Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

Someone climbed the stairs behind me, and I recognized
the footfalls. Crane had this way of falling into his steps,
almost like skidding, on the hardwood.
“What’s the noise outside?” I asked over my shoulder.
I felt him approach and waited.
“Mr. Torrance is having the ‘stupid, gaudy, fucking
fountain’ removed, he said.”
I almost wanted to laugh at the way he repeated Damon’s
words, throwing shade.
But then they sank in.
“Removed,” I mumbled.
He was taking out the fountain in front of my house.
Throwing it away. GGetting rid of it.
Like he didn’t want any reminder of the past or what he
fell in love with about us as a boy.
He wanted to kill it.
I stopped drying my hair, holding the towel in my hands.
“Is he here?” I asked.
“He’s close.”
Close. What does that mean? Was he always close? Even
when he left?
“Do you need something?” Crane inquired. “I don’t expect
him back to the house today, but I can get a message to him.”
I didn’t even know where to start. I wanted to say things to
him, but everything in my head was still a hodgepodge of
feelings contradicting facts.
I didn’t want to talk, but I wanted to feel him in the house.
Turning around, I followed the wall past Crane, without
answering him, and slipped into my bedroom, closing the
door.
I’d tried hard not to think about everything he said night
before last—keeping busy with choreography and planning—
but if I slowed for a second, he was there again, sitting against