TK is wasting his time playing football at this school. We’ve never been good. And as good as he is, he’s only one guy. He can’t do everything. Though, he sure as hell tries.

“Baby, you were so amazing out there. They just need to get you the ball more,” Taryn says as her boyfriend finally comes out of the locker room.

Kyle, Levi, and Wes have been waiting for us in the parking lot. I followed Taryn to the locker room with the hope of talking her into just taking me home, but she didn’t drive. She rode with Wes and Levi. I rode with Kyle. And I know exactly how the next fifteen minutes is going to play out—they’re all plotting to get us alone together in the same vehicle. I’ll walk first.

The game was a decent enough distraction from him, but my eyes must be trained when he is anywhere in my vicinity, because despite forcing Taryn to sit several rows away from the boys, I found Wes in every crowd he was in for four quarters of football.

During the first half, it was much of the same he’s experienced for the last week. It’s the hype and frenzy of the lost boy found. Girls came up to him all night, giggling and asking him questions about coming home. A few teachers stopped to see him, along with the cop that patrols the parking lot and stands during our home games. I couldn’t hear a word from where I was sitting, but I could tell from the slight movements Wes made, and the few times his lips opened and closed that his answers were all short. Of course, everyone would understand and leave him, figuring the stress of it all is still so hard. He’s just trying to get back to normal, find his way after being so lost. He’s…fragile.

But I know better. He’s just trying not to make his lie so big he can’t control it.

“What’d you think, Joss? How’d I look out there?” TK brushes his arm against mine, his other slung around Taryn’s neck as we walk out into the parking lot toward the two trucks—my only two options.

“You play football about as good as you play baseball,” I say.

TK chuckles.

“I’m gonna go ahead and pretend you’re paying me a compliment, Cherry,” he says.

I turn to walk backward and flip him off. He knows I hate that nickname, so he saves it like a right hook, when he has no other way to get back at me for teasing him.

Taryn recalls a few of her favorite plays as we walk, feeding her boyfriend’s ego while forgetting to mention the two dropped passes that, frankly, he should have caught. All I hear in my head, though, is the conversation about to happen about me and Wes. Someone will need to ride in one car, and then someone else will need to be with Kyle, or someone forgot they needed to pick up whatever at the store, and then bam—I’m alone in a truck with Wes.

The boys are all leaning on the front of Kyle’s truck now, their arms folded, heads turning as each takes a turn speaking. Still several feet away, I consider bolting—just sprinting the entire way home, crawling into my bed and waiting for a weird car to show up and the streetlamp to go out. I’d rather feel afraid than angry and hurt. A few more steps, though, and I’ve come too close to find the courage to run. The part of me that wants to end up in a truck with him, that wants to be forced together, to talk, to scream and shout—that piece of me has taken over driving my body. The hurt part is too weak to fight.

My eyes find his even in the dark. Our faces are the same—flat mouths, heavy eyelids; the weight of things both said and unsaid pulling us down.

“Shoot, TK…I forgot the beer at my house. Can I just go with you to get it?” I breathe in as Taryn speaks, my eyes still on Wes’s.

“I was going to swing by the store, too. My dad hasn’t gone shopping, and there ain’t shit to eat in my house,” Kyle says.

Before Levi can make the suggestion, I roll my eyes and walk up to Wes, pinching the long sleeve of his gray ringer-tee as I walk by, jerking it lightly then letting go.

“Just drive me to Kyle’s and save them all this embarrassing,” I stop, turning to face my friends while I walk backward to the passenger door of the Stokes’s truck, “and very poorly scripted and performed scheme to get me and you alone in a truck together.”

“Oh, Joss…we didn’t,” Taryn starts, but I cut her off, one foot in the truck already.

“Save it, T. You did. I knew you would. Whatever, just get the beer there, and buy me some fucking Reese’s.” I slam the door closed, and a blink later Wes does the same.

“Just drive,” I say, glancing at him before shaking my head and pulling my buckle in place.

He’s just as silent, and he does as I ask. Or maybe it’s what he intended, too. Our friends are predictable, and I’m sure his brothers are prodding him to reach out to me. I’m sure everyone’s confused, wondering why I’m not glued to him, afraid to let him go again. They have no idea that glued to me is, apparently, the last place in hell he wants to be.

Wes is quiet as he drives out of the lot. Our friends pull up beside us, and Levi screams from the back of Kyle’s truck, standing and holding on tight to the roll bar along the cab. Kyle glances my way as he waits for traffic to stop so he can turn. I let my head fall against the window while I stare at him.

“Sorry,” he mouths, and I can tell he genuinely is.

Taryn leans forward to look at me around Kyle, and I can tell she’s not sorry at all. “Talk,” she mouths. My eyes glare, and after a slow blink I face the front, intent on letting her worry about how pissed I must be until I get to tell her to her face.

