Between the Spark and the Burn by April Genevieve Tucholke Page A

like the one between me and the sea.
    â€œI’d like to hear your story,” Finch said from the backseat after we turned down a two-lane road that lazily wound around an orchard-covered hill. A few frozen apples still swung from the bare branches and I was tempted to reach out the window and try to grab one. “I haven’t talked to other people in a long time and I like listening to your voice.”
    I took off my seat belt and turned to face him. “I was just about to ask you to do the same thing.”
    â€œYou first,” he said back, half smiling at me in that strange, contrasting way he had, gentle and wild all at once, like a caged wolf only half resigned to his fate. I guess that’s what came from growing up all alone in the forest. He had a dimple on his left cheek, a deep one. I decided right then that dimples were inherently likeable.
    I told Finch about me, and Luke, and Sunshine, and Neely and Freddie and Citizen Kane and what happened last summer and how we ended up in Inn’s End. I wasn’t used to talking so much at once, and it didn’t come easily to me, but I got better as I went along. Finch was quiet, his expression mild, and I would have thought he didn’t believe me at all, believe my tale of glow and spark and blood and fire, except his eyes never left mine.
    We went by bare, brown vineyards, their grapes stolen for wine. We went by farms, red barns and dark fences and endless trees. I told Finch about River. And about Brodie. I talked about the red hair and the knife and the cowboy and the mad mother and him cutting up Jack and him biting River and how it ended when I stabbed him in the chest as I bled to death out my wrists.
    I showed him the scars and he touched each with his right finger, softly. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, leaving his finger on my left wrist and looking me straight in the eye. “I wish I had been there. I wish I could have saved you the way you saved me in Inn’s End.”
    I shook my head. “You couldn’t have stopped Brodie.”
    â€œAnd yet you’re hunting him.” Finch’s expression still had that caged look. “What do you plan to do if you find him?”
    I could feel Neely look at me. I moved my wrist away from Finch’s hand. “If we find Brodie, then . . . then I’ll . . . I’ll stab him again. With a knife this time, not a shard of glass. And this time I’ll kill him.”
    Finch’s eyebrows went up. Just slightly. But I saw it. He doubted me.
    Of course he doubted me.
    River, what am I going to do if we find Brodie in North Carolina instead of you?
    â€œI’d like to see this Citizen Kane someday,” Finch said after I was quiet for a while. “I’d like to have coffee in the guesthouse and dig up old clothes in the attic.”
    â€œYou can,” I said, trying not to sound too excited. I can’t help getting excited when anyone seems interested in the Citizen. “Once we finish up in North Carolina, you can come back with Neely and me and see it all for yourself and stay as long as you like.”
    Finch nodded, and his mouth broke into a sweet, genuine smile. He reached forward and grabbed my hands, putting his fingertips on my wrists again. “So which one are we going to find in North Carolina?” he asked, after a moment. “River, or Brodie?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Outside, the landscape had flattened, and lost some of its trees. “Probably neither.”
    Neely looked at me again, quick, and then turned back to the road. “River loves the Outer Banks,” he called behind him to Finch. “It was the first place he ran away to back when he was fifteen.”
    â€œBut a sea god sounds more like Brodie.” I paused, and slipped my hands out of Finch’s grasp. “Either way, if a Redding boy is there, we’ll find him.”
    â€œYou can only run so far