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County Road B

They make it to the field without Hannah getting lost, not even once, and as far as Meg’s concerned that’s a success already. The girls can never decide who has the worse sense of direction, but tonight it’s a moot point. Everything’s moot in June when you’re seventeen.

Hannah parks, and the girls lie on their backs in the pickup bed, side by side. A million billion stars glint overhead. The points of light form Kim’s face, her mouth, the back of her head when she turns away in the school halls. It’s not working, Meg. I want to be with someone different.

How can the universe hold so many stars? It ought to mean something profound. It ought to matter. What good is beauty if it doesn’t make sense?

Years later, that’s what Meg remembers, her ragged frustration. The girl she loved is long gone, just a blurry back of a head in her memory, and Meg doesn’t know when she finally did it, finally got over her, how pain can slip away so quietly, out the back door where all the time goes when she’s not looking.

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