"Maybe you should ask my mom to take her to a doctor," Axel suggests.
"She's already been," I say. "Twice."
"No. This kind of doctor." He points to his head.
I give him a look.
He gives me one back. "Trust me, I watched a movie on this before."
"But what if it doesn't work?" I ask. "What if it doesn't get better? She doesn't want to do anything." I turn back to show him, but Krys is nowhere to be found. Where'd she go? I look around, panicked. What if she's gone? Why isn't she where I left her?
My eyes land on her figure a little distance away from the bench. She's standing by Axel's new friend, the wolf's kid who's now-ironically-in his wolf form. He's digging a hole in the snow for a reason that escapes me. Other people are staring. Krys is staring too, head tilted. When he seems proud of his work, he steps back and lets her see what he's done.
He's created a little area where the snow's been pushed away. You can see straight down into the hardened dirt, the brown soil softened by his digging.
She reaches down and takes a clump of it into her hand. She looks at it like she never wants to let it go. Then she hugs him.
Wait... what?
I run after him, chasing him away from my imprint. What the heck does he think he's doing? When I first hear the nickname she'll eventually come up with for him, I nearly lose it.
It took a long time for Krys to get used to this town. An even longer time for us to actually call each other best friends, and then, on my part, to want more than that. But even now when I think back to that time, I realize how much we've both changed. I'm not the same girl who met her that day all those years ago, and neither is she.
But that doesn't mean everything has changed. There are still days when she needs Mr. Huggles to feel safe, or can't fall asleep unless she's holding Kaiden, but I'm happy to say that on those days she wants me sleeping beside her too (under the mass of her stuffed animals).
"What's wrong?" she asks me from across the room. We're currently getting ready to go to bed early. If we don't, she'll be cranky when we have to go watch Mia.
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