“I want to go home.”
He nodded immediately.
“I’ll walk you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
He did anyway.
The walk from school to my house took twenty minutes. The storm never came, but lightning trembled behind the clouds, turning the streets silver for half a second at a time. My heels clicked on the sidewalk. Caleb walked beside me with his jacket folded over one arm, close enough to feel present, far enough not to trap me.
Neither of us spoke for the first five blocks.
Then he said, “I’m sorry I asked.”
I kept my eyes on the pavement.
“People always want the story.”
“I didn’t ask because of the scars.”
“Then why?”
He stopped walking.
I stopped too.
A streetlamp buzzed above us.
Caleb looked at my house down the road. The yellow kitchen window glowed faintly, my mother waiting up like she always did.
His voice came out almost broken.
“Because sometimes not remembering is its own kind of prison.”
I stared at him.
“Caleb, what does that mean?”
He looked at me then, really looked, and for the first time that night his eyes flicked to the scar on my cheek.