I hear every sound in the cab, many of them familiar, and my fingers roam from my legs to the seat on either side of me. The fabric is worn, just as I remember; the rattles all sound the same, and there’s a torn piece of cardboard wedged where the windshield meets the dash. I remember when Wes put it there to dampen a vibration that was driving him nuts. I’m tempted to pick it out.

We pull up to the light for the road that leads to our neighborhood, and because I’m incredibly unlucky, it turns red and Wes doesn’t make an attempt to run it. The longer I sit here, surrounded by the visuals, sounds, and smells that made me feel so safe once, the more I want to kick the door open and run. I test the theory, moving my hand to the window, running it down the door panel and resting my fingers on the handle.

“It’s locked,” Wes says.

His voice touches me everywhere, but I manage not to let it show on the outside. I let my grip slide loose, but I keep my gaze away.

“Of course it is,” I say back. I wonder if my voice has the same effect on him.

The light changes, and the truck crawls forward. My eyes close and I imagine the next few hours of my life. If it’s anything like this short ride in his truck, it will kill me.

“Take me home.”

I can feel the groove form between my brows when I say the words. It hurts to ask. It hurts to be here. It’s so painful that a part of me wants to believe and stay the course, to see if there’s a miraculous shift between us that takes us back. But things like that aren’t real. Just like superheroes aren’t real.

Villains.

That’s the only thing out of all of this that exists, and I’m surrounded by them.

We get to my street and Wes stops. The motor gurgles, and we both breathe long and slow draws, each waiting for the other to do…something. Anything!

Several seconds pass, and I notice the headlights of another car flash in my passenger side mirror. The car behind us slows the closer they get, and I give in and turn to look at Wes.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my words overlapped with his.

“Have you ever teeter-tottered?” he asks.

I stare at him for a few seconds, glad the car behind us finally passes. It was making me anxious. Now we can sit here and stall—that’s what this is…stalling—for a few more minutes.

“What?” I ask, finally.

“Teeter-totter,” he repeats, meeting my eyes. Blue. So unbelievably blue. “You know, like…”

Wes holds one hand up and stretches his fingers wide, twisting his palm from one side to the other.

“I know what a teeter-totter is.” My mouth is a flat line.

His eyes leave mine as he turns to look back out his window toward a small park where the weeds grow high and where teenagers have melted garbage cans and picnic tables with lighters and cigarettes. I’ve contributed my share to the vandalism. In the thick of trash and a forgotten youth, the orange metal seat sticks out from a dirt circle that once held sand.

“I have never been on a teeter-totter,” he says, breathing out a chuckle as he brings his hand to his mouth, resting his weight on his palm, gazing out at the park I played in for years—until the neighborhood turned and my life slid off tilt. I wonder if Shawn brought us there ever when we were small. I wish I could remember any of it.

“You probably just don’t remember,” I say, my voice softer, even though my arms cross my body to stand guard. I still want to go home.

“I’d remember. Trust me,” he says, pulling his hat from his head and running his hands through hair that’s become thicker—longer. “Nobody would take the other side. When I was with the Woodmansees?”

He turns to me again, the look in his eyes a reflection of the lost boy. It’s that look right there that always finds a way in—it shows up in my sleep, in my daydreams. It lulls me now.

He chuckles a little more before turning back toward the playground equipment.

“I would sit there on one end, kicking my legs as hard as I could against the ground, trying to lift myself up. The other end was never heavy enough, though,” he says.

“That’s sad,” I say, and my words come out careless. I’m hardened, because my lonely boy didn’t want to come back to me. I gave him a friend. I gave him my heart—every little piece of me. It wasn’t enough to make him want to come home.

I expect Wes to shrug me off, to start the truck and turn my corner and drive me home, tired of this push and pull. Instead, he turns off the engine, kills the lights and opens his door, stopping just long enough to speak over his shoulder.

“Come on.”

His door shuts and I sit motionless while he pushes his hands in the pockets of his perfect jeans and glances both ways before jogging across the street. His hat low on his brow, I breathe in at the silhouette of his form as it walks away. He’s like a ghost, like a hologram that isn’t really here. Only part of him is here. I want the whole thing, though. More than that, I want him to want to be here…completely.

He stops at the teeter-totter, pulling up on one end, the creaking sound deep and loud enough to hear a hundred feet away in his truck. He stares at me for a few seconds before gesturing with his hand for me to come. More of me wants to than doesn’t, so I give in and leave the shelter of his truck, not bothering to check for traffic when I walk toward him. I notice his mouth raised on one side as I step closer, and I shrug.

