"Do you forgive your father for abandoning you? Do you want to seek him out? What about you?" His tone was cold and I flinched back from it. Kyland rolled toward me and squeezed his eyes shut briefly, putting his hand on my cheek.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't fair."

I took a deep breath. "No, it's a fair question. The difference is, I never knew my father. I think . . . I think I do forgive him. But to me, he'd be a stranger. Your mama, though, you loved her, and she loved you."

"I thought she did." Pain moved over his face. "But that's not even the worst part—do you want to hear the worst part?"

I nodded slowly.

"The worst part is that as hard as I try, as hurt as I am, I can't stop loving her. Even though I know she doesn't deserve it. She abandoned me and didn't look back, and I still love her. What kind of stupid fool am I?"

"You're not a fool," I said softly, pain making my voice scratchy.

I reached over and held him. There was nothing else I could do.

And as I held him, I thought about how strong and tenacious he was, moving forward, never stopping, never giving up, even though he had all the reason in the world to do just that. I thought about how intelligent he was, how caring, how selfless, how filled with love. "You're going to be just fine. You're so strong," I whispered. "In every way. You're as strong as a bull and twice as stubborn."

I smiled and I felt him smile, too. "You've kept that fire burning all this time, despite all you've lost. There's nothing stronger than that. Nothing."

We didn't get out of bed that day until the noontime sun was beaming through his window.

**********

When we went back to school two weeks later, I grieved the loss of being in his bed, but it simply wasn't practical. The pressure was on now to start the final semester off right—this was it. This was our last chance to do well enough to win that scholarship. Problem was, for me, suddenly that scholarship was the very thing that was going to take him away from me, or me away from him. It had been the one thing I'd focused on for almost four years, and suddenly, I didn't know how I felt about it. I didn't even know if I wanted it anymore. After all Kyland had been through and as strong as my feelings were for him, how could I hope to take his dream away even if it meant achieving my own? How could I?

Kyland had told me that whether he won it or not, he was going to leave Dennville. And so he had a plan either way. But could I really hope that he would have to walk out of here with not much more than the shirt on his back? Could I really hope that he would have to suffer even more hardship than he already had? Just that thought alone filled me with fear for him and an aching loneliness.

You worry about your own self, Tenleigh Falyn, I thought, admonishing myself. Lord knew no one else was. I wondered, though, if Kyland thought about that scholarship differently, too. If he did, he didn't share it with me. It seemed neither one of us wanted to discuss it.

I saw him in school and he grabbed my hand as we passed in the hallway, but we didn't have any classes together and a different lunch period, so we didn't spend much time together there.

But we studied together in the evenings, among other more pleasurable things, and one day in mid January when I finally got around to checking out a new book in the library, I noticed a small white piece of paper sticking out of the one I had returned several weeks before.

I pulled The Catcher in the Rye off the shelf.

Holden Caulfield: A whiny, unlikable narrator. Insults those he calls "phonies," but he's really just one himself. – KB

I laughed softly and scrawled out my own note.

Holden Caulfield: A boy who feels alienated from society, is struggling to understand his place in the world, and is looking for someone he can relate to. A story about loneliness. – TF

Always the optimist, Tenleigh Falyn, even when it comes to unlikable characters. – KB

I smiled at his note. I'd never thought about myself as an optimist, but maybe I was. And maybe we all saw books differently based on our own hearts.

In February, the top four students were announced, the students who were in the running for the Tyton Coal Scholarship. It was down to me, Kyland, and two other girls. I received my letter of admission from San Diego State University and I accepted. It seemed like a cruelty to accept something I may never get the chance to use, but if I won the scholarship, I had to have a school to apply it to. If I didn't win, I'd rescind my acceptance, as would the other two students. I didn't ask Kyland where he'd accepted. I didn't want to know.

All that winter and into early spring, we studied together, we kissed long and slow anywhere and everywhere, we hiked through the hills, and we showed each other the secret spots we loved deep in the Appalachian Mountains, where there was only beauty and only peace. We sat by streams and fished with Kyland's homemade fishing pole, my head on his lap, the sunshine warming our skin, the tall grass whispering in the breeze. We walked through meadows sprinkled with wildflowers and I collected them and put bouquets in old tin cans in my trailer and Kyland's house. We spent glorious nights exploring each other's bodies, learning every spot that brought pleasure. We read book after book, only discussing them through very short written notes that somehow gave a brief insight into the heart of the other.

I worked when I got the shifts. I struggled, I went hungry some nights, and I scraped together pennies to pay for mama's medicine.

And I fell in love.