“Want to talk about it?” Ella says.
“No.”
Ella wants to tell the girl that she’s lucky, that she could get in real trouble. That she’s being reckless. That she needs to get help. But a lecture won’t help. And, really, who is she to give advice about sensible, safe behavior? And the truth: she likes the admiration in those eyes.
“Need a ride home?”
Jesse takes an exaggerated look around the empty lot, like she’s looking for Ella’s car.
Ella holds up her phone. “Uber.”
“No, thanks. I’m gonna walk.”
Ella feels her eyebrows creasing. “Won’t your foster mom be—” She stops. She’s not this girl’s mother. But she’s also not keen on letting a teenager walk home by herself from an isolated Target surrounded by woodland.
“Walk?” Ella gestures around the same empty lot.
“What time is it?” Jesse asks.
Ella looks at her phone. “Eleven-fifteen.”
“Good, there’s still time. If we’re fast, we’ll make it. Follow me.”
* * *
Soon, Ella is traipsing through the forest on the outskirts of the parking lot. She’s breathing heavily, trying to keep up with Jesse, who negotiates the trail like a skilled hiker. The kid’s obviously done this before. The woods hum with insects and the wind rustles the treetops.
Lights wink ahead. Ella stops at the edge of the forest, finally catching up with Jesse. They’re at a gravel road. A tall, chain-link fence spans the distance on either side of them. On the other side of the fence, railroad tracks. A platform, a gray concrete slab, borders the tracks. It’s not for passengers, a storage or work area for rail employees. Ella hears a train in the distance.
She watches as Jesse steps to the fence and grasps a section at the bottom near a support pole, and yanks upward. Someone has cut this piece of fence so it opens like a hatch. Jesse lifts the fence and crawls under.
“I don’t think this is a good—”
Before Ella finishes the sentence, Jesse is running toward the platform. “Hurry! It’s coming.”
The rumble is louder. Fuck. A train. Ella’s concern about breaking into a rail yard turns to terror as she watches Jesse standing on the ledge of the platform, facing the tracks. The ground is trembling now. Ella yanks at the fence and climbs through the opening, then sprints toward Jesse, who is lit by the approaching train’s headlamp, her shadow stretching across the platform.
“Jesse!” Ella screams as she pumps her legs over the grass and weeds. Her heart is pounding.
Jesse stands precariously close to the platform ledge. The roar of the train buries Ella’s pleas.
The train is speeding toward the platform. The scene is surreal, Ella struggling to process it. She has to reach Jesse before …
The teen stands at the platform’s lip, her arms raised and spread, head raised to the sky like she’s on the prow of the Titanic.
Ella makes it to the platform with little time to spare and finds Jesse still in the same position. Jesse turns as the train approaches and gives Ella a look. A faraway smile.
It’s the first time Ella has seen Jesse smile.
“No!” Ella screams.
CHAPTER 20
CHRIS
Chris lies in the dark, the city lights twinkling through the thin sheers covering the window in Clare’s bedroom.
Her voice breaks the quiet. “Is something wrong?”
Chris waits for the briefest of moments. “No, why do you ask?”
“You’ve just seemed quiet since the party,” she says. “My friends weren’t giving you a hard time about your job, were they?”
“No. Not that I’d care if they did.”
That is met with a long silence. Then: “They’re good guys, if you get to know them.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, actually,” Clare says. It isn’t biting, it’s earnest. That’s the thing with Clare, you can’t get her ire up. How can she be so good? The better question is how can someone so good be with him? And why is he sporting for a fight?
“Maybe I should get going,” he says.
She faces him on the bed now. “Get going? It’s late. What’s going on, Chris? Are you mad at me? Did I do something—what’s going on?”
He examines this lovely woman in the faint light. Her strong jaw and perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Beauty inside and out. What’s next isn’t an epiphany, since he’s experienced it before, but more of a piercing revelation: Clare doesn’t deserve his shit. And he should quit pushing her away out of fear that she’ll leave when she understands who he really is.