“What can I say. I’m a rebel,” I say, gripping the other end of the long metal beam and swinging my prosthetic leg over. The balance is a little awkward, but I’m strong enough to manage. Wes waits as I adjust, his eyes lingering on mine briefly, then flitting to my stomach and eventually my legs, a slight curve to his lips.

“You are much more than a rebel,” he says with a shake of his head as he swings his own leg over and balances us both.

Knowing he has me by a good twenty-five pounds, I push up quickly from the ground, lifting myself high in the air as I watch Wes fall hard on his ass. It was mean, but it felt good.

“Yeah, I’m a real bitch, too,” I smirk, winking.

Wes chuckles, moving one hand to his ass while he shakes his head.

“Normally, I’d argue with you about that, but that hurt like hell, so I’ll let you have this one,” he says, kicking up hard enough that my real foot finds the ground.

For several minutes, we work together like this, Wes pushing up with more thrust while I merely lift myself back up. The entire time, our eyes are locked. We study each other, and the longer I look at him, the more my emotions mix into a dangerous cocktail and the less I understand about anything.

“Kyle and I used to come out here and do this when my parents were fighting,” I finally say.

There’s a brief pause in Wes’s movement, and he holds us even for a breath.

“It’s no big deal. I was just sharing,” I say. “You know, just filling this fucking awful silence.”

His head falls a tick to one side and his mouth pulls in on the corner. Sympathy. I stretch my left toes so they touch the ground and push up a little, signaling that I don’t want to dwell on this.

“Was that before or after I knew you?” he asks.

This time I pause, letting him do all of the work while I tuck my chin in to glare at him, my toes barely tickling the ground.

“You know better than to ask me that,” I say.

The small rocking halts completely, and I pull my legs up so my shoes rest on the long metal shaft that’s balancing us.

“I don’t remember much about when we were little, when I was…with Shawn the very first time,” he says, glancing down so all I can see is the brim of his hat and his parted lips as they take a heavy breath.

“I don’t remember any of it,” I say.

His head tilts up and his eyes find mine through the shadow of his hat, his mouth a crooked smile.

“We were babies,” he shrugs.

I hold his stare for a moment, waiting through the twisting feeling my insides get from being so close to him.

“We were never really babies, Wes,” I say, and his brow pinches.

“You were a superhero, and I was just awesome,” I add, shrugging again and smiling on one side.

Wes chuckles and pushes up again lightly, taking control of our sway as he floats me to the sky then brings me back to earth gently.

“I swear I’m no hero, Joss. I know what Shawn said, but I can’t do what he thinks I can,” he says, and I can’t help but see a slideshow in my mind of all of the things Wes can do. I let my legs fall back to the sides, and I lean forward, gripping the bar with a jerk that makes Wes stop our movement.

“Then why’d you come back at all?”

I glare—my face hard and my eyes demanding to just cut through the damned bullshit. His expression morphs slowly. The ease of a moment ago sliding away, fluid, until his mouth rests flat, his head shifts slightly and his eyes—those ever-powerful eyes—hold me hostage.

“Just because I’m not who he says I am, doesn’t mean he isn’t,” he says.

A swift kick hits my ribs on the inside, a sharp breath that I didn’t take, my heart recognizing my worries and my doubts and that place where they intersect.

“He’s a crazy man, Wes,” I say, and I watch his chest fill with air slowly before his head shakes no.

“He lives in a trailer by the lake, in a house filled with toys and fantasies, and he…he abused you, Wes,” I whisper, saying what I really felt when I walked into that place with Kyle days ago. “Not…not physically, but emotionally, yes. He did Wes, and I don’t know why you can’t see it. He filled your head with these insane thoughts and theories that will hold you back and keep you from truly living.”

Wes’s eyes move from mine to the ground, and eventually his head shakes.

“Joss, there are many things that Shawn did to me that aren’t…that aren’t right,” he starts, and I take in a sharp breath, my mind racing ahead somewhere I hadn’t expected. Wes draws in his mouth on one side and quickly shakes his head at my assumptions, though. “No, never physically. Like you said. Emotionally, though…yes, I will agree. But his visions? Joss…there is too much truth to those, things that have happened and that I’ve seen that I can’t disregard.”

“So then why bail on me?”

I hold the bars tight and lean back as far as I can, my body balanced over nothing, one slip and I will fall to the ground, probably hit my head. Is that in some drawing somewhere? Does Wes rush to save me, catching me just before my head busts wide open? I tilt my head to the dark sky and smile, just a bit.

“He saw your leg, Joss. He saw water. He saw a bus. Damnit, Joss.” His tone is harsh, like the night I fell from a speeding car, and it snaps me from my trance. I sit up to stare into his eyes, and there’s a story hiding in them, one where words are missing—where characters die. “I went to Shawn when I climbed from the river. I ran the entire way, in the downpour. He was sitting in his living room with the door open, just watching and waiting for me because he knew what had happened. He knew when the first raindrops fell. And he knew I would give in and come to him.”

