It Ends with Us

I shook my head and looked back out the window. I thought he might get up and
find another seat at that point, since I said I didn’t tell anyone, but he didn’t. The
bus made a few stops, and the fact that he was still sitting by me gave me a little
courage, so I made my voice a whisper. “Why don’t you live at home with your
parents?”
He stared at me for a few seconds, like he was trying to decide if he wanted to
trust me or not. Then he said, “Because they don’t want me to.”
That’s when he got up. I thought I’d made him mad, but then I realized he got
up because we were at our stop. I grabbed my stuff and followed him off the bus. He
didn’t try to hide where he was heading today like he usually does. Normally, he
walks down the street and goes around the block so I don’t see him cut through my
backyard. But today he started to walk toward my yard with me.
When we got to where I would normally turn to go inside and he would keep
walking, we both stopped. He kicked at the dirt with his foot and looked behind me
at my house.
“What time do your parents get home?”
“Around five,” I said. It was 3:45.
He nodded and looked like he was about to say something else, but he didn’t. He
just nodded again and started walking toward that house with no food or electricity
or water.
Now, Ellen, I know what I did next was stupid, so you don’t have to tell me. I
called out his name, and when he stopped and turned around I said, “If you hurry,
you can take a shower before they get home.”
My heart was beating so fast, because I knew how much trouble I could get into if
my parents came home and found a homeless guy in our shower. I’d probably very
well die. But I just couldn’t watch him walk back to his house without offering him
something.
He looked down at the ground again, and I felt his embarrassment in my own
stomach. He didn’t even nod. He just followed me inside my house and never said a
word.
The whole time he was in the shower, I was panicking. I kept looking out the
window and checking for either of my parents’ cars, even though I knew it would be
a good hour before they got home. I was nervous one of the neighbors might have
seen him come inside, but they didn’t really know me well enough to think having a
visitor would be abnormal.

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I had given Atlas a change of clothes, and knew he not only needed to be out of
the house when my parents got home, but he needed to be far away from our house.
I’m sure my father would recognize his own clothes on some random teenager in the
neighborhood.
In between looking out the window and checking the clock, I was filling up one of
my old backpacks with stuff. Food that didn’t need refrigerating, a couple of my
father’s T-shirts, a pair of jeans that were probably going to be two sizes too big for
him, and a change of socks.
I was zipping up the backpack when he emerged from the hallway.
I was right. Even wet, I could tell his hair was lighter than it looked earlier. It
made his eyes look even bluer.
He must have shaved while he was in there because he looked younger than he
did before he got in the shower. I swallowed and looked back down at the backpack,
because I was shocked at how different he looked. I was scared he might see my
thoughts written across my face.
I looked out the window one more time and handed him the backpack. “You
might want to go out the back door so no one sees you.”
He took the backpack from me and stared at my face for a minute. “What’s your
name?” he said as he slung the pack over his shoulder.
“Lily.”
He smiled. It was the first time he’d smiled at me and I had an awful, shallow
thought in that moment. I wondered how someone with such a great smile could
have such shitty parents. I immediately hated myself for thinking it, because of
course parents should love their kids no matter how cute or ugly or skinny or fat or
smart or stupid they are. But sometimes you can’t control where your mind goes. You
just have to train it not to go there anymore.
He held out his hand and said, “I’m Atlas.”
“I know,” I said, without shaking his hand. I don’t know why I didn’t shake his
hand. It wasn’t because I was scared to touch him. I mean, I was scared to touch
him. But not because I thought I was better than him. He just made me so nervous.
He put his hand down and nodded once, then said, “I guess I better go.”
I stepped aside so he could walk around me. He pointed past the kitchen, silently
asking if that was the way to the back door. I nodded and walked behind him as he
made his way down the hall. When he reached the back door, I saw him pause for a
second when he saw my bedroom.
I was suddenly embarrassed that he was seeing my bedroom. No one ever sees my
bedroom, so I’ve never felt the need to give it a more mature look. I still have the

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same pink bedspread and curtains I’ve had since I was twelve. For the first time ever
I felt like ripping down my poster of Adam Brody.
Atlas didn’t seem to care how my room was decorated. He looked straight at my
window—the one that looks out over the backyard—then he glanced back at me.
Right before he walked out the back door he said, “Thank you for not being
disparaging, Lily.”
And then he was gone.
Of course I’ve heard the term
disparaging 
before, but it was weird hearing a
teenage guy use it. What’s even weirder is how everything about Atlas seems so
contradictory. How does a guy who is obviously humble, well-mannered, and uses
words like
disparaging 
end up homeless? How does any teenager end up homeless?
I need to find out, Ellen.
I’m going to find out what happened to him. You just wait and see.
—Lily
• • •
I’m about to open another entry when my phone rings. I crawl across the
couch for it and I’m not the least bit surprised to see it’s my mother again.
Now that my father has passed and she’s alone, she’ll probably call me
twice as much as she did before.
“Hello?”
“What do you think about my moving to Boston?” she blurts out.
I grab the throw pillow next to me and shove my face into it, muffling a
scream. “Um. 
Wow
,” I say. “Really?”
She’s quiet, and then, “It was just a thought. We can discuss it
tomorrow. I’m almost to my meeting.”
“Okay. Bye.”
And just like that, I want to move out of Massachusetts. 
She can’t move
here.
She doesn’t know anyone here. She’d expect me to entertain her
every day. I love my mother, don’t get me wrong, but I moved to Boston to
be on my own, and having her in the same city would make me feel less
independent.
My father was diagnosed with cancer three years ago while I was still in
college. If Ryle Kincaid were here right now, I’d tell him the naked truth
that I was a little bit relieved when my father became too ill to physically
hurt my mother. It completely changed the dynamic of their relationship

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and I no longer felt obligated to stay in Plethora to make sure she was
okay.
Now that my father is gone and I never have to worry about my mother
again, I was looking forward to spreading my wings, so to speak.
But now she’s moving to Boston?
It feels like my wings were just clipped.
Where is a marine-grade polymer chair when I need one?!
I’m seriously stressing out and I have no idea what I’d do if my mother
moves to Boston. I don’t have a garden, or a yard, or a patio, or weeds.
I have to find another outlet.
I decide to clean. I place all of my old shoeboxes full of journals and
notes in my bedroom closet. Then I organize my entire closet. My jewelry,
my shoes, my clothes . . .
She cannot move to Boston.

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