Don't Let Me Go. J.H. Trumble

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      Chapter 2

      Two months earlier

      Graduation party and Key West

      “Open it! Open it!” Mea cried, bouncing impatiently in her chair.

      Adam grinned. “I’m opening it.” He painstakingly worked the envelope flap loose just to tease his little sister. Adam’s parents had waited until the party guests had gotten out of the pool, dried off, and gone home to give him their graduation gift.

      Clearly, the wait had been almost too much for his little sister. “It’s an airplane ticket,” she blurted out before he could finish the job.

      “Mea!” Mrs. Jensen said, putting her hand over the six-year-old’s mouth.

      Adam stuck his tongue out at her and removed not one, but two tickets from the envelope. He looked at them, said, “Wow,” cleared his throat, then held them up for me to see.

      “What?” I said, surprised, because one of the tickets was issued to Nathan Schaper.

      “Family trip,” Ben said before we could get the wrong idea, which was approximately two seconds too late.

      Mrs. Jensen slinked her arm around her husband’s waist. “We’ve already cleared it with your mom, Nate. We have a lot to celebrate and, well, we’re really hoping you want to go.”

      A week in Key West with Adam? Was she kidding? Even with his family, it was still a week in Key West with Adam. Just a week and a half ago I’d been girding myself for a second trial, a repeat of the painful and humiliating experience that had been the first trial in March. Facing the second assailant in the courtroom, reliving that horrible night five months ago, laying out the most intimate details of my relationship with Adam, and feeling like I was the one on trial. And then, at the eleventh hour, a plea deal.

      Just like that, it was over.

      I hadn’t felt this free, been this happy since last New Year’s Eve, until Mea innocently blabbed half an hour later, “Adam’s going to be a star.”

      I was helping her get her toys out of the pool while Adam helped his mom and Ben carry the food back inside.

      “Adam’s already a star,” I said, hooking a yellow raft with a net and dragging it toward the edge.

      “No, he’s going to be a for-real star. In a play and everything. In New York. He even said I could visit him. And he’s going to take me to the zoo in Central Park. And let me feed the pigeons and ...”

      New York? New York?

      Over the next week, I kept waiting for Adam to hit me with New York, my excitement over the trip to Key West marred by a new impending sense of doom. But he said nothing. And by Friday afternoon I was beginning to think that Mea had gotten it all wrong.

      Adam was rummaging through my suitcase when I got out of the shower.

      “Why do you have so many books packed?” he asked, flipping through the pages of a novel I’d picked up at a used bookstore after work a few days earlier. “When do you think you’re going to have time to do all this reading?”

      “I always read at night before I go to bed.”

      “Not this trip. You’re sharing a room with me.”

      “What?” I froze in the middle of towel-drying my hair and stared at him, shocked.

      He laughed and tossed two books over his shoulder. “Mom and Ben finally gave up trying to figure out room arrangements. They could only get two rooms at such a late date, so they were going to have me sleep with them and Mea. And then that seemed ridiculous when there was an empty double bed in the room right next door. So ...”

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