Between the Spark and the Burn by April Genevieve Tucholke

quiet and dirt-under-the-fingernails and waking-up-all-alone-every-day.
    Finch seemed older suddenly, all cleaned up. I thought he might be seventeen, not the fifteen I’d first thought. I’d have to ask him, once I knew him better.
    We moved out onto the wooden platform, and then, in a blink, the black train was pulling up and good-byes, good-byes.
    â€œLast chance, Violet,” Luke said. He stood on the bottom step of the train and looked down at me. Sunshine was already inside, having walked right by without a word.
    I shook my head.
    Luke sighed. “Be careful, sister.” And his face told me how much he meant it. “I was . . . a coward, back at Inn’s End. I’m not proud of it, Vi. But you’re making the wrong choice. You are. If a person goes looking for trouble, they’ll find it.” The train began to howl. “What if the barn boy is River?” he shouted over the noise. “What if it’s Brodie? What will we do then?”
    I didn’t answer.
    What would any of us do with either Redding boy if we found him? I hadn’t figured that out yet. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth thinking ahead. Because then you’d freeze and never end up doing anything, anything at all.
    Luke stared at me, and I stared at him, and I could see he was pissed, and sad, and a little scared still. But mainly, mainly he just seemed kind of . . . lost, all of sudden.
    â€œWe’ve never been apart, you know,” I said, because we hadn’t. But Luke didn’t hear me over the howling. He turned and went up the steps.
    The train left, and he was gone.
    That’s when the bad feeling started. Deep in the pit of my belly. Thick and bitter and sweaty.
    Luke was right. I’d made the wrong choice.
    And I supposed I should have wondered right then if I would ever even see my brother again. But that seemed too dark a thought, even for me.
    â‰ˆâ‰ˆâ‰ˆ
    We left the college town behind a half hour later, though I didn’t want to. The way Inn’s End had played out didn’t make me all that eager to follow another one of Wide-Eyed Theo’s stories down the rabbit hole.
    No, that wasn’t true. I wanted to go to North Carolina. I did. . . . I just needed one more cup of coffee first.
    Finch was quiet as we wandered back through the campus. He didn’t seem to understand money very well, let alone have any of his own, so I paid for his coffee and he didn’t mind a bit. He winced each time a car went by, and I watched him stand by an overflowing garbage can for a full minute, a melancholy look on his face.
    But he watched other people closely and learned fast. The day before, he’d been a cabin-dwelling mountain boy. By the time he’d finished his whole-milk latte, he was leading the way back to the car, cutting through alleys and jaywalking across busy intersections like some true-blue city kid.
    â€œFinch, have you ever been to this town before?” I asked, looking at him out of the corner of my eyes. “Have you ever been anywhere?”
    â€œNo.” He paused, and glanced around, serious and big-eyed like a deer that had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of town. “The world is a lot bigger than I thought.” A truck rambled down the road in front of us. “And a lot louder.”
    â€œA lot bigger?” Neely repeated, and laughed. Though not in an unfriendly way. “We haven’t even left the state yet. You wait.”
    And Finch nodded, though I detected a bit of doubt in his eyes, like he wanted to believe Neely about the world being bigger but couldn’t yet, not quite.
    We got in the car and drove away.
    The truth was, I’d been back in civilization and I liked it. The grand university had sucked the Devil-hunting itch right out of me.
    I thought about me going east and Luke going north and I felt a tug. Something was going taut between us, some connection,