Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

Rachel closed her eyes. Tipped back her head. “For all kinds of reasons.”

Angela took out a cigarette and held it in her trembling hand. “Name one.”

But Rachel couldn’t. Everything she loved about Belle Haven was changing. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I can’t imagine leaving. It seems wrong.” She put her hands over her face again. They were filthy. There was powdery grime in her hair and on her clothes. “I can’t explain it.”

“I think I can,” Angela said. The sight of Rachel so confused and unhappy made Angela sorry for what she was about to say. She was tempted to put her arms around her friend, but there were some things more important than comfort.

Rachel lowered her hands.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time now, Rachel. I used to worry about you when you were a kid. You were so … selfless. You never took a step out of line. I used to think you were going to explode. I remember hoping you would.”

“Hoping I would explode.”

“Yes.” Angela shrugged. “Most people would say bloom, I guess. Come of age. But the way you tamped yourself down all the time, I figured you weren’t likely to do anything so gradual. I figured it would come all at once. An explosion. But I was wrong.”

Rachel waited. She knew there was more.

“You went off to college instead. Which I thought was a good thing at the time. I figured you’d grow out of your”—she searched for the right word—“your self-control. Throw out the script you’d written for yourself.” She put the cigarette back in its pack.

“College was good for you, Rachel. Anybody could see that. You’d come home so relaxed. And confident. That’s when we became friends, you know.”

Rachel frowned. “I thought we’d always been friends.”

“Uh-uh. You were always my friend, but I wasn’t always yours. You were way too tense for me, like you might break if you weren’t careful.”

Rachel looked like she was going to cry. “Is there a point to all this, Angela? Because if there isn’t, I think I’d like to stop talking for a while. The doctor should let us in to see Rusty soon.”

Angela took out the cigarette again. She held it between her fingers. “The point is that it would have been better if you’d exploded. Being a later bloomer would have been okay, too, if you’d been able to finish what you’d started. But you had a couple of lousy experiences at school, right around when your parents got killed … and you stopped.” She tapped the end of the cigarette against her wrist. “You’d opened up to the point where you started to take some chances and put yourself first. But you were only halfway there, Rachel. The place where you stopped wasn’t where you were meant to end up. You went from being a mouse to a lion. If you’d kept going, I’m sure you would have found your place somewhere in between the two. Somewhere less deliberate. Less … calculated. Where you weren’t always reacting to something, or someone. But you stopped.”

“What are you talking about?” Rachel didn’t know how much more of this she could take. “You sound like a goddamned shrink. I know I tried too hard when I was a kid. You think I don’t know that? I know I was naïve. Jesus, Angela, I’m not stupid.” She thought of Rusty somewhere down the hall, what it had done to him to lose his father. What surviving Mary Beth would do to him now. “Everybody reacts to everything,” she said. “Everybody. Including me. Christ, look at Joe. How come you’re not having this little talk with him?” Rachel waited for Angela to pick up this new thread. Follow this new road. But she didn’t. So Rachel continued on down the one she knew best. “Everybody changes as they grow up. Which is all I did. What’s wrong with that? Why try so hard to be … to live up to everyone’s expectations when nothing around me came close to living up to mine? Except Belle Haven. That was the only thing that didn’t let me down. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been able to come home after everything went so wrong.”

“You would have gone on!” Angela cried, holding out her arms and letting them fall at her sides. “You would have survived. That’s what people do.” She almost said, “That’s what I did.” But this wasn’t about her.

“I did go on. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you’re here all right. But you’re not telling the whole story, Rachel. Why are you still here? That’s what I don’t understand.”

Rachel felt like she was hearing an echo of herself asking Joe the same question so many months earlier.

“Fine. Then you tell me where I should have gone. According to you, I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m entitled to make up my own mind about where and how I live. I’ve got to finish blooming first. So tell me. Where should I have gone? Where should I go now?”

“Shit, Rachel, I don’t know. I’m not saying you should do what I or anyone else thinks you should do. That’s what got you in this mess in the first place.” She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I know this is going to sound terrible, and I’m not sure I ought to be saying it, but even though your parents dying was a horrible thing, and it wasn’t something you would ever have asked for, it gave you a freedom that you really needed. You—”

“Jesus God, Angela!” Rachel flinched as if she’d been singed. “My parents were everything to me. You think their death was something I should be thankful for?”

“No, Rachel, of course I don’t. But I don’t think it was something you should feel guilty about either.”

“I don’t feel guilty about it!”

“Then why, when you were finally coming into your own, did you quit school