Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
My pulse raced. “What?” I breathed, thinking I heard her wrong.
“Inertia,” she said more certainly, more forcefully. “I’m invoking inertia.”
Inertia: an object will continue at its current motion until some force causes a change in its speed or direction.
She was unearthing a childhood pact that we buried like a time capsule. If someone invoked the word inertia, then whatever road we were taking, we’d have to change course together. To change course was to do the opposite of what our parents wanted for us, and that felt like the ultimate rebellion.
We never wanted to be alone when contesting them.
It felt isolating and devastating to stand against the indomitable forces that were our mothers. So the pact was born to ensure it’d always be the two of us against the world. It was an unbreakable pact. Stronger than a pinky promise. Stronger than a blood oath.
It’s a pact reserved solely for us: two daughters of con artists and best friends for life.
It was only the second time the word was ever invoked. The second time the pact rose to the surface.
The first time, I’d been the one to say the word. We were fourteen.
Hailey had been viciously bullied at our prep school. She had hoped to “tough it out” even though every school day ended in tears. I had wanted to drop out of the prep school, though it’d go against our moms’ wishes.
So I’d said, “Inertia.” After that, we’d never gone back. We’d changed course together.
Hailey summoning this word at the bus stop in Carlsbad swept me into the power of our friendship and the indestructible pact we wielded like a trump card.
I had used it once and she followed through, despite being afraid of the repercussions. Now, it was my turn to do the same.
I had to do it. There was no other thought in my mind then. I had to, and I would.
She opened her black leather handbag and pulled out a brochure. “I found this.”
She passed it to me. It started sogging between my fingers, but confusion began to fade as I gazed at the picturesque New England landscape.
Vacation in One of Connecticut’s Oldest & Most Vibrant Towns!
It looked beautiful and quaint. The kind of place you’d start a family and grow old. A place you’d plant roots.
Normal.
And I realized, it was her Mystic Pizza. The small town with only romantic troubles and college dreams. No lies.
No scams.
And she wasn’t asking me to take a weekend trip up the East Coast. I didn’t know how long she had carried this brochure or how much she’d thought about leaving until then. But maybe that night had lit a match, and after what happened in the beach house, her idea had detonated into a plan.
Starting over.
A chill raced across my skin.
Doing the normal thing. Was that even possible?
The wet brochure was crumbling between my fingers. “Our moms will hate us moving to Connecticut.” They’d been best friends since childhood.
Thick as thieves. Quite fucking literally. Only their lives were less than glamorous, unlike our cushy and glitzy upbringing—as they so often reminded us.
The rain began to let up when I glanced back at Hailey. “We’re grifters, in case you’ve forgotten.”
I like using that word because our moms hate it. They think “grifting” invokes a visual of tobacco-spitting hitchhikers. Though, we have hitchhiked before, and we try not to stay in one place for too long.
“Then we don’t tell them we’re going,” Hailey said. “We could stop running. Stop conning. We could build something for ourselves that lasts. Can you picture that?” She looked up like it was a constellation in the stars. Spelling out our real bright future.
Pain blossomed in my chest from the strange, muddled yearning. The idea of not running sounded nice. Not conning . . . I wasn’t so sure. While she stared up, I looked down at our sopping wet dresses, my discarded heels, and the dirt on the bottoms of our feet.
“It’s hard to imagine,” I whispered. “Sounds more like a dream.” A strange fantasy.
But seeing the desperation in Hailey’s eyes again—I really did want to give it to her.
“Then let’s live that dream. Let’s try.” She clutched my hand again. “Please, Phoebe.” Her round gray gaze pleaded. Begged. “I can’t do it alone.” A tremor shook her voice.
The pact surfaced in my heart again. “You won’t be alone, Hails,” I breathed.
When I was ten years old, Hailey told me to jump off a bridge into ice-cold water to save a drowning stray cat. She was too scared of heights, and I had rarely been scared of anything. I couldn’t say no to her then.
I definitely couldn’t say no now.
“I’ll try with you,” I cemented.
We hugged underneath the bus stop’s pergola, still sopping wet from the storm, and we let go before an old Ford truck rode up to us.