Chapter One Preview

Chapter One: She Didn’t Love Him Anyway

“It’s just for two months,” Alex reassured Kyler as he twisted her long, chestnut hair around his index finger.

Kyler knew that. After all, Alex told her that at least once every other day since she had met him. Why did he think he had to tell her again?

“Besides, I’ll call you every day,” he added, giving a slight tug to Kyler’s limp arm.

Unfortunately, that didn’t make her feel any better, but it didn’t make her feel any worse either.

Alex and Kyler sat outside her brick house on the big black and white two-seater rocking chair her dad had to buy at the flea market on his forty-third birthday. Kyler could hear her dog Iced Tea scratching at the door (don’t ask how she picked the name, it was just the first thing that came to her mind three years ago when her father adopted him from the local humane society). Kyler knew Iced Tea was yearning to join the couple outside.

“Don’t worry, Kyler, you’re going to have an amazing summer,” Alex said, his voice more excited than reassuring now. Kyler figured he was referring more to the fact that he was going to have an amazing summer, not her.

But still, Kyler didn’t say anything. She was too busy paying attention to the world around her and avoiding the circus performing in the back of her mind. Kyler had become accustomed to playing a game in which winning included keeping her overactive mind preoccupied. It was the only way that she could keep herself from pondering about what could happen once Alex left and what she figured would happen regardless of his departure. Kyler didn’t want to say what she believed was inevitable out loud, and she tried her hardest to avoid saying it in her own mind, but in her heart, she knew that she and Alex were not meant to be. Although realizing this would make most teenage girls depressed, Kyler didn’t let it get to her. She figured it was normal. After all, besides princesses that you read about as a child, how many people end up finding their Prince Charming on the first try? Not many.

Whether or not Kyler would miss Alex after he was gone was a tough question to answer. Kyler hadn’t truly missed someone since her mother passed away years before Alex was in the picture. Coincidentally, it was around the same time that her dad decided they should get a dog. Kyler’s dad thought that Iced Tea would help her cope with her mother’s death, but having a dog that constantly peed and pooped all over the living room floor only gave her another problem to deal with.

Kyler’s mom left this planet years, even decades, before she was supposed to, and Kyler blamed herself for her mother’s death for months after the funeral. For some reason Kyler believed that she could have saved her … that she should have noticed the signs, but she knew her mother’s depression was something that she never, even if she had the power to create a miracle, could have overtaken. When Kyler thinks back on what happened she wishes that her mother could have disappeared in a way that would have saved her father from the heartache he experienced. He suffered from the death of his wife, much more than Kyler did, and for a while, Kyler wondered if she was losing him, too. She knew that she was the only person who was keeping him alive, and although at times this was like trying to support a boulder with only one arm, Kyler took pride in the fact that she was at least able to save someone.

Kyler looked at Alex and tried to shake the thought of her mother out of her mind. Her mental picture of her mother was constantly fading, and that scared her. Kyler could deal with the fact that she lost her mother, but she didn’t want to have to live with the regret of forgetting the memories that she had of being with her.

The air outside was warm, which was normal for Providence, Georgia during the end of May, but that also meant that the mosquitoes were ready to charge at the nearest human, hoping to survive a little longer. The sky was painted black and there were only a few stars shining down on Alex and Kyler.

Kyler ignored the beauty of the stars, and a sick feeling fell over her. It was an almost perfect night, but she wasn’t content with it or with herself, yet she couldn’t figure out why. She had a boyfriend, good grades, a plan for the future, amazing friends, and a father who influenced her life in the best and most positive way. Her life appeared to be great from the outside, but that’s just because she was an expert at concealing how she really felt on the inside. Deep down she knew that something wasn’t right, and even deeper down, she subconsciously knew exactly what that something was.

It was sitting right next to her.

When Alex and Kyler first started dating in January, Alex was basically what any seventeen-year-old girl would want in a guy. He was charming, and he could make Kyler laugh no matter how bad her day was going. Alex had a good job and a well thought out plan for the future. He was in college and doing extremely well in all of his classes, and he had a great attitude about life. Alex was the first guy that Kyler really cared about and because of that, she was blind to all of his flaws.

