Ransom(17)

I shrug. “Yeah, well, I didn’t handle it very well. I left school before graduation, and I wasn’t really ready to start college in the fall. I was supposed to go to Ohio State, but it was just too close to home. And I knew a bunch of people from school were going there.” Like Joanie.

“So you ended up way out here in the mountains,” Paige says. “I’d certainly say you got your distance.”

It wasn’t some random coincidence that I was going to school in Tennessee. This university was the closest one to Horizons, the hospital my dad had put me in after everything got so bad. When I was finally released, it seemed like a good idea for me to stay here, close to my doctors. But I figure spilling my guts about being a giant skank is enough for one day. She doesn’t need to know about what happened after. I nod and say, “Yeah. It’s pretty far.”

“I’m glad you ended up out here,” she says, placing her hand over mine. She pulls her hand back after a moment, as if she can sense I don’t like being touched, but I appreciate the gesture all the same.

She grabs a napkin from the dispenser and begins to shred the edges. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what does all of that have to do with Daltrey? I mean, I totally get that it sucks, of course. But why does that mean that you couldn’t talk to him anymore?”

I pull my sleeves down a little, liking, as always, the comfort it provides me to pretend I can shrink from sight, if only a little. “I was embarrassed. I didn’t want him to know what people were saying about me… or for him to see anything.” I shiver a little. My worst nightmare in those early days was that he might see a picture of me online. Later, the nightmare changed to him finding out what I did afterward. Either way, it seemed prudent to cut ties with him.

“He never found out about any of it?”

I shrug. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Wasn’t he still friends with anyone at home?”

I shake my head. “Not really. Not anyone he would be in touch with. Once they got to L.A., they were busy with the album. Then they went out with Grey Skies, and things got even crazier. There wasn’t a lot of draw to come back to Jonesboro, you know?”

She nods. “Did he try to talk to you?”

“He used to call, yeah. When things got really bad, I stopped answering. Then I moved and stopped going online. So that was pretty much the end of things.”

“Wow,” she whispers. “Do you think he’s mad at you?”

I try not to think of the day I finally returned one of his calls. We agreed, years ago, that we would go to prom together when the time came. It was our way of promising each other we’d avoid all the silly drama of high school romance, focus on the things that mattered to us—friends, music, and having a kick-ass time. When he dropped out of school so he could leave with his brothers, it became an even more vital promise—that we’d be reunited, that we’d have one last celebratory event to remember our high school years by before he went off to conquer the world. Calling him to cancel had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But there was no way I could have let him come home, not then.

“Daisy?”

I give myself a little shake, willing myself to stop thinking of the sadness and betrayal in his voice, of the way he had begged me to tell him what was wrong, why we weren’t talking. That was the last time I talked to him. Not long after that, I left Jonesboro forever, my old address, phone number, and email abandoned.

“I think he’s probably pretty mad,” I say, my stomach turning at a new thought. “That is, if he even thinks about me anymore. His life is so different now. He probably forgot all about me.”

“I doubt that. He’s way too sensitive and sweet to forget about an old friend like that.”

I raise an eyebrow.

She looks abashed. “I mean, at least that’s the impression I get when I see him on TV.”

I laugh. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? He’s on TV now. And all over the Internet and the radio. You saw what happened when a few people turned to look at me in econ. I obviously do not have the capacity to get anywhere near his world.”

“I think you underestimate yourself,” she says. “When you’re comfortable with someone, a lot of that stuff goes away. You’re already acting much more natural with me, and we’ve only known each other for a week.”

“I am?”

She nods. “You’ve barely stared at your hands once in the last ten minutes. You’re making eye contact and everything.”

Dr. Jacobs would be so proud. “I hadn’t even noticed.”