Nothing More - Chapter 99

away from the Starbucks, and I chased her, as I always did.

She turned a corner down an alleyway, and I lost her. I felt like I couldn’t breathe until I found her. It was too dark for her to be running through that part of town. I found her a few minutes later, right outside the Patch. She was sitting on the ground next to a half-torn-down fence, the black of the woods behind her.

The chain-link fence had huge holes in it and it was dark outside, and after a minute I could finally breathe again. Dakota was picking at the gray rocks and tossing them into a pothole in the street. I remember how relieved I felt when I saw her. She was wearing a yellow shirt with a smiley face on it and glittery sandals. She was mad at me because I thought it was a bad idea to try to track down her mom.

Yolanda Hunter had been gone for too many years. I felt that if she wanted to be found, she wouldn’t be hiding.

Dakota was angry, telling me that I didn’t understand what it was like to have no parents. Her mom ran away, leaving her children with a drunk father who liked to smack his son around.

When I caught up to Dakota, she was crying, and it took her a few seconds to look at me. It’s so strange the way my mind remembers the exact details of that night. I had started to get worried about her. Sometimes, I would think she was going to disappear, like her mom.

“There’s no proof that she wouldn’t let me live with her,”she told me that night.

“And there’s no proof that she would. I just want you to consider how you’ll feel if she doesn’t say what you want her to, or if she doesn’t say anything at all,”I said to her as I sat down next to her on the crunchy gravel.

“I’ll be fine. It couldn’t possibly be worse than not knowing,” she said.

I remember grabbing her hand and that she laid her head on my shoulder. We sat in silence, both of our heads tilted up toward the sky. The stars were so bright that night.

Sometimes, like that night, we wondered why the stars even bothered to shine over our town.

“I think it’s to torture us. To mock those of us who are stuck in bad places and living crappy lives,”Dakota would say.

I’d say something like “No, I think they’re here to give us hope. Hope that there’s more out there. Stars aren’t evil like humans.”

She would look at me and squeeze my hand, and I would promise her that someday, somehow, we would get the hell out of Saginaw.

She seemed to trust me.

“Sorry it took so long!” I recognize Posey’s voice through the cloud of memories in my head. She’s talking to Aiden. A woman in a black dress holds up a sign and tells everyone it’s time to go. As the crowd spills out of the shop, I listen to the exchange between Posey and Aiden.

He lifts his shirt up to wipe his sweaty face as she talks to him. “It’s all right. Landon finally showed up.”

Posey’s head turns and she finds me, wiping a rag across the metal counter.

Not eavesdropping at all.

“I’m so sorry!” Posey says, walking toward me. Her hands are behind her back and she’s tying her apron. Her red hair is up today, pulled back into a bun.

“I could have sworn we switched shifts today, I must have forgotten to ask you,” she explains.

I shake the rag over the trash can before soaking it in the soap bucket. “No. We did switch. I was just out of it last night and let my phone die. Sorry you had to come all the way down here.”

She looks toward Aiden and I follow her eyes. He’s not looking at either of us; he’s talking to a customer about decaf coffee being despicable and pointless.

“It’s like alcohol-free beer. Waste of time,” the middle-aged man Aiden’s talking to says in a raspy voice. He looks like he’s had a few beers today himself.