“Maybe I’ll be able to meet the president!” Alex eventually said a little too excitedly, causing Kyler to jump.

Kyler looked up at his face, and it took a minute for his comment to register in her brain. She was in her own universe that night, daydreaming about anything but Washington D.C., Alex’s inevitable departure, and her final exams that she wasn’t prepared for.

It took Kyler a while to see the other side of Alex, the side that she sometimes wished she never saw. Alex spoke his mind, even at the expense of other people’s feelings. At first Kyler tried to not make a big deal out of his insensitivity along with his huge ego and total lack of manners. Kyler wanted to be the type of person who looks beyond all of the little imperfections and chooses to see the best in others. But unfortunately, Kyler is only human; therefore, she couldn’t ignore all of Alex’s little imperfections forever.

Kyler could tell that Alex was waiting for her to say something as she sat there daydreaming that night, but it took her a few minutes to think of something to say. This was odd considering Kyler was a born writer, and thinking of things to say was almost automatic to her. Sure, she didn't always come up with the smartest or even the most practical things to say, but sometimes the random thoughts spoken out loud are the best.

“I wish I could go to the airport with you tomorrow morning,” Kyler lied, as guilt rushed through her spine.

“Well, you can’t,” Alex spat. “You have to pass your final exams. You’re going to be a senior next year. Don’t you want to go to Smithsonian?”

Kyler shook her head and sighed. She couldn’t believe that she was going to be a senior in high school. Even more than that, she couldn’t believe that her friends were going to be seniors in high school. It’s not like she thought that they would all flunk out or anything, it’s just that she’s had the same two best friends since elementary school, and it didn’t seem right that they were already almost grown-ups.

Even though Kyler was excited about being a senior, she couldn’t help but miss the good old days when she was a little kid. Whitley McCallister, Eric Barrios and she survived through jungle gym arguments with the older kids in elementary school, vicious made-up rumors in middle school, and the first three years of the zoo that is formally known as high school together. It’s weird how people spend what seems like their entire life in school. It just doesn’t seem real when it’s almost over.

Alex was right, though. Kyler had wanted to go to Smithsonian State University since she was a little girl. After all, it was the best school in the state of Georgia for journalism and mass communication. Not to mention it also had a newspaper staff, yearbook staff, literary magazine, radio station, and even its own cable television show. Considering these were all pieces of the huge puzzle that formed what Kyler planned on doing in the future, Smithsonian State was the best choice for her.

“Go Cougars!” Kyler used to shout with her mother while her father shook his head in disappointment.

“Kyler, you know you want to be a Renegade!” her dad shouted in a persuading way while patting her gently on the head. “Trenton is the college for you, not Smithsonian where your mom went. You want to go where your brilliant, dashing, thoughtful father went, don’t you?”

“Dashing?” Kyler’s mom asked with a laugh.

“Yes, dashingly handsome,” her dad said and then tickled Kyler until she agreed to go to Trenton.

But that was a long time ago.

Kyler had plenty of plans for the future involving her mother riding shotgun back then. These were plans that they’d never be able to experience with one another. They were going to drive to Florida the night of Kyler’s graduation and wake up on the beach. They were going to go to all of the Smithsonian softball games even though they knew nothing about the sport. They were going to go to New York on Kyler’s twenty-first birthday and to Hawaii for her mother’s forty-fifth. All of these dreams were lost the night that Sheriff McClure knocked on Kyler’s front door and told her dad two little words that Kyler still can’t repeat to this very day.

“I’m so glad that it’s almost summer,” Alex said, breaking Kyler’s concentration of not concentrating on him. “Summer is always the best time of the year.”

Yeah, when you get to leave behind all your troubles and go to D.C., Kyler thought. Then it’s the best time of the year.

Kyler sat with her head resting on Alex’s shoulder and wondered what she could say without technically lying again. The truth was that she was relieved Alex was leaving for the summer. Of course, that may have been obvious. Alex’s leaving took a tremendous amount of pressure off Kyler. She felt like she could finally go back to being herself, whom she hadn’t felt like in a while.

