The Truth Against the World by Sarah Jamila Stevenson Page A

Rae’s reflection, sitting subdued on the rumpled bedclothes.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re leaving.” Rae ran a hand through her short, dyed-coppery hair. “You have to email me as soon as you get there. Or I’ll worry you were eaten by wolves.”
    â€œI’m pretty sure there aren’t wolves in Wales.” I laughed a little, but at the same time I felt like crying. My face in the mirror looked pinched and pale. “I’ll write to you as soon as I can. The main farmhouse has wi-fi but our cottage doesn’t.”
    â€œWhat’ll I do without you?” Rae wailed, flopping back onto the bed.
    I rolled my eyes. “You’ll be fine. Don’t you have that leadership program for student government?” I asked pointedly. “You’ll have Bethany.” And you could have been hanging out with me more this whole time anyway . But I didn’t say that.
    â€œWe’ve never spent a summer apart,” she said, her voice still sad. “Can you believe it? We even went to that horrible camp together back in fifth grade, the one where I got eaten alive by mosquitoes and you fell into the river with your shoes on.”
    I relented, finally. “My purple Converse sneakers. I was so mad I yanked Derek Atkinson into the water after me.” Now I was crying, and smiling at the same time. I shoved aside a pile of sweaters and sat down next to Rae on the bed. She leaned her head on my shoulder.
    â€œYou know, if you end up marrying that Gareth guy, you have to invite me to the wedding.” That surprised me into laughing again. “Or you guys can just sneak off and do it behind a bush, but you have to tell me everything . ”
    â€œGod! My parents are scared he’s a predator, while you, on the other hand, are the actual perv.” I shoved her back onto the bed. “Give me some credit. Anyway, at this rate I might never get to meet him.” I hated to even think about that possibility.
    â€œYou have to, Wyn.” Rae was serious now. “You’re going to be alone there. You need a friend. It’ll make it feel more like home.”
    Home. Wales would be home for the next month at least. Maybe for the whole summer. I swallowed back a lump in my throat.
    â€œRae, can you hand me that duffel bag?” I sniffled a little and started stuffing a change of clothes into it.
    â€œHey,” Rae said after a few silent minutes of me packing. “You’ll have to learn to drive in opposite land.”
    â€œUm, no.” I zipped up the green duffel. “I’ll take driver’s ed this fall instead.” I tried to sound like it didn’t matter, but I still felt an emptiness in my chest. I’d be missing so much.
    A few months was starting to seem like forever.

    Alone in my darkening bedroom, I pulled my bulletin board off the wall and started unpinning photos: me and Rae as kids, playing on China Beach with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background; me as a two-year-old with my parents at Christmas, Mom with feathery 1980s hair.
    A photo Gareth had sent me: the desolate church by the sea, the one that was the same as the scene in my dreams. Just looking at it made me shiver.
    And my favorite, an old black-and-white photo of Gee Gee when she’d first moved to the United States: long dark hair swept up into an old-fashioned-looking knot, the expression on her round face somber, almost sad. In the picture, she was wearing a pale, 1950s-style dress and fingering an oval silver locket that hung around her neck. I remembered being disappointed, as a child, when she told me she’d lost that locket.
    Last but not least, I pulled off a strip of photo-booth pictures of me and Rae. My throat tightened again, and I shoved all the pictures into the back of my new Welsh dictionary. Before Rae had left, I’d hugged her for what seemed like the longest time. Now she was gone, and I already felt like something was