“What can you do?”

Really, it’s a question I’ve held on the tip of my tongue since the first time I witnessed Wes do something extraordinary. It’s why I tested him for so long. I wanted the truth, sure—to know for certain he was Christopher. But I also wanted to know what he could do.

We’ve been sitting out on the curb in front of my house, about a dozen yards behind rent-a-cop, taking turns throwing small pebbles at the sewer cover in the center of the street. We never discussed the rules, but we both know that the closest rock to the center of the cover wins. So far, Wes has me beat by about six inches.

“Is this because of what Grace said in there? At dinner?” He leans forward, propping his arms on his bent knees, and looking at me with one eye squinting.

“It’s a little because of that…yeah,” I say, shrugging then lining up my toss, shooting the small rock with basketball form, landing it right next to his. I twist to face him and lift my brows once.

“Couldn’t just let me win, could you?” he chuckles.

“Aw, Wes. I’m sorry, want me to start throwing left-handed?” I push my lips out in a pout and he rolls his eyes.

“No,” he sighs. “With my luck, you’re better at this with your wrong hand.”

On a whim, I fling a rock in the direction of our target with my left, skipping it along the road, and it lands next to the other two we’ve both landed there. Wes’s mouth curves slowly, his tongue caught in his back teeth as he shakes his head.

“I swear that was an accident,” I say, giggling.

Wes exhales, pretending to be a sore loser, and tosses the few pebbles left in his hand out into the road. The lights from an oncoming car cast shadows along the ground, glowing underneath the rent-a-cop’s car, and I hear his door open in response. I hold my breath, and I draw my legs in close, preparing myself to stand—to run. The car passes slowly, turning into a driveway about six or seven houses past mine, and I slowly unravel the grip my fingers had on my knees.

“He had his radio out, ready to call someone,” Wes says, nodding toward our watchman. His door closes again, and he resumes the comfortable position he was in, bringing a large Styrofoam cup up to his mouth and tilting it to let the ice slide out.

“He’s had sixty-four ounces today, I swear. I wonder when he pees,” I say, hushed.

“Joss,” Wes says.

I turn to him with a, “Hmmm?”

He reaches for my fingers, still gripping my leg, and he pulls them into his hand, revealing the small indents left behind from my fingernails. Shifting slightly to the side, he keeps my hand in his, running a finger from his opposite hand along the marks on my leg.

“I don’t like how nervous all of this makes you,” he says.

My eyes focus on my leg for a few quiet seconds while I think of the right words to say. I am scared, but I’m also done letting fear tell me what I can and cannot do.

“You know what’s weird?” I begin, my gaze shifting from Wes up into the starry sky. “The more nights I sleep with the idea that this is my life, the more okay I am with it.”

His forehead creases.

“Not just since the car being totaled, but since…I don’t know, my leg maybe?” I say. “It started out as a sort of coping mechanism—some piece of wisdom I picked up from one of the dozens of doctors who tried to tell me the best ways not to be depressed, because of their medical expertise, of course. Not that a single one of them had ever lost a limb…when they were seventeen.”

Wes nods slightly, sympathy coloring his cheeks and sloping his eyes. He rests his chin in his palm, waiting for me to explain.

“I go to sleep and tell myself that this is just what it is—my life is this. And in the morning, it will be there waiting for me, and I’ll get up, and I’ll go to school, or to my job, or to the field, or…wherever. And I’ll be in this body, with Eric Winters as my dad, and with sour memories of my mom,” I say, breathing in and holding the air in my chest, puffing it out as I turn to look Wes in the eyes again. “But then there’s also you.”

My mouth quirks, and his eyes squint suspiciously, his mouth hinting at a smile.

“I’m not under the same delusions that Shawn is, Wes. I’ve tried to accept them as real, but they just aren’t. This is my life,” I say, holding my finger up in the air between us. “I decide to get drunk, and it goes this way,” I say, lowering my finger to my knee. Wes covers my hand with his and pushes my finger down to the ground, and I look at him sideways, even though I know he’s right.

“My dad makes an effort, and my life does this…” My finger begins to draw a slow slope back up in the air between us. I stop when it’s at my shoulder’s height, and I leave it there.

“The state of California can’t afford to fix a bridge,” I chuckle, dropping my finger back down, this time to the sidewalk we’re sitting on. “I meet Rebecca,” I say, raising my finger again, slowly as I continue to speak. “I work hard. I train. I get a magazine story. I meet my grandmother. I love my grandmother.”

I shake my head, my mouth forming a crooked smile. Then I draw my hand into a fist and let my fingers stretch back out as my mouth makes a quiet explosion sound.

“My dad racks up some serious debt,” I laugh.

I hug my knees to my chest and rock back a little, my face tilted up and my eyes moist from laughing.