Kyler was also glad that she would be able to spend the summer with Whitley and Eric. They deserved her full attention considering she did get a little too preoccupied with Alex back in January. Eric even mentioned to Kyler that she was the “strong, independent, future journalist out of the three of us,” and he wondered why she had to “go and get a boyfriend.” At that point, Kyler didn’t want to admit to herself that she was choosing a guy over her friends, but eventually that strength that Eric thought she had gave way, and she knew what she didn’t want to believe was true.

Alex shifted in the rocking chair, which made Kyler’s daydreaming cease once again.

“Just think, when I come back in August, I’ll be rich!” he said, exposing his presumptuous side.

Kyler couldn’t help but let a disgusted look form across her face. It was the same look that she had when she was practically forced by Mrs. Moore to dissect a frog in biology class sophomore year.

This haughtiness was typical of Alex. Kyler would expect him to think more about the money than the experience.

Alex turned his head, and Kyler assumed he was about to speak.

“Now you better not spend all summer missing me,” he said, leaning his cheek on Kyler’s forehead.

I won’t, Kyler thought, even though she knew that she shouldn’t be thinking that. It was both mean and wrong. Or was it?

“You better hang out with Whitley and Eric all of the time.”

Despite what Whitley and Eric thought of him, Alex thought of them as friends of his own.

“Don’t worry, I’ll probably be with one or both of them every day,” Kyler said, feeling like she was taking over the reassuring role.

Kyler looked up at the few stars that were glimmering in the sky and thought of Whitley and Eric. Just thinking about her friends made me smile, but there she was sitting with her boyfriend only minutes before he was about to disappear for the entire summer, and she didn’t even have the urge to grin. How did that make sense?

Alex began talking about what he was going to do during his first day in D.C., and Kyler immediately became annoyed.

Does he honestly not realize that I have already heard this fifty times? she thought. And does he also not realize that each time he tells the story it doesn’t change even one bit? It’s like he wrote it down and memorized it or something.

Kyler touched the chain that hung lightly around her neck and attempted to smile. Alex gave her a necklace with a medallion he made on his own only a few days before. When he gave it to Kyler, he didn’t look her in the eyes or smile. When she took it, she didn’t either. Kyler couldn’t help but feel like the gesture was more of a good-bye than an “I-care-about-you.”

Alex yawned, looked at his watch, and sat up straight. Kyler looked into his dark brown eyes for the first time that night and noticed that they were cold and unfocused. Kyler remembered how on their first date his eyes never left hers, and she was certain that he was listening to every word that came out of her mouth. Kyler looked at Alex’s somewhat slanted smile and wondered when she would see that goofy grin of his again. It was in that single moment of looking him over for the last time that she felt like she might miss him.

Alex’s eyes turned toward Kyler’s driveway.

“I better go,” he said quickly, standing up.

“Okay,” Kyler whispered and stood up as well.

Well, this is it, Kyler thought. He’s really leaving.

Kyler didn’t know why this was coming as a shock to her. With as many times as Alex reminded her of the exact date and time he was leaving for Washington D.C., she never thought that she would be unprepared for the moment of departure.

“Whatever happens,” Alex said without looking Kyler in the eyes. “Don’t lose that ambition that you have inside of you to do something extraordinary with your life. It’ll take you far.”

Maybe that was Alex’s way of saying bye. Maybe it was his way of getting closure. Maybe Kyler was just overanalyzing what he said. She tried to think of something smart and sophisticated to say as well, but nothing came to mind. All she could do was try to smile and nod.

Kyler gave Alex a hug and watched as he got into his green Ford Explorer and carefully glided out of her driveway. He honked twice, and Kyler smiled as his Explorer disappeared into the night.

Kyler didn’t realize at that moment that she wouldn’t see that Explorer again come August. She didn’t realize that Alex would never call her even once over the summer, and she definitely didn’t realize that she would have to tell his voicemail that she was tired of waiting for him to call, and she was moving on.

Oh well. Thankfully for Kyler, this was two months ago…