I breathe slowly, turn the envelope over in my hands, check the flap that’s still sealed up tight. How did nobody think to ask about this? How did Mr. Kinney not open it? Not even out of curiosity about this girl-turned-myth? Maybe he didn’t even realize it was there with the others. Or maybe he did, but left it alone out of respect once the official statement came out that they were swept down the river and into Summit Lake, where the search had to end because of the piercing cold and plunging depth of the water. It’d be too sad after that. Like reading Romeo and Juliet and knowing all along how it’s going to end.
I flip the envelope back over to the side with her name and run my finger over it, teetering on the edge of something. The thing I should do, the most right thing to do, would be to give it to Mr. Kinney and let him decide how to handle it. I don’t let myself even think about actually reading it; that would be wrong for so many reasons.
Except.
It feels like history in a manila envelope. Like something that should be saved. My heart beats a touch quicker.
Kat would take it in a second if she were here. She wouldn’t even wait to open it. If she were here, I’d be the one to insist we put it back, because that’s what I do. It’s the role I play between the two of us—conscience to her temptations, reason to her impulsiveness. It’s also the role she’s always trying to get me to step out of, just a little. She never stops talking about the idea of pivotal moments in life, tiny ones that can either pass you by or make some big dramatic change somewhere down the line, depending on what you choose to do with them. This feels like one of those moments.
I know it’s wrong to take it, I do. But something in me decides to do it anyway, and it’s so quick and resolute I don’t have time to change my mind. I know the period’s almost over so I put Julianna’s journal on the bottom of the stack and walk it back over to the table where the box and my backpack sit undisturbed. I smile politely at Ms. Moore when she looks up, and when she goes back to her work, I take a deep breath and slide the bottom envelope into my backpack, zip it up quick. The bell rings, sealing my decision, and I have to hurry to get the rest of the journals in the box so I can get it back to Mr. Kinney like it’s any normal day and any normal project he’s given me to do. But as I step into the hall with the box in my hands and the stolen journal in my bag, I feel like I’m setting foot down a new road. One I’ve never traveled.
3.
“But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past.”
—“CARPE DIEM,” 1938
I pull out a red chair with a swirly sun painted on it and sit down with my chai. Try to sound casual. “Do you know where Julianna Farnetti’s family moved away to?”
Kat gives me a weird look from across the table and leans over her steaming cup. “That’s random. No.” She takes a sip of her mocha and licks the whipped cream off her lips in a way only she can, which makes her new favorite coffeehouse worker smile as he puts his head down and pretends to wipe the table next to us. Since Lane started working a month ago, Kat’s become quite the coffee drinker, if you count white mochas and caramel frappucinos, which I don’t, really. He’s cute in the way most ski bum seasonal employees are—tan face from days spent on the mountain, scruffy, I-don’t-care hair, easygoing smile. Not hard to pull off when you work just enough to pay for a winter of snowboarding and the weed to go with it.
He’s doing a really great job on that table, but doesn’t say anything, so she doesn’t either. Instead, she pretends to focus on our conversation. “Where did that come from, anyway?” As she asks, her eyes slide past me to follow him across the café to the counter.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I was just wondering.” I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to tell Kat what’s in my backpack in the front seat of her car. She’d have to read it as soon as she knew, and I haven’t even made up my mind that I’m going to read it yet. “Something made me think of her and I just . . . wondered where they went.” It’s not a total lie. I did, at one point in the day, decide the right thing to do would be to track down her parents and send the intact envelope to them. But then the thought seemed almost cruel.
Kat finally brings her eyes back to me. “I don’t think anybody knows where they went. It’s not like they had a whole lot of reason to keep in touch after. They just left and never looked back.” She takes another slow sip of her coffee and leans back in her chair. “You know, just like you will when you go off to college and leave me here to become a bad, small-town cliché.”
She winks at me and I kick her under the table. “Shut up.” I know she’s mostly joking, and I try to sound like I am too, but at the moment, the letter in my back pocket feels like a weight around my neck. I need to just tell her and get it over with. “I told you, you should come with me,” I say instead. “You could get a job and we could have a cute little apartment near whatever school I go to, and we can share clothes and order takeout and live happily ever after.”
It doesn’t come out sounding as plausible as I want it to since I know it’s not. Kat will end up staying here because the mess that is her mom will make her feel like she has to. Where my mom drives me insane with her never-ending sermons on how important it is that I achieve more and do better than she did, Kat’s seems to wonder why her daughter should ever want or deserve anything beyond a job that barely pays the bills, an endless string of guys she hopes will, and the resulting need to find comfort in a bottle when they don’t. Kat’s been privy to her mom’s drama all her life and mostly brushes it off, but it sometimes makes me sad for her.