Along for the Ride

by Sarah Dessen

I had a flash of my mother, the dismissive way she’d looked at Maggie, the bikini bottoms, the Booty Berry and then me, all of us grouped in the category of Not to Her Liking. But it was vast, that place I’d struggled to avoid for so long, as wide and long as the beach where we were right then.

“The basic fact of the matter is that no, this isn’t ideal. Very few things are. Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak. You know?”

But the memories and experiences, were no less real because of it. If anything, they were more special, because they hadn’t happened to me, but because of me. And him.

That racing of my heart, the flushing of my face I was feeling: it was what happened when you got hurt, true, but also when you got back up and went on. Maybe Jason had never been meant to be part of my second chance anyway, and this was just the push that I, and fate, needed.