Page 49 of The Fall Classic

It feels exciting, exhilarating, even. Like taking a deep breath on a crisp autumn day.

I’d be lying if I said she doesn’t represent something to me—like hope, connection, a future of my own—but she isn’t a symbol. Not only.

She’s so much more.

The rightness of that clicks into place in my chest, even as my anxiety peters out, at least for the moment.

Whoa.

I did it. I used the tools Dr. Chang has given me, and they worked.

Progress!

And maybe it’s the thrill of this progress that makes me take my cap off and look at it for a second. Powder blue and rust red, fitted perfectly in a way only people who wear a lot of baseball caps understand. I don’t want it to get grimy, so I never wear it during a game.

I only wear it to see Georgie.

I set it on top of the library.

She’ll see the hat before she sees the book. She’ll know someone left it on purpose—me. Hopefully she’ll even find Tuesdays with Morrie and read it and find the part I underlined so she can understand something about me without me having to lay my soul bare. Again.

I stand there for one final moment before turning back to my truck, my anxiety calming the rest of the way, probably because there’s nothing left for either of us to say.

As I drive out of the lot, I take one last glance in my rearview, at the hat sitting on top of the powder blue library in the predawn dark.

I turn at the light.

Fingertips. No palm.

Let it go.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Georgie

Inever dreamed I would willingly leave my apartment at four thirty in the morning, but now that I told Marlowe I could be at the Sugar Maple Farms’ workers’ lot when they arrive at five AM and back at the factory for the shift change, I am somehow willingly leaving my apartment at four thirty in the morning.

Honestly, I’m so delirious, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m actually dreaming about being awake. I stayed up late last night to work on a group project for class that the rest of my group isn’t working on. I never thought I’d dislike working with others, but I once was wrong and now I’m right.

R-i-g-h-t.

How is that pronounced “right?”

Weirds are so word.

Weirds?

I giggle to myself and at myself as I lock up and walk down the outside stairs that my grandparents added when they converted the house into the coffee shop. Somewhere nearby, I can hear a truck passing, and I marvel that anyone else is up at all at this hour. Poor sucker. I hope they’re more awake than I am.

The parking lot is dark except for the streetlamp on Sycamore, which throws a triangle of light across the asphalt, fading short of the northwest corner. With the truck backed up close to the back of the shop, I go through the motions of stocking it on autopilot.

When I’m done, I round to the front, about to climb in, when something catches my eye across the dark parking lot.

There’s something on top of the library.

I squint and stand in the dark, blinking. What is that lump?

I walk over. The streetlights cast enough light that as I get closer, I make out the shape of a bill and then colors—powder blue and rust red.