Page 52 of Stand

God, she didn’t want to say all this out loud. Not in front of two pairs of accusing eyes. “I guess I couldn’t—couldn’t give anyone anything. And I withdrew, and it turned out that made me mysterious and cool.” And boys liked it, which Sam had liked. Treating them poorly seemed to make them flock to her, even before she chose Brennan Caplan and discovered sex. But she wasn’t about to tell Ty’s kids about that. He knew far too much about it as it was.

“So I was stupid and thoughtless, and I didn’t care if… pretending someone wasn’t in the room when I went in hurt them or not.”

“Dad?” Matt said. “Is she right?”

She shot another look at Ty before she could stop herself. He had been watching her the whole time. Ty regarded her for a moment longer, until Sam rearranged her hands on the steering wheel to attempt to shake off her self-reproach.

“She’s not wrong.”

Sam laughed, though her shame was making her skin burn. “Now you’re telling the truth.”

“So what are we doing here?” Matt said. His voice was as heated as Sam’s cheeks. “Why are we on this trip with her? And why didn’t you tell us this before we decided to keep going this morning?”

“Yeah,” Alyssa agreed. Sam couldn’t see her face, but her tone made her flinch.

“Because people change, Lyss,” Ty said. He twisted in his seat, and Sam got the scent of wood shavings again. “Does Sam seem toyoulike that girl? She helped us this week. Have you forgotten already?”

“No,” he said, less forcefully. “Doesn’t make what she did right.”

“Of course it doesn’t.” Sam had to speak for herself. She was letting Ty do too much of the work. “And I know that telling you I’m sorry about it doesn’t fix anything. Iamsorry. There’s never an excuse for being shitty—uh, crappy—to other people. My sister Thea went through the same thing, and she didn’t turn into me.”

“You are nothing like your sister,” Ty said. The vibration in his voice drew her eyes to his—the hell with the road in front of her. The intensity in his eyes made her breath catch. “She hid from the world. You went out and punched it in the face.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“It’s the only thing you could have done, Indy,” he said. “Being you is your best skill.”

Now her skin tingled in a whole new way. Approval from Ty Cavanaugh? Like his kiss, Sam would take the memory of it and lock it away for the future. Lock it from prying eyes and save it for those rare nights when she felt that she’d made all the wrong decisions and would die alone.

“The road,” Ty added mildly, and she jerked her head around. They’d drifted over an entire lane. Thank God Northern Pennsylvania was dead right now.

Matt and Alyssa didn’t say anything else for a few minutes. Sam was thinking of turning the music back on to drown the silence when Alyssa spoke. “You could, though,” she said.

“Could what?” Ty said.

“Could do something to make up for being a mean girl in high school.”

“She already has.”

“Not to us. I mean, yes, she’s made it up to you. I guess she has, anyway, since we’re in her car.”

“That’s not why I agreed to this drive, Alyssa,” Sam said at once. “I wanted to help you. This isn’t a tit-for-tat scenario. At all.”

“Yeah, okay.” Sam couldn’t tell if Alyssa believed her. But the girl had another point to follow. “I mean, you can apologize to the others. Dad has the app on his phone for the other parents, right, Dad? You could start with the ones who stayed around. And if Dad knows where any of the others are, you can call them.”

“Lyss, that’s not appropriate,” Ty said. “You can’t ask—”

“She kind of can, actually,” Sam said, while her stomach flipped over at the thought of talking to those people again. Janine was one thing. The kids she knew she’d hurt? Her hands suddenly got slick against the steering wheel.

“Why are you sticking up for her, Dad?” Matt said. “Is it because Mom treated you bad and you think that’s okay?”

“Holy cow,” Sam said, while Ty said, “Matt!” Ty had gone red right up to his roots.

What was it about children? Sometimes they were wiser than the hills. Sam saw it all now: maybe she’d been the first or maybe she’d been in the middle somewhere, but she’d treated Ty with the disdain the whole school gave his kind, and why would a boy think he deserved more when that was all he’d known? She’d seen his face while Julia had been hitting him. He wasn’t scared. But he was resigned. He’d accepted what Julia did. Taken it as if it were his due.

If she hadn’t been on a highway with no exit in sight, Sam would have swerved right off the road. As it was, the shoulder looked real tempting right now. She had to handle this cascade of emotions that pinged off her memories, her entire self-image, her self-worth.

“Ty,” was all she could say.

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