The Next To Last Mistake Read online

  Title Page

  Durham, NC

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 Amalie Jahn

  The Next to Last Mistake

  Amalie Jahn

  lightmessages.com/amalie-jahn

  [email protected]

  Published 2019, by Light Messages

  www.lightmessages.com

  Durham, NC 27713 USA

  SAN: 920-9298

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61153-264-7

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-61153-263-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960481

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without the prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Infamous

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A Note to Readers from Amalie Jahn

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  If You Liked This Book You Might Also Like

  Dedication

  To Johnisha, Susie, and Holly.

  I’m forever grateful for our friendship.

  Infamous

  Monday, February 18

  I rip a poster off the wall without looking at what’s on it and throw it into the pile on the floor. I continue down the science hall past the next bank of lockers and reach for another. This time, however, I accidentally catch a glimpse of my own face printed on the sheet and it stops me dead. There’s something so shocking about the photo I simply cannot force myself to look away.

  There was a time I might have been embarrassed by the line of sweat I see beading at my brow or how disheveled I look with my bra strap slipping off my shoulder from beneath my shirt, but that’s not what draws my attention now. What surprises me instead is the look of sheer joy on my face. The girl in the photo is happy. Enjoying life. Living in the moment. The girl in the picture has momentarily forgotten all the worry and heartache associated with moving to this new place. She’s plain old Tess from Iowa having a good time.

  Knowing what’s written beneath the photo, I don’t want to let my eyes drop, but I can’t help it. I can’t ignore the bold script scrawled across the bottom of the page declaring TESS GOODWIN IS A SLUT. My heart races and bile rises in my throat, but I swallow it down because I can not—I will not—risk showing how this stupid prank has upset me.

  After several deep breaths, the anger and sadness wane, and I’m able to toss the sheet onto the floor with the others. Before moving on, however, I notice a piece of tape still clinging to the wall where the poster hung. I need to peel it off because I can’t leave any trace of viciousness behind. I pick at the adhesive, slipping my fingernail under the sticky edge, but instead of pulling off cleanly, it only rips in half. Frustrated by everything that’s come to pass, I squeeze my eyelids closed to prevent the tears from spilling over, but the persistent voice in the back of my head won’t shut up.

  You don’t belong here, Tess, it says. And you were stupid to think you would ever fit in.

  chapter 1

  Iowa

  Thursday, November 8

  My best friend Zander is buried in his phone, playing Clash of Kingdoms in the passenger’s seat beside me on our way to school. Normally I’d be annoyed by his disinterest, since there’s nothing I hate more than feeling like his chauffeur. But this morning, his preoccupation with securing a new realm is a relief, leaving him oblivious to both my distracted driving and my somber mood.

  As we sputter into the East Chester High School student parking lot in my ancient Volkswagen Jetta, Lacey Pemberton darts out from behind a parked car to where her boyfriend is leaning against the bed of his pickup. I slam on my breaks to avoid hitting her, and Zander finally looks up from his game.

  “If any part of you wanted to take her out, that woulda been your chance,” he says, clicking off his phone as I pull into an empty parking spot at the far end of the lot. “No one woulda blamed you. She clearly wasn’t watching for oncoming traffic.”

  Although it’s sweet of him to express his continued solidarity where Lacey is concerned, retribution for her long-standing aggression toward us is the last thing on my mind. Yesterday, I might have joined him in one of our exhaustive analyses of her tyrannical hold over the student body. But today? Today the foundation of my life is crumbling beneath me. Her cruelty is no longer relevant.

  “I mean, seriously, wasn’t it her student council who petitioned to have our fancy new crosswalk installed last year? And now she’s not even using it? So much for all those ‘Safety First’ buttons she made everyone wear.”

  I climb out of the car and slip both arms into my backpack straps. It took extreme willpower not to break down to him on the way to school about the bombshell Dad dropped on me after breakfast this morning. Zander and I share absolutely everything and to keep this secret from him, if only for an hour, feels something like betrayal. But as I stretch my canvas coat closed across my chest and trudge through the parking lot toward the side entrance of the school, I lack the strength to make my announcement more than once. He’ll have to hear my news along with everyone else.

  “See how easy it is to glance both ways before you cross?” He makes a big show of turning his head to the left and the right before stepping onto the street. “It takes two seconds and you don’t have to worry about accidentally getting run over.”

  Cornflakes churn in my stomach, sloshing around undigested, as I stew about my morning, which started normally enough before taking an unexpected turn. Everything was fine until after breakfast when, instead of heading out to the barn for our typical morning chores, my sister Ashley and I were waylaid by Dad at the kitchen table where he blindsided us with his big news. Now, I can barely keep my knees from buckling as I brace myself against the cab of a classmate’s beater pickup, recalling his plan. I’d hoped the initial shock would be worn off by the time we got to school, but the realization keeps hitting me in waves, and I’m forced to slow my pace across the parking lot to steady my breathing.

