Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) by Travis Thrasher Page B

the dark, watching the same story.
    I’m tired of being alone. I know Mom and Dad had their issues and they couldn’t work things out, but I know that two will always be better than one. Especially around here.
    Eventually we stand and leave the table. As we do, I look at the man.
    He grins at me as if sizing me up.
    I don’t look away.
    I don’t smile a polite smile. Instead, I grit my teeth and toughen up my eyes and know that this is what’s ahead.
    I’m standing in between this stranger and Kelsey, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do.
    They don’t frighten me anymore.
    Even if they should.

18. Ryan Gosling
    Kelsey lets me drive her car back to my house just to let me feel a little more manly. I mean—we just spent two hours watching Ryan Gosling be a macho man and woo the ladies and be tough but tender, so I need a little help.
    Driving back to my cabin, I imagine for the moment that I’m Gosling and this is my woman. Not my girl but my lady. That we’re older and that we can do anything we want and that I’m her lover and protector.
    It’s nice making up things.
    I pull the car around in my driveway and think about the empty house in front of us. But then I ditch that thought. Because it’s too soon and because it’s Kelsey and because of what happened when I last had those empty-cabin-all-to-myself thoughts.
    The engine is running and the car is in neutral and I can see those big blue eyes looking at me in the semi-darkness.
    “This was fun,” I say.
    But that’s Buckley talking, not Gosling. He would never say something so lame.
    “You can, uh, come in for a while if you want, you know?” I say.
    Still far to go to be Gosling, buddy.
    “I better go.”
    She doesn’t know your cabin is empty anyway, remember? She thinks your mom is here.
    I nod and start to say something very Buckley-esque, and then Kelsey moves over and kisses me.
    It’s a very non-Kelsey-like kiss.
    But as we embrace for I don’t know and don’t care how long, I think another thought.
    Maybe this is a Kelsey kiss that nobody else except me knows about.
    And I don’t have to be Ryan Gosling to get a kiss like that.
    She finally moves and smiles and then waits.
    I guess there’s nothing left to say because she just said this.
    I have a lot more I want to say and a lot more I want to do, but I climb out of the car and head back up to the empty cabin.
    Knowing I’ll dream of her.
    I turn and watch her car pull away in the darkness. Then something in me tears away.
    I think of the tossed car off the side of the road like a scrap of garbage that ended up killing Lily.
    I stop breathing for a moment.
    Who knows who’s watching me now? Or following Kelsey back home?
    I can’t be with her every moment. I can’t fully protect her.
    “God protect her,” I say out loud.
    That’s all I can do. Even if I still don’t really know if that’s doing anything.

19. The Wizard of Oz
    I’m here because of Kelsey.
    And, I guess, because this is the first step to the final page. The big thing that’s supposed to be on the horizon. The thing that’s supposed to happen that I’m a part of—that I’m needed for—that all this fuss has been about.
    So I’m starting at the doorway to New Beginnings Church. I walk inside, hoping that Pastor Marsh sees me. I want him to think that I’m going along with the plan. And that as long as I do what they tell me to do, they’ll leave my mom and Kelsey and anybody else I care for alone.
    That’s the plan.
    I remember that storage room downstairs and still want to know what’s up with that coffin. And the mannequin I saw.
    This makes me think of chapstick guy from the other afternoon. The man who claimed to be into “dark arts,” Mr. Mannequin himself.
    Maybe I don’t need to know any more about those things.
    “Christopher.”
    Anytime someone calls me that, I want to run and hide. My father used to say that when he had to discipline me. Every teacher who announced that I was