“There’s a reason for every dive and climb, Wes. There just is. And my life, it depends on my choices, on my dad’s decisions…on some government vote…on you. I wake up smiling now, because of you. And not because I think I need you to save me, or because of the weird shit you can do,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t Wes. I can ride the waves, and I know I’ll be just fine. Because of me. I can count on myself, and that…that is a pretty fuckin’ healthy place to be, don’t you think?”

His eyes on mine, Wes’s mouth puckers into a slight smile as he leans in and pulls my head toward his lips, kissing me as he sweeps the tiny loose hairs from my skin. His fingers touch my chin next, and his mouth dusts mine with a brushing of a kiss.

“I can fly,” he whispers against me, pulling away just enough to look me in the eyes. My lashes lower and my focus shifts from his left eye to his right, my heart beating faster the more milliseconds that pass. My stomach starts to dive, and my eyes begin to widen just as Wes’s mouth twitches into a curl.

“You ass!” I shout, pushing him until he rolls into a ball along the curb, his laughter echoing off our garage door.

“I couldn’t help it…and you called me weird!” he teases, righting himself and poking my side where I’m ticklish.

“You are weird!” I say back, pushing him again.

He catches my wrists in his hands this time, tugging me close and kissing my lips a little harder than before.

“I’m yours,” he says, his head falling against mine.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be the reason you wake up smiling. That’s hero enough for me.”

Wes stands, holding a hand out to help me to my feet. We both dust our legs off, and I walk with Wes toward his truck parked on the other side of where rent-a-cop sits. Our guard looks up as we pass, so Wes holds up two fingers to wave. Our watchman nods, grumpily, then goes back to reading something on his iPad.

“Must be a good book,” Wes jokes.

“I bet it’s porn,” I say.

Wes shakes his head and pulls me into his arms, swallowing me completely in his embrace. “It’s not porn,” he says, pressing his lips on top of my head. “You can’t get a strong enough signal out here.”

I smack lightly at his back then find bliss in the raspy laughter that echoes in his chest.

“Take you to school in the morning? TK and Levi are riding with Taryn.”

I hold on to the front of his shirt and nod yes while he pauses with his driver’s side door open, his keys dangling from his thumb.

“Good,” he says, nodding over his shoulder toward my house. “You better get inside. I can see your grandmother at the door.”

“Good night, Wesley!” Grace calls out.

I tuck my head into his chest, embarrassed, but Wes only responds with more raspy laughter.

“Good night, Grace,” he says, waving over my shoulder then sliding back into his front seat. His thumb brushes over my bottom lip, and I feel it seconds after he drives away, all the way inside my house.

“That young man grew into some gentleman, didn’t he?” my grandmother says.

“He did,” I say, my mouth falling closed into a grin. My dad busies himself with the dishes in the kitchen, and I notice that he’s whistling lightly. My body grows warm inside hearing it, and even though I can’t remember a time my dad whistled like that before, I know he has, and I know I heard it somewhere. This feeling—it’s the kind that prickles from memories—good ones.

I walk into the kitchen to kiss my father goodnight, then do the same to Grace, thanking her for dinner. On my dad’s orders, I gather up the spare blankets and make him a bed on the sofa, my fingers kneading at the sheets I laid down for Wes.

“I’m just fine sleeping here, you know,” Grace says, already kicking her shoes from her feet and pushing them to the side of the couch.

“I insist,” my dad says, drying his hands and leaning on the counter as he picks up the TV remote. “Unless you want to join me out here for the Motor two-fifty. I recorded it this weekend, and I managed to avoid hearing who won, so I’m gonna sit back and watch every lap.”

“Well I could tell you who won,” Grace says, my dad’s eyes flashing wide instantly. She sniggers and winks at him. “I’m kidding. You enjoy your race. I’ll have Joss help me get settled in.”

We both head down the hallway to my dad’s room, and other than a few stray dirty shirts and a pile of papers from his visit today to the police station, my dad’s room is pretty clean and bare.

“There’s an extra quilt in the chest,” I say, lifting the lid to show her. “And if you don’t like his pillow, I’ll switch you with one of mine. We share the bathroom…oh…and Dad has one of those air-filter things. If you like to have white noise, or whatever.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she says, sitting on the bed’s edge, her small suitcase open on the floor near her feet.

“All right…well…goodnight,” I say, my eyes lingering on hers as she says the words back. I turn to leave through the door, but before I enter the hall completely, I give in to temptation.

“What can he do?” I ask, turning to face her swiftly. Her head jerks up and her brow furrows. “At dinner. You told Wes you knew what he could do.”

She chews at her lips for a few seconds, almost as if she’s deciding whether or not I can be trusted with this information.

“I didn’t know him well. I mean, I wasn’t around that much, and you both were very young.” Her voice lifts at the end, and her brow bunches again as she drops the nightshirt back into her open suitcase. “You two were glued at the hip,” she continues, grinning slightly, her eyes set on something invisible to the side of me. “I can’t say it was you more than him, or the other way. We all thought it was this adorable first best-friends thing. But I do remember one thing that really stood out.”