  Zander waits for me by the entrance after noticing I’ve fallen behind, and I can tell by the suspicious look on his face he’s finally realized something’s up. “You’re not gonna say anything about almost running over Lacey? Really? Come on, Tess, this is the part where you say, ‘Accidents are painful. Safety is gainful.’” He laughs aloud. “Remember those signs Lacey hung all over last year?”

  He holds the door open, and I manage a weak smile. “I remember,” I say stepping into the building.

  His eyes narrow as if he’s about to ask what’s wrong, but b
efore he can inquire, our friend Pete careens through the door behind us, throwing himself onto Zander’s back. “Chess club in the house!” he hollers. “You two headed to the library?”

  It’s a rhetorical question because he knows we are. Along with a handful of other chess club members, the three of us have been meeting in the partitioned corner of the library we call the War Room every morning before first bell since freshman year. Back then, we established the club to help pad our college applications with a non-agricultural-related endeavor. Zander always teases that if there’s a spot on Harvard’s application for proficiency in artificial cow insemination, he’ll be a shoo-in, but we both doubt there is.

  Getting into college is the least of my worries this morning, though.

  By the time we get to the War Room, our friends Claire and Bruster are already embroiled in a game they’ve been playing since late-September, and Mike is scribbling furiously onto a sheet of notebook paper. He looks up as Zander collapses into the seat beside him, but instead of joining them as I normally do, I linger just inside the door.

  “I swear to God if I have to look at one more tangent or cosine, I might end it all right here in the library. Because at this point I don’t care how tall the stupid tree is. I’d actually love if it fell on my head and put me out of my misery.”

  “Don’t you have some fancy calculator for that trigonometry crap?” Zander asks. He pulls his morning pop from his backpack, and I relish the familiar fizzing sound as he cracks it open. “Breakfast of champions,” he says to me.

  “Yeah,” Bruster chimes in without taking his eyes off the chess board, “say that a little louder with all the dairy farmers in the room.”

  “If milk were caffeinated, I’d make the switch. Until then, I’ll start my day with a pop.”

  Zander’s pop of choice is Cedar Falls Cola, which makes me crazy because he will drive miles out of his way to find some instead of drinking a readily-available Coke like everyone else. He likes flapjacks but not waffles. His left foot is two sizes bigger than his right. And he cries at the movie Rudy every time he sees it. It’s taken me a lifetime to learn everything there is to know about Zander. The thought of ever having to cultivate new friendships seriously makes me want to puke.

  I venture a nervous glance at the wall clock over their heads from my post along the periphery of the room. Only fourteen minutes remain until homeroom bell, and several members of the group have yet to make an appearance. I’m considering holding off on my announcement until lunch when Liam, Tina, and Will arrive.

  “What’s up?” Will says, chucking his backpack onto the floor. He and Zander shake hands in this ridiculous way they assume makes them appear hip but only accentuates how incredibly middle-American they are. I’ve encouraged them not to do it in public on several occasions to no avail.

  “My dad said something about you guys getting a new cultivator,” Zander says to him.

  Will pulls their game board from the shelf and sets it gently on the table between them, careful not to disturb any pieces. “Yeah. Sorta. It’s a used New Holland we’re co-opting with the Millers and the Burns. It’s way better than the Massey we’ve been using, though, so hopefully things’ll go more smoothly this spring than they did last year.”

  The guys settle into their game, talking about their dads and the machinery and the beautiful routineness that embodies what it means to grow up on a farm. The milking, feeding, and mucking, ever-present regardless of the season, pressing us forward through the steady monotony of our chore-filled days. The cycle of life. The reaping. The sowing. Births. Deaths. The unexpected cold snap or drought or locust invasion. All these things I can handle. All these things are as much of who I am as who we all are.

  But who will I be without my farm, my herd, and everybody I already know?

  Just the thought of it causes me to unwittingly blurt out, “I’m moving. To North Carolina. Right after Christmas.”

  Everyone stops what they’re doing as if I’ve pushed pause on the soundtrack of our morning. Slowly, their faces distort into looks of concern. Brows furrow. Lips purse.

  “You’re doing what now?” Bruster asks.

  I explain again, this time with slightly more detail, trying desperately to talk around the lump that’s taken up residence in my throat. “My dad re-enlisted in the Army. It’s like some…” I pause, searching for a neutral explanation which doesn’t express the actual shock and horror I’m experiencing. “I think he might be having some midlife crisis or something. Because the farm can’t support our family financially anymore. And I don’t know, some civic duty thing because of the war in Syria.”