My stomach sours. Lips bent down, the bottom one quivering, I lean forward and hold tight, slowly moving my right leg over the bar, all of my weight balanced on my good left limb. I can feel my pulse in my guts, like a steady churn that’s killing me from the inside. Wes holds himself up, waiting until I let go of my end before setting his down gently and standing on the opposite side of the teeter-totter.

I fold my arms over my chest, tucking my fingers under each elbow.

“I’m stronger than I was before,” I say.

Wes’s brow draws in and his eyes fall to my feet, his lips pulled in tight as he shakes his head.

“I should have never let this happen to you,” he says, his voice soft, not quite a whisper.

“I’m stronger,” I repeat. I wait until he inhales and flits his gaze back to mine. I nod once and lift my eyebrows. “This was happening whether you were here to fix it or not. And while I would give anything to have my leg back, I’m so grateful for the strength this experience has given me. I’m so strong, Wes. You have no idea.”

He doesn’t blink, and we remain quiet, our eyes locked, while a line of cars drives along the road behind me. Others coming home from the game, maybe even friends who are going to Kyle’s house.

“If I wasn’t here, maybe you would have been somewhere else. Maybe you wouldn’t have been on that bus,” he says.

I let that thought soak in for a beat, and quickly dismiss it.

“Then that means I would have quit, and my dad would still be a drunk, and he and I would still be doing nothing but hurting one another. I’m not sure what’s worse,” I say.

His jaw flexes at my argument, and he draws in a quick breath through his nose, blowing it out as his eyes move to the scene behind me. I turn when I hear whistling. Levi and TK are both standing in the bed of Kyle’s truck now as they pass by slowly, teasing us. I chuckle and shake my head as they turn down the street after mine and head toward Kyle’s house.

“What if I can’t stop what’s next?”

I watch Kyle’s taillights fade in the distance while I think about Wes’s words.

“What if…” I stop, twisting again to face him as I speak. “What if life is better happening just however it’s meant to?”

His swallow is slow, and the movement in his neck forces his chin to rise. He doesn’t respond, so I twist my lips and quirk a brow, ready to gloat and tease that maybe I’m right. But he doesn’t let me.

“It’s not,” he says, and my breath stops. I blink once. “Your life…it’s not better the way Shawn sees it.”

My cocky smile and confidence fades. Wes tucks his hands in his pockets and looks down at his feet, punching the toe of one shoe into the dirt, tearing out a weed. His head looks up at me again with a snap.

“I came back because I have to try,” he says.

“Even though the crazy man in the trailer says you fail.” I breathe through my nose, my front teeth closed tight.

He nods slowly, and I breathe out a laugh, tucking my tongue in my cheek and looking the opposite way. A breeze picks up and the tips of my hair tickle my bare arms. My legs feel chilled, goosebumps on one, and imagined cold on the other. I nod slowly, my mind made up the same way it does every time I work through this crazy scenario on my own. I turn and begin to walk back to Wes’s truck, and after a few steps, he follows me. I climb in on my side, and he does on his. We both buckle, and he turns the key waiting for me to tell him where it is I want to go.

“Let’s just go to Kyle’s,” I say.

His body relaxes, his posture less perfect and his arm muscles less flexed. Probably, because I’m being agreeable. Only I’m not. I don’t agree with any of this. I’ve never liked people telling me what to do.

“And just so we’re clear,” I begin as he turns down the next street toward Kyle’s house. I sense his glance at me. “I believe in free will. I get to decide how this goes. And I have also decided that both you and your uncle don’t know shit.”

The truck rolls to a stop with my last word. I unbuckle, happy to leave things there with Wes. I’ll go inside, get a beer, and tuck myself in my favorite chair, ready to get back to the life of a young girl—with friends, and laughter, and a dad that, while he disappears, isn’t throwing up in the front lawn anymore and calling on me to come clean it up.

“My father,” Wes says, just before I slam my door to a close. I freeze, turning quickly to meet his gaze, a million thoughts about those words all trying to line up and make sense out of them.

His tongue is held between his teeth as he breathes out hard, once.

“Shawn. He’s…he’s my father.”

I stare at him, half hoping for a laugh to leave his lips next. This is a joke. He’s seeing how far this can go before I give up. When he doesn’t break, instead pulling his mouth into a tight line and slowly shaking his head, I know that I’m waiting for nothing. There’s nothing more. That’s it. Shawn is his dad. And this is all so incredibly fucked up.

I let the door fall closed and I watch him for a few seconds through the window of his truck before I turn and head inside where I find my beer and my favorite chair. My friends are all laughing. But this is nothing like the life I had before or imagined I’d have again. This is a mess. And it hurts.

And I’m sick of it.