A/N: I know it's late. Sorry about that. I also think it's a little weird... maybe too weird, especially at the end. Please- constructive criticism on the last part? Please?

The first day of my alone time is spent, well, alone. So is the second day. And the third. And the fourth.

The fifth day of my alone time is spent in silence. Clay off at work, Chelsea at the supermarket with Chris. I wandered around the house for nearly half an hour before I found two books Clay left for me, along with a little note.

Spence-

Ashley called me on the phone last night and told me what happened between you two. We're both really worried about you, and we know that you're feeling alone right now. So I found these books hidden in my library somewhere, and thought they were perfect for how you're feeling. Read them. And then maybe you won't feel so alone.

Love, Clay

I take a look at the two books left on table, stacked up neatly with the little yellow Post-It on top. The Bell Jar and Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit. Two vaguely famous novels that I've heard about in passing. I knowThe Bell Jar is about a suicidal woman who suffers from some sort of mental disorder. Brilliant. Clay thinks I'm about to kill myself. Which I'm not. I know that my behavior in the past few days may have definitely caused people to think I'm thinking of ending it all, but it's never crossed my mind. Well, I will admit that it's crossed my mind, but never for more than a fleeting second. Maybe he thinks I need to see what can happen if I let this take over my life. But it's too late for that. It already has.

I decide to put off the confusing reactions set off by The Bell Jar and continue on to Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit. I remember hearing about it briefly in my teenage years. A boy who had just moved here from New York in my English class in sophomore year had requested we read it. But the teacher had told him we didn't read books like that here. I thought is was something like A Clockwork Orange; filled with torture and rape and that kind of stuff. Turns out, though, I learn as I skim the back cover, it's basically the story of my life. A daughter of a terribly religious family turns out to be gay. Oh, sure, bits and pieces of it are different, but the basic outline is the same. I read the entire book in about two hours, feeling no more satisfied than I did before reading. I still feel restless, hurt, confused. Alone. And I know that now I need Ashley more than ever, but I know she won't take me back. Not yet.

The emptiness of the house makes me feel like a grown-up, returning to a now abandoned childhood home. I wander around aimlessly, taking in all of the things in Clay's house, trying to evoke some sort of feeling in me.

And while I'm waiting for this revelation to happen, the phone rings. I hesitate, not knowing who would be calling Clay and Chelsea in the middle of the day. I assume that most of their friends would be at work, so I figure that it must be some sort of emergency.

I pick up the phone, but the moment I hear the voice on the other end, I wish I hadn't.

"Clay!" an angry, threateningly familiar female voice shouted from the other end. "Where do you get off not telling me your sister's back in-"

"Mom?" I question fearfully with more than a little crack in my voice.

"What?" She comes over as shocked. "You're not Clay. Definitely not Glen, either. Who the-" She catches herself and breathes in a deep sigh. "Spencer."

No words are needed to confirm this. None at all. We both know who I am now, no use in hiding it. But I can feel it, inside of me, that part of me that's still trying ridiculously hard to hide.

"The nerve! You just come back here to this town, after you ripped us apart, Spencer! Do you know how much we've gone through just so wedon't turn into the town laughingstocks? Every year damn year at that damn barbecue some damn idiot has to bring the whole damn thing up! How do you think your father and your brother and his wife! His wife, Spencer! Do you know what you did to her?"

"Yeah," I answer weakly. "I gave her more of a relationship, more love than Glen ever will."

Mom doesn't respond. Can't respond. Because we're both stunned I said that; stunned I would even let her believe, even think, that it was consensual. Because I've never told her that. All these years, and I barely once tried to tell her Elle loved me back. At that point, the only thing I cared about was not being shipped off to one of those ex-gay camps I'd read so much about online. And the best way, I decided, for that not to happen was for me to pretend like none of this happened. That's where the pretending started. And it's ending, now. But I get the feeling that this is just the beginning of the end.

"You disgust me." Her voice drags through the receiver, like she's trying to maximize the length of the word just so that she can make it cut that much deeper. "Do you know that? Do you know how much I hate this lifestyle you've chosen?"

I cry. Light sobs, but crying nonetheless. I want to be strong. I want to tell her I don't care. But I can't. Because I do care; because she's still my mother.

And I still want her to love me.

"Mom. Just... don't. I- why can't you just be the mom who used to love me, unconditionally?" My whole life, it feels like, hinges on this question. This question that I already know the answer to.

"Because you aren't the daughter you used to be," she tells me, and for the first time, I detect a hint of weakness in her voice. "I want to be that mom, Spencer, but you're not letting me, dammit! You've gone out with these, these harlots just to upset me! There's no other reason!"

I can tell that this conversation won't last much longer, on account of me being too teary to talk. "Mom, you're wrong on so many levels. First, Ashley is not a harlot."