  I force myself to go on, pressing the heels of my hands into my temples and averting my gaze since I can no longer be trusted to look at any of them directly without bursting into tears. Zander, of course, is the worst. He’s gaping at me like I’ve slaughtered his prize pig.

  “He already has his orders, and he’s been assigned to Fort Bragg in Fayetteville,” I say to the floor. “We’re selling the farm. We’re leaving right after Christmas.”

  No one speaks. There’s only my heartbeat pulsing inside my head and my jagged breathing.

  In one swift motion, Zander stands. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s coming at me fast. Before I can react, he’s got me in an embrace which can only be described as a cross between a headlock and a vice grip, and he’s squeezing me. Hard. I’m about to pass out from lack of oxygen when he releases his hold to punch me in the shoulder.

  He looks crushed. Worse than the day I told the class he peed his pants in second grade. “That’s for not telling me sooner,” he says.

  It was cruel not to have divulged my secret to him in private on the way to school. In hindsight, it’s what I should’ve done. But I’d been selfish and cowardly, not wanting to rehash the details of my departure half-a-dozen times. “Sorry,” I manage, letting myself fall into his arms for the second time. “The whole thing is so…”

  I want to say ‘stupid’ but stop myself. Because is it stupid? Is it stupid my dad wants to provide what he hopes will be a better life for me and Ashley? And is choosing to serve his country in the process such a bad thing?

  “Unfortunate,” is the word I land on.

  The others are watching us now, afraid to speak. Afraid of disturbing what should have been our private moment. Maybe that’s the real reason I didn’t tell him alone in the car, the second he slid into the passenger’s seat. Maybe it’s because I was too afraid we’d get stuck, unable to keep going on with our day unless there was an audience encouraging us along.

  I wonder how we look to them now, with my head tucked into Zander’s chest and his arms clutched tightly around my shoulders. Does it look like we’re holding onto each other as though our lives depend on it? Because that’s exactly how it feels to me.

  “We should have a party,” Claire offers, finally breaking the silence. “A farewell send-off over Christmas break.”

  I smile at her, grateful for the gesture, but it’s going to take way more than a party to ease me gracefully out of Iowa.

  chapter 2

  Sunshine

  Thursday, November 8

  Life on a farm is perpetual motion. There are no vacations. You can’t let something go just a little while longer because shirking your responsibilities can ultimately threaten the well-being of the herd. This is why, instead of moping in my room the way Ashley does after school, I pull on my boots and thermals and head out to the barn.

  As with any farm, late fall and winter are the slowest seasons, but caring for a herd of fifty cattle still requires considerable daily labor, regardless of the date on the calendar. As a little girl, I was relegated to simple tasks like mucking stalls and filling troughs, but these days I’m responsible for more complicated tasks like calibrating the milking equipment, rotating the cows in and out of the barn, and caring for the herd’s general health.

  The familiar smell of grain and manure greet me at the barn’s
entrance, along with the steady whir of the milking machine. Most of the herd have already been through the milking parlor for the second time today and are now back in the pasture, but the last ten remain standing, idly chewing their cud while the machines extract their milk. I walk over to the closest cow, an eight-year-old Holstein with a splotch across her back that Ashley swears resembles the state of Florida.

  “Hey, Sunshine,” I say, reaching out to rub behind her ears. It’s hard not to well up, knowing our days together are numbered, despite our long history.

  *

  When I was nine-years-old, my dad was the one who dealt with illness and injury, bovine or otherwise. Knowing this, I didn’t question the concern in his voice the morning he hollered through the screen door for the rest of us to get dressed and meet him in the barn as quickly as we could. Groggy and still rubbing sleep from my eyes, I ran into the barn, following his voice to the partitioned stalls where cows are kept if they can’t stay with the rest of the herd for some reason. Mom and I were surprised to discover, that on this particular occasion, one of the heifers had been separated because she was having difficulty delivering her calf on her own. And although I’d witnessed dozens of calves being born over the years, this was to be the first time I would assist in the delivery.

  The pregnant cow, one of the herd’s youngest, was stomping her hooves and braying mournfully, clearly in distress.

  “The calf is breech,” Dad explained as he stood by the heifer’s side, patting her neck as if she were the family dog. “I didn’t realize until this morning she’d gone into labor overnight, and now I’m afraid she’s been trying to give birth for too long.” His eyes were frantic, and I felt the weight of his accountability. “I tried correcting the calf’s position, but my hands are too big. I can’t get a good grip on the blasted thing.” He turned to me then, pleading. “I need you to try and turn the calf so the front feet come out first, or there’s a chance we’ll lose them both.”