“What?”

I thought about telling her who and what Heath Hall was and represented but I felt like that took away from the secrecy pact of it all. She’d know in a couple days when that backpack and instructions ended up in her care. So instead, I said, “My parents choose my brother over me every time.”

She didn’t argue. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m tired of it. I thought if I drove this truck tonight that I’d be facing a fear, the fear of competing with his memories my whole life. I thought I’d be facing the memory of my dead brother once and for all. Telling him in a way that I had won. Or maybe that it shouldn’t be a competition at all. I don’t know. It sounds weird, I know.”

“So wait, you drove this truck around? Like out of this yard?”

“Yes, I was just getting back when you pulled up.”

“Wow, Hadley. And how did it feel?”

“Freeing.”

She smiled. “I bet.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at the truck again. “And now you’re trying to put it back?”

“Yes.”

She hesitantly asked, “What about your parents? Don’t you want them to know?”

“I think the message would be a little too shocking. I want to ease them into it a bit by talking to them first.”

“Probably a good idea . . . except.” She gestured to the truck. “Now you’ll just give them a heart attack.”

“I know.” I let out a defeated breath of air. “This will not go over well. It would’ve been one thing if I had just left it parked in the driveway. That would’ve been shocking enough. But this?” I couldn’t even finish that thought out loud. This would be like a punch to the gut. This looked like a broken truck. A wrecked truck. This would be more than a shock. I felt beyond terrible. That’s why I was going to fix this. I had to.

Amelia walked around the platform again, as though some new idea on how to solve this would suddenly come to her after over an hour of trying to figure something out and failing. “Where did you go?”

“All the places I wanted to go and never could. I took Jackson.”

She clapped and gave a little jump. “Tell me everything.”

I climbed up on the platform and into the bed of the truck. It teetered just a bit with my weight but the way it was sloped forward provided a really good angle to sit. I patted a space next to me.

She raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure? I’ve never been inside his truck before.”

“Neither had I. Come on. Let’s talk. I want to hear all about your night with DJ as well.”

She joined me, then laid her head on my shoulder. “You have no idea how proud I am of you right now.”

I gave a single laugh. “For what? For taking my brother’s truck and failing to put it back right?”

“No. For realizing that you don’t have to earn your parents’ love.” She squeezed my hand. “And if they don’t kill you first, I’m sure they’ll realize that too.”

“Thanks. Very helpful.”

“Maybe Jackson will know how to right this truck. We should call him.”

“At two o’clock in the morning? I think I can wait until a decent hour. My dad won’t be home until tonight anyway. I have time.”

Amelia stretched and leaned her head back to look at the sky. “This is a great view.”

I looked up as well. The stars were bright tonight. “How long have you known that my swimming was about my parents? My brother?”

“First of all, you love swimming. Don’t let this make you think you don’t. But in a race, as soon as you tap the wall, your gaze goes first to the scoreboard. If, and only if, your name is in the top spot, do you look to the stands.” She took my hand in hers. “Maybe now you can swim for yourself, Hadley. Enjoy it even more.”

Thirty-Five

I awoke with a pain in my neck and two mosquito bites on my right arm. A bird chirped from the tree above. I groaned and rubbed at my neck while I sat up. The hard metal floor of the truck bed was not a comfortable mattress.

My phone, sitting next to me, informed me it was only seven a.m. The sun or the bird or the mosquito bites must’ve woken me up because this was too early to get up on a Saturday morning. Amelia still slept next to me, hugging a pillow, the blankets pulled up over her ears. The night slowly came back to me: taking the keys, driving my brother’s truck off the ramp, getting my brother’s truck stuck on the platform, then spending hours talking to Amelia in the back of it. At some point during the night, I had run inside, grabbed some blankets and pillows because we were cold, and brought them back out to the truck so we could finish talking. We must’ve fallen asleep.

My head ached. The events of last night did not seem better this morning. The sun only made everything that much clearer. The huge patch of grass stripped away, now muddy and dark beneath the front tire, looked so much worse in the light of the day. I let out a small whine.

I carefully climbed out of the truck and walked around it once. What I needed was some leverage, something to pull it off the platform. If my dad’s truck were here, we could use it. But it wasn’t. Who else had a truck?

I knew Jackson would still be asleep, plus he was grounded, but I sent off a text anyway so that the second he woke up he might be able to help. Maybe he knew someone. This would be fixed today. I had about eleven hours. We could right this in eleven hours.

So . . . do you know anyone with a big truck?

My text probably woke him up because minutes later he replied. Why?

I answered: Let’s say, hypothetically, of course, a truck you were trying to put back on a platform was now stuck lopsided on said platform.

I’d text my hot boyfriend so he would come over and help me.

You have a hot boyfriend too? Unfortunately, mine is grounded so he can’t help me. Do you think yours can help me?

Funny. So are you just messing with me to be funny or is this hypothetical situation a sad reality?

Yes to the second option.

That sucks. I’ll be over in a minute.

You’re grounded.

I’ll ask my mom. She forgets everything when she’s sleeping.

Amelia sat up in the bed of the truck and stretched with a loud sigh. I tucked my phone into my pocket.

“Hey,” I said. “Your parents have a truck.”

“Yes, it pulls the trailer with Cooper’s quads.”

“Do you think they would let Cooper borrow it to come help us?”

“Of course. I’ll call him.”

By the time Jackson arrived ten minutes later, my hair and teeth were brushed and Amelia and I were sitting up in the truck bed watching him walk the path to us.

“He’s cute,” Amelia said. “Even when it looks like he just rolled out of bed.”

He was wearing the same sweats from the night before but with a green T-shirt that I was sure would make his eyes look amazing once he was close enough for me to see them. His hair was a curly mess on top of his head and I could still see some mud streaks around his ankles from our time at the lake last night. I looked at my ankles and realized I sported the same streaks.

He had on a lazy smile and my heart constricted in my chest.