"Who is Ashley?"

A deep breath on my part. "My girlfriend."

A whispered curse word on her part.

"Second, she's the first girl I've dated since Elle. Everything you told me, everything you told me to be, came out in college and I tried dating boys." Tears splatter patterns on my jean skirt. "Just to make you happy. Because I wanted you to love me more than anything. I tried, Mom. For you. For Dad. For Glen. But it never worked. Why? Because I still like girls, and I think I'm falling hard for Ashley. Harder than I could ever fall for any boy."

She scoffs at this. "Spencer, you're just kidding yourself. Get out of this rebellious phase, and come back to who you are! Because I know you are not a dirty, slutty lesbian!"

"But Mom," I choke out, trying with all my willpower not to hang up the phone. I have to see this through. I just have to. "Ashley is my everything. She has been for three years. And just about a month ago, we became what we are now! Two women who care about each deep enough to form a romantic relationship! Why, Mom? Why can't you get it? She brought me back here."

"She brought you back?" I can almost hear the look on my mother's face; the one that makes her look like her eyes are daggers and her mouth is more open than the mouth of a cave. "Get. Away. From. Her. Now."

"What?"

"She brought you back, when you're still diseased? When you haven't been cured? She's the devil, Spencer. She will cause your downfall. And I can promise you I won't be there to pick up the pieces."

I hang the phone up without a good-bye. I sink to the floor, my head wrapped in my arms, resting on my knees, my whole being hanging on something that I tried to get rid of. Ashley. It all comes back to her. Every little thing in my life that's been perfect; the only perfect bits of life have been spent with her. And I need her back.

But she doesn't want me back, I know. Me and stupid wallowing in my stupid self-pity. And now, as tears flow like rapids from my eyes, as my whole body shakes with fear and anger, as my heart trembles under the sheer weight of my predicament, I'm alone. Alone once again, and I'm starting to think maybe I always will be. Because I clearly was never meant to let anyone in. Never meant to let them have any more than half of me. But a small part of my brain tells me that's not true; Elle had every part of me, and then she gave it up; released it into thin air. And I can't find it.

There are two paths here, two paths to take. One of them involves Ashley; full of all the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs, the extremes of life. The other involves withdrawing; being content to be alone. Never being truly happy, but never feeling pain.

I can't decide which one I want. They're both appealing I think with my head down on my knees.

And then I look up.

Maybe it's symbolic; maybe it's the phone that reminds me; maybe it's Ashley's words.

"Since you can't look down any longer, you have to look up and you can finally see just how far you've fallen."

But I see it. I see how far I've fallen in a mix of swirling colors above my head. I see Elle and our days together; I see the barbecue; I see the first day of college; I see me and Ashley running on the beach; I see Ashley kissing me. I see Ashley leaving me.

And by looking at that, I see how far up I have to climb. I start by grabbing the corner of the desk and standing. I take in the empty house, feeling the small victory inside of me.

It's a start.

I continue with a ride. I head out to Clay's garage where my high school bicycle is still kept. Luckily, I haven't grown so much since then and it still fits. So I go.

The wind whips in my hair as I fly by the world, so distorted by my speed. I don't what prompted me to take this trip, but it's exhilarating.

I think on the state of my life as I zoom down the main streets, the alleyways, and those in between. Life with this burden is a terrible existence (if it could really be called that), but now that I've leafed through it and gotten to the root of it, can I be sure that I can leave it in the past forever?

The answer is very simple: only if I stay in this town.

I think on the state of my life as I zoom down the main streets, the alleyways, and those in between. Life at the bottom is not a pleasant place, but now that I recognize where I am, can I be sure that I can get out of it?

The answer is very simple: only if Ashley is on my side.

I think on the state of my family as I zoom down the main streets, the alleyways, and those in between. Life for them has been incredibly simple for the past four years since I left, but now that I've come back and still am who I was, can I be sure that they're life will stay that easy?

The answer is very simple: only if I leave this town.

I think on the state of my relationship with Ashley as I zoom down the main streets, the alleyways, and those in between. Life without her has become so ridiculously hard, but now that I've hit the bottom, can I be sure that she will come back?

The answer is very simple: only if I let her.

These paradoxical thoughts race through my mind like little rockets, bravely searching into the relatively unknown with theoretical ideas of what they might find, but no real proof of it. I'm so confused, so lost. So lost that I inadvertently take myself to the cemetery. I slide to a stop in the gravel, the noise crunching beneath my tires.

The wrought iron gates bearing the name "Justin's Garden Cemetery" have been left open. They're always open. On Sundays, people come here after church to put flowers on graves. When I was little, we would come here every Sunday and leave flowers on my grandmother's grave. I'd never even known her; Glen and Clay hadn't either. I don't even think Mom had met her more than three or four times.

