A/N: Sorry it took so long to upload. It's because I'm really unhappy with this chapter and wanted to rewrite it, but decided that this whole story is a first draft anyways, so it doesn't matter but also because all of you readers are so amazing and patient that I should give you it before I make you wait forever. So here it is! (:

          Twenty-Two

          I tell decide to tell Hadley everything I told Evan the weekend after the meeting. My parents and I talked to the police and they said that they have a warrant out for his arrest. The day after I decided to talk to talk to my therapist and finally open up. I ended up having a really good appointment and he said I was making good progress on my own, despite his concerns that I may be filling him with lies.

            With my mother’s book release party coming up quickly she’s going insane around the house over it, planning and on the phone. My father is also calling people to come to his get-together so when Hadley invites me to go to the beach with her across from her home, I’m thankful to get out.

            I spill to her everything and she takes it exactly how I expect her to do – like everything is okay. The thing I don’t expect is when she rises to her feet and pulls up her left short-leg a little bit to reveal her skin. When she shows me four small, faded lines, she looks up at me with a smile that tells me she’s happy to not be where she was when she did it.

            “Freshman year,” she explains, letting me look for another moment before she pushes her fabric back down. “I was bullied.”

            I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything at all. Hadley asks if I want to see what her mother’s painting and I say yes and soon we’re walking across the bumpy sand on the warm beach towards her little white house. As soon as we go inside I can smell paint.

            Her mother doesn’t even notice us when we walk into the kitchen. The sound of a kid’s television show drifts in from the next room over and I wonder if this is the only way Hadley’s mom has time to paint.

            When I look at her painting, I gasp.

            Hadley’s mother whirls around with a heart to her hand. When she sees us her expression relaxes a bit.

            “I didn’t hear you two come in. I was in my muse.”

            Hadley apologizes as her mother steps aside to reveal the rest of her painting. I feel like I’m really staring at the ocean as I stare out at all of the blue waves and water flowing over itself. A little island sits unfinished on the surface but below there’s the sand at the very bottom of the canvas. It’s so large that I feel like I’m underwater despite being able to breathe.

            “It’s amazing,” I say, a little bit breathless about how shocking the painting is. I don’t get to admire it any longer than a few moments before Hadley’s pulling on my arm and dragging me away. I ask her to wait and she says to just come.

            “Hadley is used to my awesomeness,” her mother calls with a smirk as her daughter pulls me down the hallway and out of the kitchen.

            I have never been inside Hadley’s room before today. As she pulls me into the small, rectangular space I take it all in. Someone, it’s exactly as I would have imagine it, with only a little less space.

            Posters, some black and white cover every inch of the four walls that make up her bedroom. Some are large while a few are so tiny that I can’t even read the writing. They look like business cards for concerts. Her bed is a purple comforter thrown over a small frame and mattress underneath the only window in the dim space. It starts at one wall and ends at the other while being pressed underneath the window. The only wall it isn’t touching is the one we came through to get inside.

            “Your room is cool,” I say as I do a spin. Even her ceiling looks cooler than mine, even though it’s possibly the exact same stucco ceiling.

            Hadley ignores my comment as she digs through one of the drawers in a small, white drawer space. When she finds what she’s looking for she turns around to face me and holds the marker in front of my eyes. It’s a black Sharpie.

            “Found it,” she says as if she’s patting herself on the back.

            “Congratulations. Now what?”

            “Hold out your arms.”

            “What? Why?”

            “Just hold out your arms,” she repeats.

            I do what I’m told but not without a sigh. As soon as I hold them out she flips them upside down until my palms are pointing upwards. I start to object as she pulls up my baggy sleeves but the words drown in my mouth.

            Hadley places the Sharpie on my skin and quickly removes it, pausing. She looks up at me but looks far from concerned.

            “You don’t mind if I draw on you, do you?”

            I think she’s asking if I was one of those kids whose parents threw a fit about poisoning each time they came home with homework written on the back of their palms or colours on their fingers from markers.

            I was one of those kids, but I don’t plan on telling Hadley that.

            “Well, I think it’s too late for that,” I say, looking down at the black dot on the inside of my forearm. I mean to smile, for it to not come across as blank and numb, but Hadley looks at me with suspicion. She goes back to drawing on my arm where the scars are and I look at her multi-coloured hair so I don’t have to watch.

