Page 59 - My FlipBook

T R A I L O F C R U M B S

His breath started again. “I guess we…get up. We go to
school.”
“Really?”
“Won’t it be a red flag if we don’t? They’ll start calling
home. Send social workers or something.”
“They’ll call us at home to tell us we weren’t at school?”
“You know what I mean,” he said. “We don’t want any
more problems.”

Was this Ash speaking? He climbed out of bed, disturbing
her pocket of warmth. Greta scrambled to cover the breach
in the blanket. He turned his back to her and pulled his
T-shirt off, picking a clean one from the shelf. Through the
dim sunlight, she saw the old scar on his shoulder blade from
a tree house nail. His jeans were wrinkled from sleeping in
them, hanging low on his skinny hips.

Greta scoffed. “I think school is the least of our worries.”
Ash pulled on the new shirt and tugged the silver chain
hanging from the lightbulb. She winced, even though the
wattage was pathetic. “Get up, Greta.”
She pushed herself to her elbows, indignant. Then she
saw his face, his jaw clenched but green eyes calm.
“From this point on, I look out for you, and you look out
for me,” Ash said. “Until Aunt Lori gets back from Arizona,
we only have each other.”

Ash was right—there were no other relatives in the
picture. Roger’s parents had died when Greta and Ash were
three, and their mother’s parents ran yoga retreats in Mexico.
They couldn’t stand Roger when Diana was still alive, and now

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