But every Sunday we would come here and put flowers there. Petunias. Always petunias. I'd thought they were the most dreadfully ugly things in the world, but I never said anything, because Dad seemed to like them. He'd stand there for at least a half an hour while Mom took the three of us over to the empty field. She'd spread out a blanket and tell us a fairy tale while we wiggled and squealed with delight.

We stopped going to the cemetery when I was nine.

Mom never said exactly why, and Dad never ever talked about it, even when we were going; one day we were coming home from church and we drove right past the cemetery. No one said anything. Until two months later when Glen, Clay, and I asked Mom why we stopped, and why we had even gone in the first place.

"Your dad had some troubles with his mom. He's fixed them now," was all she said. I remember wondering how going to a grave of a dead person could help someone fix their problems. Now, I understand.

I ride my bike up the path through the cemetery. It used to be more gravel, but now it's cement. It's all changed since I last came here. Elle and I's tree droops in the sunlight, its branches gnarled and crumbling. I debate briefly about whether or not I should visit Grandmother's grave, but I can't find a point in doing so.

I turn around and return to town. I get onto Main Street, and it's like all of my childhood memories come back in full force. I see the restaurant where we'd always go on Saturdays in the summer for ice cream. It can't really be called a restaurant; more of a shack. Sam's was its name back then, but now it's boarded up and the blue-and-white striped paint is chipping into little piles on the ground.

I remember the ice cream there was better than any I'd ever tasted, and better than anything I've since tasted. We would ride our bikes down there at about noon every Saturday from May until September, sometimes even on Fridays when Dad came home early from work. I would always get the cotton candy flavor in a cup with tiny cows all over it. Sam would hand it to me with a wink and a smile and I'd feel like the luckiest little girl in the world. There used to be a sand box next to the shack, with little benches painted by the neighborhood kids. I helped paint one of them with Clay, Glen, Luke, and Elle.

I jump off my bike, leaving it down in front of the building. After quick inspection around back, I find the benches still there, piled up in a wobbly stack. Ours is on the top.

It really shouldn't be considered a painting, our bench. More like a mural, because all of our handprints are on there, repeated millions of times over or so it seems. I can remember that afternoon in my mind, when Sam asked us to paint this bench. I hogged all the purple, Luke monopolized the baby blue, Clay held onto all the green, Glen stole the black, and Elle snatched the yellow. None of us wanted to give up our colors, and you couldn't really paint with only one color, so we decided to make a bunch of handprints.

I put my hand on the purple one I'd made over ten years ago. Predictably, it doesn't fit at all, but some part of me hopes that if I just keeping sticking it on the other one, I'll find one it does fit on.

So, finally, it hits me. What I'm missing. I'm missing my childhood. I'm angry at how ruined it is now, how broken. I can't look at it without looking at the future and it's become.

I've had my childhood; it's over and done. I've had the most perfect, idyllic childhood. It's my teenager years that are the problem. And that's how it needs to stay.

So I cry. I lean onto that bench and I cry, not even noticing the storm clouds moving overhead until they open down on me like my own tears. I wipe my tears from my face, but it soon becomes hard to distinguish them from the rain.

I look at this town and what it means to me. What it meant to me. I look at my life like a mystery waiting to be solved; the Ohio case has been solved. It's closed. I can't keep looking back at it or I won't be able to focus on the other open cases. Now it's time for me to move on to the next case, one that I hope will never be closed.

I tear down the rainy Main Street on my bike. I know I'm being reckless, but I have somewhere to go. Somewhere I need to be.

In about five minutes, I'm there. I hope I'm in the right place, because it's been awhile since he told me his address. I pound on the door and wait.

And she opens it. Ashley is there, and I feel everything I've done today just fades away. Because I know what I want. I want to be with her. I want to love her.

But she looks at me warily. "Spencer, I told you-"

I think I'm crying, but I can't tell because of the rain. "I know what you told me." In spite of myself, I smile. "I know what I want."

Her jaw drops. Literally. "Spencer..." She steps out of the door, into the rain, and tentatively touches my hair. "Are you sure?"

And I see the earnest look in her dark brown eyes, the breath held in as she waits for my answer, the tears barely forming on her face, the hand at her side nervously fidgeting. I feel like a girl in one of those movies, being swept off her feet and into the arms of the most unexpected person. But it's real. And I've finally figured out that so many people would die right now to have these kind of deep feelings for another person. "Yeah. I am."

She breathes out a long deep sigh of relief. "Good. Because I don't know if I could stand it if you weren't." And she kisses me passionately, right there, in the rain, in full view of anyone who wants to see.

It's the best kiss of my life.