            “I know I’m being kind of bossy, but you have to trust me. I think you’ll really like this. Someone did this for me when…well, you know.”

            I nod my head even though she can’t see. I don’t really want to talk. Exposing my scars is new to me and the feeling and bareness of my arms feels unnerving to me. I have to constantly brush away the feeling of having to pull my sleeves down or tear my arms away.

            I move my gaze to the posters on the walls and look over the titles of movies and bands I don’t recognize. When Hadley switches arms she looks up at me briefly but I don’t meet her gaze.

            I’m supposed to meet Evan tonight to go down to the coast and my nerves are constantly on my mind. I haven’t seen him since the night he kissed my arms and I’d be stupid if I didn’t realize that things have changed drastically between us. I guess we’ve never exactly been friends, but we’ve never been together. In fact, I don’t know what we are. But now I’m sure things can’t stay the way they have all summer increasing, and on top of things I’ll be gone in a matter of a few very short weeks.

            “Done.”

            I start to look down but Hadley practically jumps into my body to cover whatever she drew on me from my gaze. After she yells for me not to look I avert my eyes and she backs away.

            “Keep your hands at your sides,” she orders.

            I do as I’m told.

            “I want this to go perfectly. It’s kind of cheesy, but I’ve always been a fan of cheese,” she says as if that explains everything. “We’re going to walk back to the beach, but you have to promise not to look, okay, Bam?”

            “I promise,” I say dryly.

            Hadley narrows her eyes. “Bam, seriously.”

            “I promise,” I repeat, louder this time. I give her a small smile and she returns it. Together we walk back out into the warm day and Hadley keeps watch to make sure my arms remain swinging at my sides. She makes me walk through the ocean wind all the way to where the water chases us up to the shore, only inches away from my shoes. Despite everything, all that I think of is how I don’t want them to get wet.

            “Look up so I know you won’t peek.”

            With another sigh I tilt my head up towards the blue and cloudy sky. Hadley grabs my arms as I’m not looking and pulls them together with whatever she drew facing up. She makes sure I press them tightly against each other and each time I move them away for comfort she grunts and moves them back. Holding them in front of me is uncomfortable, but bearable when I tilt everything up towards the sky.

            Hadley moves until she’s behind me.

            “Okay, open your eyes, but don’t look directly at your arms. Look kind of above your hands, out at the ocean.”

            Slowly, I open my eyes into the bright of the fading day. The ocean is full of waves but no whitecaps. It looks perfectly normal except for my arms sitting directly in the middle of the picture.

             A set of train tracks are drawn on my skin and over my scars. The outer rails of the tracks are my scars, and even though my right on is slanted, someone together, the track is still perfectly straight. Boards tie the two together when I press my skin against each other and venture out towards my hands. They stop before they reach my palms but it doesn’t look like it ends.

            The detail in the wood panels is amazing for such quick drawing with a permanent marker, and I’m impressed. I had no idea that Hadley could draw and is as talented with it as her mother is with painting.

            “You are a train on a track,” Hadley says rhythmically from behind me. I don’t move my head in fear she will yell at me for not standing exactly how she positioned me. I can’t see her in my peripheral vision. “You are long gone from the past and now in the present, where you stand now. The tracks out in front of you are the future. You choose where you want them to go.”

            The Sharpie completely covers the scars, as if they were never really there at all.

            Hadley grabs my shoulders and starts spinning me around, staying behind me as she moves me back and forth.

            “You cannot go backwards to your past because your tracks don’t go that way. You can only go forward, to the place you choose.”

            She moves me back to staring at the ocean and I stare out at the tracks that are drawn on my arms. Despite how silly this seems, what Hadley is saying makes sense.

            But it’s still really silly.

            I don’t notice when Hadley leaves from behind me because I can’t see her or hear her footsteps over the waves. But I do realize she left when suddenly she’s at my sides and lifts her cupped hands over top of my bun. In a second, ocean water is dripping down my hair and onto my shoulders.

            “Hadley!”

            I wipe the drops away from my face with the back of my hand just before she takes off running down the coast. I immediately start running after her, chasing her as she screams in fright of me reaching her.

            “You are so going to get it now!”

