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

months after Harry (through the death of her parents and the long gray days that had followed) when she’d had no period to end things properly, completely. She remembered her explosive relief when she’d felt the first hot blood seeping, finally, and had moved a great step further from that dreadful time.

How different those ghastly final months of college had been from her first extraordinary days away from Belle Haven. Despite her reluctance to leave home, she had almost immediately felt a great freedom, a great release, an enormous excitement. Every choice she made filled her with pride and satisfaction. Every new friend, every good day, every letter home that spoke of what she’d learned and what she’d gained compounded her certainty that this new chapter of her life was one she’d be sorry to end.

And now it all seemed so long ago and far away, almost as if it had never happened. As this Mother’s Day waned—as the feel of Joe holding her faded—Rachel wondered how her awful humiliation and disappointment at Harry’s hands might also have diminished if she’d only had the chance to ride them out, go on to better things, return to the sound habits and safe choices that had brought her such satisfaction.

But her parents dying—when and how they had died—had made it impossible for Rachel simply to pick up where she’d left off. She had changed. She could not ever retouch the way things had been. They were there in her mind, sharp, stuck images: Harry laughing with the next girl; the slick, hot feel of Skip tonguing her ear; Paul turning her out of his car; ashes rushing downstream.

And now, Joe. Now she had Joe. This afternoon she had done something she’d sworn never to do in haste again. But Joe was not Harry. Not at all like Harry. She’d known him for a whole year already, and she felt that she knew him through and through.

So why, even as they had nestled on their bed of moss, even as he had lazily combed her hair with his fingers, had she felt her lingering curiosity begin to harden into clots of doubt?

It’s no good, she thought, watching the moon. I can’t just hope for the best.

The next day, when Joe came to her, his eyes alight with memory, she sat with him in the hammock in her backyard, let him lace her fingers with his, and asked him for the hundredth time, “Why are you here?”

“ ’Cause I finished turning over Mrs. Grant’s garden early and Ian doesn’t need me to do his until two.” He rolled out of the hammock and pulled her shrieking into the grass.

“Stop it, you fiend.” She laughed.

“Not until you admit that you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

Which sobered her, for indeed she had slept very little. Yet he was smiling when he said, “Every time I shut my eyes I was back in those woods with you.”

“What I meant was, why are you here in Belle Haven?” she said, rolling way from him, gaining her feet.

When he lunged for her again, she stepped out of reach. It was difficult to look at him, at his smile, without returning it.

“Come with me for a minute,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the trees. “I want to show you something.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she said, resisting, half laughing.

“No, nothing like that. God, what a mind you have.”

Reluctantly, she let him lead her into the woods. But before they’d gone far, she asked, again, “What are you doing here? Really.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Rachel. Not this again.”

“Well, if you’d ever give me a straight answer, I wouldn’t keep asking.”

“How straight do I have to get? I’m here because I want to be here. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”

“But I still don’t understand why you didn’t go back to school.”

“Why I didn’t go back to school? Why didn’t you?” He paused to bend an unruly branch out of her way.

“If you’re suggesting that our answers are the same,” she said, stepping past him, “you’re wrong.”

“I am not wrong. We’re both content to be where we are. We both have better reasons to stay than we do to leave.”

“But I live here,” she said. “I’ve always lived here. This is my home.”

“Mine too.”

“But that’s what I’m talking about. Why have you made this town your home?”

“Look, Rachel. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.” He grabbed her by the arm to slow her, took up his place beside her on the narrow trail. “Why can’t you accept my decision to stay?”

“Oh, come on, Joe. You’re a rich boy who belongs here about as much as I belong in Manhattan.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, and she could tell that she had hurt him. “Who are you to say who belongs here and who doesn’t? Besides, you’re not exactly poor yourself.”

“Which has absolutely nothing to do with this. There’s no question that I belong here.”

“So you’ve said, over and over and over again. Which makes me think you need to hear it more than I do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He sighed. He stepped quickly in front of her, took her by the arms. “Why can’t you take things for what they are?”

“What are they?”

“They are …” he said, shrugging, twisting with frustration, “what they are. And if you would simply admit that I do belong here too—”

“But you don’t. You never have. Not really. You came here unintentionally, to some extent against your will, and I think maybe you would have gone home by now if your father had asked you to.”

“Not true,” he said, leading her slowly along the rabbit trail again, up through the sloping woods. “I’ve stayed here because I’ve wanted to.”

“But that’s what I’m asking you. Why? Why have you wanted to stay in this particular place? When you could go anywhere, do anything you want to do?”

“Why don’t you ask yourself the same question?” he said, but before she had a chance to