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very
exciting.”
    “He wants to meet you and Dad,” Raven
said, squinting, clutching the phone that much harder.  
    “Well we’d love to meet him.   Any friend of yours…absolutely.”
    Raven sighed.   “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know
when we’re getting into town.”
    Her mother was getting happier, seemingly,
as she processed what was happening.   “You’re really coming back home to visit?   You’re sure, Raven ?”
    “I’m sure, Mom.”
    As
long as it takes to get the footage and pictures we need to make it look real .  
    It was sad, actually, because if this had
been a genuine relationship, she truly would have been excited to introduce
Jake to her mother and father.
    Yeah,
but what girl wouldn’t be excited to introduce Jake Novak to their friends and
family?   Just be glad you can even
pretend you’re with him.   That’s a
lot better than most girls will ever get.
    It was true, but it hurt
nonetheless.  
    She’d always fantasized about going back
to her hometown as someone successful, happy, showing off that she’d made it
despite everyone’s attempts to bring her down and believe the worst of her.
    Only now that Raven was getting the
chance, all she could focus on was the fact that it was all based on a lie.
    They got off the phone, Raven’s mother
finally showing some excitement about reuniting, and Raven was left with at
least a faint ray of hope that perhaps the whole trip might work out okay.
    Then she hung up and sat there on the
couch, thinking back on everything that had caused her to flee Southbridge in
the first pace four years ago.  
    Instantly, she recalled Caleb’s face, his
light curly hair and blue eyes, the way he’d looked at her and told her things
she’d desperately wanted to believe at the time.   She was reminded of the love she’d felt
for him, and then the betrayal that had made her question whether anything he’d
ever told her had been true.
    Flashes of the party that had started the
whole mess began to flicker across her inner vision, as if the phone call with
her mother had triggered a cascade of memories—Memories that had merely
been waiting all these years to be called to the surface of Raven’s mind.
    She
was drinking shots and laughing with friends.   The room was hot and crowded and smelled
of stale beer, sweat and perfume.
    Caleb’s
smile, his laugh as the music blared in the background.
    The
feeling of danger, excitement, mixed with teenage bodies and alcohol and the
desire to be sexy and wanted.
    Andre
appeared, fittingly, standing next to Caleb.   The two of them, like peanut butter and
jelly, always together, always a pair.
    Caleb
and Andre, and the night of the party, when everything had gone so horribly,
desperately wrong for Raven.
    She felt sick just thinking about all of it
and had to willfully pull herself out of the current of those old
memories.   It was like trying to
climb out of quicksand, and as she found herself back in the present, Raven was
terrified to realize that none of the old emotions had gone away.
    I
thought I was past all of that.   I
thought I was better, that I was an adult, and I’d
created my new life.   But the sad
truth is, I haven’t done anything but run away, and now I’m going back there
and I don’t know if I can do it.
     
    ***
     
    Lying in bed, Raven tried to let go but
was unable to sleep.
    Raven was wearing nothing but a long
t-shirt from the clothes that had been in the suitcase Kurt had brought to her
room.
    She was lying with no covers, feeling too
hot, but also too lethargic to get up and turn the AC on any higher.   Sweat was slick on her arms and legs and
plastering her bangs to her forehead, and she was tossing and turning.
    I
can’t go back there.
    Those words had been repeating over and
over again in her mind, a loop that simply wouldn’t stop.
    I
can’t.
    I
can’t go back.
    I
can’t go back there .
    She closed her eyes, tried to take a few
deep breaths.   She sat up,