water caught my attention. The upsurge sparkled as though a million tiny fairies had been trapped inside. I was so captivated, enchanted by each swell that glimmered, that I hadn’t notice anyone approach.
“Are you kidding me?” A guy laughed behind me, and I jumped. “Poseidon’s Wheel?” He was in the water now. And we were alone on a very dark, very deserted beach.
Screaming, I quickly trudged through the knee-deep surf toward shore.
“Hey,” he said. “Calm down. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
My pulse raced. Adrenaline scorched through my body. His voice was deep, but not exactly that of a grown man’s. Something about it caused a familiar tug on my heart. Which was the only reason I stopped to watch him wade deeper into the water.
“Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” he mumbled.
My breath caught for a split-second because the boy walking toward me had a face like a storm cloud. The glowing waves rumbled behind him, and we narrowed our gazes at the same time, then he froze. “No way. . .Sunny?”
“Eli—Elias?”
We both struggled to run against the current, tripping and stumbling before we reached one another. It was like one of those moments in a movie where the music reached a climactic crescendo. I didn’t think; I just reacted. Before I knew it, my chest was against his, our arms wrapped tightly around each other—just like the last time I saw him in my treehouse, only he didn’t smell like Dial Mountain Fresh soap anymore. He smelled like leather and spice with a touch of the ocean in his messy, brown hair.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my chin over his shoulder while I tried to suck his scent deep down.
I prayed he was going to tell me he had moved back. No matter how much it may hurt to know he had been here without me knowing, I didn’t care. I just wanted him to stay.
“Driving through to Birmingham to see my paw,” he said, sweeping my hair from my face. “He’s up for parole or some shit. Aunt Billie wanted to visit a trucker she used to fool around with, so we’re over at the Motel 8. Just for tonight though.”
My hopes crashed and burned. He slowly dragged his knuckles over my cheek, and I bit down on the inside of my lip. That touch felt like everything right and a little wrong, something I wanted to cling to.
“I’ve been sick trying to figure out a way to see you,” he said. “I mean, being right here and not seeing you.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. When he reopened them, he said, “Torture, Sunny. Torture.”
