Read The Vision for Free Online Page A

the floor, and I imagined that whatever sport Ryan was into, he was probably very good at it. “We should go,” he said. “This”—he gestured toward the chapel, then back to where we stood—“is between us. Not to worry. But be careful.”
    Then he left, the door shushing closed behind him.
    I stayed in the prep room a few more minutes, collecting myself and wondering why I’d never really noticed Ryan before. Of course, I knew he was around, spoke to him almost every shift, but I’d never really noticed him.
    I wondered what he thought of me.
    One thing was certain: Ryan was right, it wasn’t smart to snoop around at the wakes. I’d have to find another, less risky way, though I felt like for once I was close to hearing something useful. I was frustrated that I missed the end of what that woman Betty or Carmen had been talking about. Robert Killiam’s research. I’d never know what it was; I’d already searched high and low on the Internet. There was nothing there.
    I went back to the break room, trying to study for real this time, but I was preoccupied with things that chemistry and calc couldn’t begin to eclipse. Ryan. The stuff we’d talked about. The way he’d felt so close to me.
    I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but it had pierced the layers of busyness I’d tried to wrap myself in, bringing back memories of Jack and all the things I was trying to forget. Or at least ignore, for now. Like the day he found me by my locker soon after I’d come home from Kansas.
    â€œWalk you home?”
    He’d startled me and I jumped a little, my heart racing as it registered that it was him. Jack. I turned, holding tightly to the books I’d pulled from my locker, and found him watching me, his head tipped slightly to the side, smiling.
    â€œSure.” I leaned back into my locker. “Let me just get my stuff together.”
    We left school, walking side by side down the wide cement steps. It was my third day back in Ashville and I was still feeling like my old life had broken in half and been haphazardly glued back together. Even things that shouldn’t have changed had —my walk to school, my friendship with Tasha, the places I liked to go. They were all colored by what had happened and what I’d learned that summer.
    I felt especially awkward with Jack because I’d been thinking about him too much. For months. I’d replayed the day I ran into him in Kansas so often—the way he called to me in the park, looked at me, told me he’d broken up with his girlfriend—holding on to it like some kind of desperate touchstone so that now, back in Pennsylvania, I worried that I’d blown it all out of proportion, read things into it that weren’t there.
    â€œTell me about your summer in Kansas,” he said, smiling down at me as we started toward my apartment. “Did you like it out there?”
    â€œNot at first,” I said, still unsteady, unnatural, though I’d walked beside him, seen his smile and those brown eyes a hundred times. “My aunt just kind of dumped me off at her apartment. I didn’t know anyone …” I paused, thinking about how bored I’d been. “I moped around for a while, kind of hating it. Then I decided to get a job.”
    â€œOh yeah? Where’d you work?”
    I told him about the coffee shop and the people there, feeling more and more like myself, talking to the Jack I’d always known as we walked. He asked me about the town and we swapped stories about how the Midwest was different, pausing only when we reached my apartment.
    I hesitated, thinking about asking him in, but knowing that even I didn’t want to be there, in that half-packed apartment.
    â€œDo you have to go?” he asked.
    â€œNo.” I smiled, relieved. “Definitely not.”
    He smiled back and we continued down the block in a comfortable silence,