Chapter 19: Four Feet

Caleb's POV

The porch was loud.

It was always going to be loud, and I had known that all week.

Bianca screamed from the rail.

Her mother screamed her name back.

Josie's cousin held her phone up to film, and her boyfriend told her not to, and she said it was evidence.

Every voice hit me at once, from every side, with no gaps.

I felt it climbing my spine.

I put my hand on my headphones, where they hung at my neck, and the plastic was cool and smooth.

I could put them on.

Nobody would blame me.

I looked at Josie instead.

She stood beside me with her hands clenched, and she was not looking at her sister.

She was looking at her mother.

I had watched Josie say yes to this family for two lives.

In the first one she told me all of it in my kitchen, laughing, as if it were funny: the dresses she gave up, the rooms, the boyfriends.

She had said yes every time, because it was easier than the noise.

I knew exactly what she was going to feel in the next minute.

I measured the rail.

It was about four feet off the lawn, and the lawn was soft.

If Bianca jumped she would hurt her ankle, and nothing else.

I thought that was probably why she had picked the ground-floor porch, and not the second-floor balcony.

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