Reborn to Leave Her Behind novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Bonfire

Erin opened the front door before her mother could stop her.

Rhett stood on the porch with one hand braced on the frame and his eyes red.

He had been drinking since noon, and he smelled of it.

"There she is," he said. "Princess of Fairmont."

"Tonight," Erin said. "At the quarry."

"What?"

"You said everybody would be there. Good. I'll be there too."

His grin slipped for half a second.

He had expected her to cry, I think, or to hide behind her mother.

"Bring your boy," he said, to cover it. "I'd hate for him to miss it."

He went down the steps and nearly missed the last one.

Erin shut the door and leaned her forehead against it.

"That was stupid," Mrs. Hartigan said.

"Yes."

"I'm driving you."

Erin turned around.

"Mom."

"I'll sit in the car with the engine on. I won't say a word." Her mouth was set. "But I'm not sending my daughter into a field of drunk children alone."

That night the quarry field was full of trucks.

Somebody had stacked pallets as high as a garage and set them on fire, and the flames lit up two or three hundred faces.

Briarwood sweatshirts were everywhere, and a speaker in a truck bed was playing something with a loud bass.

I had come in my mother's old parka, still weak from the fever, with the cold biting through to my teeth.

Erin walked in ahead of me.

She had stopped three feet away from my shoulder, as she always did, and I did not have the heart to tell her she could close the gap.

Heads turned as she passed.

Rhett was sitting on the tailgate of his truck with a beer and a circle of boys around him.

"Hartigan!" he called. "You came!"

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