I lean back, looking down the hallway, seeing my dad’s arm now resting in his favorite chair. Mumbling comes from the TV, which means he’s distracted. I look at my grandmother again, her gaze beyond me one moment, then on my eyes the next.

“It’s like he could predict the future,” she says, her voice almost laughing out the words. She waves her hands and stands again, lifting her nightshirt from the ground. “Oh, it’s just silliness.”

“No…I don’t think it is,” I say. She turns to look me in the eyes again, slowly. I shake my head with tiny movement, my eyes flitting to her hands then back to her face. “What made you think that he could see things? Before they happen…”

Her breathing slows, and I notice the way she swallows, a glassiness forming over her eyes. Instincts tell me to brace myself against the wall near the door, so my hand grips the doorway behind me, holding on.

“Your mom…she had troubles, which I told you about,” she says, and I breathe in deeply, holding it as if I know somehow whatever Grace says next is going to choke away the rest of my air. “I was parked out front, waiting for her to come home from a doctor’s appointment she had taken you to with her. Your dad was at the school, so I was just standing out front, talking to that nice man who lived next door...the one in that picture.”

“Shawn,” I say, the sound barely audible.

My grandmother smiles as she nods, but her eyes aren’t smiling at all. They’re red and the first tear slides down her cheek just before she quickly swipes it away with her palm, trying to erase it existed.

“He and I were talking about nothing, probably the weather that day. I don’t even remember what we were saying, but I will never forget when that little boy came running out of the house and tugged on Shawn’s pant leg then patted on his cane to get his attention,” Grace says, sliding her right palm to the center of her chest, a heavy breath leaving her nose. “He told us that you were in the garage next door, and that your mama was in there with you. He said you were sleeping in the backseat and your mom was sleeping in the front. And then he told us that he saw it in a dream, two nights before. In his dream, Shawn and I were standing out in the yard talking when he came running up. He said that’s how he knew he was right, because everything in his head looked just like this.”

My gut twists as I add the facts to the only sickening conclusion. My mom was trying to kill me; she was trying to kill us both.

“I had left my car running at the curb, even though I parked, and I couldn’t hear the engine in the garage,” Grace says, falling back to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, her hands needling at the shirt. “That boy ran to the garage and began banging on it, and when Shawn didn’t know how to get it open…Wesley jammed his fingers underneath and lifted, bending the bottom panel near the ground until he could slide more of his hands underneath and lift the garage door completely. I told the police he was the one to save you, but Shawn laughed it off and told them he had made the discovery and lifted the garage. Even with his lack of mobility and muscle coordination, it was far more likely that the adult did the rescuing…but I knew better. I knew better.”

Through it all—my life—I have never felt as hollow as I do right now. No heart beats inside of my chest, and my lips are numb and cold, which is all right since I’m speechless, too.

“Your mom wasn’t well, Joss. And you were so young, there’s no way you would remember,” she says, her words rushing to fill the quiet. She’s speaking normally, and I don’t even care if my dad hears any of this now. “Your dad and I thought it was best that this was something you didn’t learn about. Your mom got help after that, and for a while, she was better.”

“She literally never wanted me…” My eyes are wide, but I can’t really see anything. The room is all a blur, and Grace is sitting motionless, not sure whether she’s supposed to hold me or wait for me to accept and move on, all on my own.

“This is what my life is,” I whisper, and my grandmother shakes her head, her brows lowering, questioning what she heard. “I’m sorry…I was…coping.”

I crack a laugh, and the sharp sound burns my chest. I stop breathing again and feel the pain.

“She wasn’t well, Josselyn,” she repeats.

“I know,” I nod, still not looking Grace in the eyes.

“That was the last time Shawn and she spoke, too. He moved away, and I don’t think they really kept in touch,” she says.

“He wrote her a letter,” I say, almost in a trance. Without thinking, my eyes act on their own and my gaze locks to Grace’s. I stare at her in silence through several breaths, my inner voice repeating over and over “Shawn was in love with her.” I never once say it out loud.

I leave Grace, promising that I’m okay, despite being the farthest from okay I think maybe I’ve ever been. When I get to my room, I close the door gently, overcompensating for the urge to slam things and punch holes with my fists. I remain calm, and lay down on my bed with my phone in my hand. I try to figure out whom I need to talk to—who can make this hurt go away.

Kyle will listen and enable. Wes will try to fix. Taryn won’t understand, but she’ll sympathize.

Several minutes pass and none of my options ever feel right, so I make the only choice I have left—I call Shawn. I find his number quickly, and he answers within the first few rings. He isn’t surprised to hear my voice at all, and it’s either because he’s intuitive or because he’s an exceptional faker. I think, maybe, he’s a little of both.

“Wes is the one who sees things,” I say, and his only response is silence.

His silence is enough.