            After we tire ourselves out from chasing each other across the sand, we lay down on the ground as close to the water as we can get without being touched by it with our hair sprawled around us. Hadley’s looks like a mixture of colours with now dirty blonde roots coming through at the top of her head. She doesn’t seem to mind as she wraps a purple strand around her finger and plays with it thoughtfully while I stare across at the lowering sun.

            “I don’t want you to leave,” Hadley says suddenly. Her usual happy and carefree tone is nowhere to be found and is replaced by a serious one.

            “I don’t think I want to leave, either.”

            “But it’s different for you,” she continues. “You get to go home to a city full of people and places. Once you leave, I’m stuck here with the same old same old with this missing feeling of you because you are supposed to be here with us.”

            I don’t know what to say to that so I lie still. Sand is getting caught in every inch of my skin and weaving its way through my hair but I still don’t move. I don’t want to leave – what more is there for me to say than that? I don’t get a choice. My parents brought me here to Mermaid Bay without one, in fact they actually forced me here. What’s to say that they won’t force me back if I object?

             “Has Evan said anything? I mean, about you leaving?”

            I shrug and my shoulders make lopsided ruts in the sand. When I see Hadley watching me with her big eyes I expect her to laugh. She doesn’t.

            “He hasn’t really said anything.”

            “But the end of the summer is almost here though.”

            “I know.”

            “Does he?”

            Again, I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say so I continue my silence until the sun is moved from its most recent perch and it’s time for me to go home. Hadley offers to walk me but I say I’m fine, knowing my way from the main beach across from her house to my lighthouse cottage pretty well by now.

            I almost wish I didn’t.

            I don’t have much time to wash the sand from my skin and hair so I opt for the quickest shower I can manage and comb my hair into thick waves over my shoulders. In white shorts and a blue tank top I make my way downstairs towards the front door where the bell had rang only moments ago. I want to beat my parents to at least get a moment to myself before they hassle him through dinner.

            “Hey,” Evan grins as soon as I open the door. He’s dressed in a grey, light pullover with the sleeves rolled up and shorts. I think pants are taboo for anyone to wear in such hot weather all summer.

            “Hey,” I mimic, feeling my cheeks flush as I step aside for him to come in. I don’t know why I’m so nervous for tonight, it’s just like any other time we’ve hung out before except now it’s kind of not. After our recapping moment things are different and I’m not sure whether they’re for the better or the worse. I’m hoping for the former.

            We only get a moment alone, which isn’t much considering I feel like a giggly kindergartener while Evan takes off his shoes. It’s only thirty seconds that we get alone, not spent well, may I add, before my mother overexcitedly welcomes Evan and says he’s just in time for dinner.

            During dinner I say no more than two words. My parents invite Evan to my mother’s book party and said that he is welcome to stay the night on our couch at my house, and asked me to invite Hadley to come and stay with me in my room. Even though I wasn’t particularly excited about going back home, Mom continued all through dinner acting thrilled.

            Eventually Evan and I migrate through the screen door and onto the back deck. We take seats at the table and I lift my knees up to my chest while Evan rests a foot on one of the bars underneath the glass.

            “Do you want me to come with you to your mom’s book thing?” Evan asks. I can feel his eyes on me but I keep hugging my legs, staring out at the ocean. “You didn’t exactly get a chance to say much and I understand if you don’t because your life’s back there.”

            I rest my chin on my knees and smile. “I want you to come.”

            “Are you sure?” Evan’s voice wavers and I can quickly tell that he’s trying to walk on eggshells around everything related to Cade. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to or anything-“

            Laughing lightly, I remove one of my hands and easily pry one of Evan’s from the armrest. With his fingers in mine, I give them a squeeze and my cheeks flush. “Evan, it’s fine, really. I want you to be there.”

            “Bam-“

            “Evan,” I groan. Though it’s sweet that he’s being so concerned about me and whatever this is between us is escalating so quickly, I want him to stop worrying. “Both my parents are going to be incredibly busy and it’s going to be hard for me to go back there. I’d love to have you and Hadley there to help me through something that’s going to be hard for me.”

            A small smile creeps up his lips and he glances down at our hands. For a moment, I think I catch him blushing. I can’t be sure and automatically wish I had my camera to double check it later.

            “Okay,” he says, meeting my eyes. “I’m looking forward to it.”

            I grin. “Strangely, I kind of am too.”