Start A New Path

Growing up on the side of a busy interstate, surrounded by Joshua trees and an extended family, my entertainment was the travelers passing through. I heard stories of faraway places — turquoise seas, snow-capped mountains,
and buildings so tall they scraped the clouds above.

I inhaled the information I gathered and exhaled it on anyone who would listen. Kids my age labeled me odd, but I didn’t know how to be any other way.

When Jesse Cruise and his mom passed through Covers Bend, they turned my entire path in life on end. A busted transmission changed the lives of a lonely girl with a mind full of random facts and a sad, angry boy carrying a world of grief on his shoulders.

I was the sun, and Jesse was the moon. Our hearts balanced each other, and together, we formed a whole. Over one summer, our teenage hearts latched onto one another. Over the years to come, we shared our lives through letters.

But what happens to a friendship tainted by a lie? And what happens when the person who acted as the sunshine in the friendship is now living in the shadows?