The Taking (The Taking 1)

He came closer, his feet sinking in the soft sand. “Or something.” He took the swing next to mine.

We stayed like that, moving back and forth on the swings, not in a hurry, not racing or trying to swing higher or matching each other’s rhythm, just swaying as I tried not to look at him too much or too often. It was hard, though. My gaze kept shifting in his direction, and I didn’t want to stare, but I did want to at the same time.

He was of course older now than I remembered, but different too. More so than anyone else.

“What do you remember? About me, I mean?”

I grinned again when he asked the question, because it was so close to what I’d just been thinking. “I remember you liked chalk. That you always did these cool chalk drawings all over the sidewalks,” I said, twisting in my swing to face him.

He made a face. “Ouch. Really? That’s what you think of when you think of me? Chalk?”

“That’s not bad, is it?” I laughed at his reaction, pushing off again and letting the swing drift. “Why? What do you remember about me?”

He stopped moving, stopped swinging as he inhaled, his eyes—those green eyes—following mine. “I remember thinking Austin was the luckiest guy I knew.”

My breath caught in the back of my throat, and my feet hit the ground, stopping me.

“What?” Tyler insisted, swinging sideways until his shoulder nudged me. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know I had the hugest crush on you, Kyra. It wasn’t my fault I was only in the seventh grade and you barely noticed me.”

He was right; I’d barely noticed him back then. Most of my memories of Tyler were fragments, held together by Austin.

“See how you went and made things all awkward?” I accused, getting up from my swing and dusting off the back of my borrowed yoga pants.

Undeterred, Tyler fell into step beside me as we made our way toward the park entrance. “Awkward or not, you should know I’m glad you’re back.” He flashed me a shy smile as he added, “And now that I’m older, I’ll try to be a little more memorable.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Day Two

I BARELY SLEPT, IF AT ALL; MY BRAIN JUST KEPT tripping over facts and nonfacts, memories and illusions, trying to sort through what was and wasn’t and might have been. Considering I didn’t remember sleeping, I felt fine by the time the sun started coming up and the smell of coffee brewing found its way down the hall to my fake bedroom.

I’d almost forgotten about The Husband—which is what I’d silently dubbed Grant, since it made me physically ill to even think his name—but he was the one I stumbled into in the kitchen. He was already dressed in a suit and on his way out the door, thank God, because, like I’d mentioned, that whole stomach-wrenching, physically ill thing.

I checked the clock over the microwave—it was 7:42.

The Husband poked his head back inside a minute later—I knew because my eyes automatically flicked to check. “You might want to see this.”

I was still in my mom’s clothes from the night before, and I grudgingly trailed after him, keeping enough distance so he didn’t get the wrong impression or anything. No matter what he had to show me, there was no way this was a truce.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what it was he’d come back in to share with me. And then I smiled, because how could I not?

The illustrations were detailed and elaborate. And even though they were created with chalk, they were vibrant and lifelike.

Tyler had drawn a cobblestone pathway that stretched all the way from one side of our street to the other, bridging our two houses, practically from my front door to his. And running across the top of the pathway was a saying, written in beautiful, scrawling script. It said:

I’ll remember you always.

It took my breath away. I couldn’t believe he’d gone to all this trouble for me. He must’ve stayed up half the night to finish it.

I glanced over to his house, but he was probably already at school.

The Husband made a whistling sound. “Pretty impressive.”

I’d almost forgotten he was there, and I wiped the smile from my face, not wanting him to get the tiniest glimpse into what I might be thinking, and then I stalked back inside. Once I’d locked the door and leaned against it and was sure The Husband could no longer see me, the grin slipped back to my lips.

My mom was at the coffeemaker, pouring herself a cup just as my dad shuffled into the kitchen.

“Yes, please,” he told her, nodding at the pot in her hand as he sat down at the table, taking the same spot he’d always sat in when we’d all lived there together.

She rolled her eyes at him but reached for another mug anyway. She didn’t ask if he wanted cream or sugar, even though he always did; she just handed his coffee to him black.

He grumbled, but he got up and went to the fridge. After a minute he peered around the door at my mom. “Don’t you have anything that isn’t soy? Something that comes from, oh, I don’t know, a cow? I’ll even take goat.”

“Sorry.” She shrugged, not at all apologetically, plucking the carton of soy milk from his hands and settling down at the table.

I sat down, too, taking my old seat. The familiarity of it should have been comfortable, but it so wasn’t. My dad sitting across from me, my mom between us, like we were still a family.

But we weren’t.

“Pretty cool, what that Tyler kid did,” my dad said, breaking the tense silence.