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Heat bloomed across the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he said awkwardly.

Becky stared at him, waiting. “Like your mom’s?”

Will opened his mouth to lie, because he couldn’t possibly tell her it was from Itori, but something stopped him.

Becky looked as she always had–the pretty, blonde, sun-kissed popular girl. But Will knew now that wasn’t all there was to her. Becky was pretty, and had the capacity to be catty and cruel, but she also wielded those weapons for more than her own ego and vanity. She cared about the land here, about their community.

About him.

Will wondered for a precarious second what she would say if he told her that a man had given him this necklace.

“It’s not from my mom,” Will said instead. Halfway to the truth.

She stared back at him, her head tilting to the side. “A gift?” She asked. The question came gently, like she was trying not to spook him.

His nerves still jumped. “Yes.”

“It’s nice. They have good taste,” Becky said with a smile.

They, not she.

Will had the sudden urge to turn and walk out of the grocery store.

“They do,” Will said in response. He felt sweat on his brow and under his arms.

Becky nodded. Then she made a show of turning her eyes back to the magazine she’d been leafing through. Her pink nails delicately flipped a page he was certain she hadn’t finished reading yet.

“Ever thought of leaving this small town?”

Will licked his dry lips. “I don’t have big dreams of California like you do,” Will said. But his thoughts went to Itori. To the decision he was about to make. “But yeah, maybe? I guess lately I have been thinking about leaving. About a different life, elsewhere.”

It was strange to think about someone noticing his absence if he didn’t return. His father would notice, of course, but it wouldn’t be about missing Will as a person.

Becky kept her eyes on the magazine. “I hear there are plenty of places that are friendly like California,” she said. “More north. Or big cities.”

He didn’t miss the emphasis. “Oh yeah?” He was fairly certain they weren’t talking about California as a literal place anymore.

Becky snapped her gum. “Yeah. You deserve a good place to grow into. The people here… a lot of them don’t understand things outside this town. They’re happy with their small lives and their small thoughts. That’s not you. Even when you try to make yourself small, you’ve never been small.” She tapped at her head in meaning. “And whether it’s California or… just someplace bigger, I think you deserve to find it.”

Will rolled those words around in his head. He’d never thought of himself as a big or small person, but he understood what Becky was saying.

There were people, like his father, who were fine to live their whole lives in one place, who actively looked for ways to wall themselves into smaller and smaller spaces.

Before Itori, he’d been walking in his father’s footsteps. He’d encased himself in the safety of the smallest box he could find, where he never drew any attention to himself, never invited any risk or reward.

But tonight he was throwing that all away.

So maybe he did have a big dream.

“You’ve got something like that?” Becky asked. Will realized he’d been silent for too long, lost in his own thoughts. She was looking at him again, her gaze focused.

“Yeah,” Will said, so softly he wasn’t even sure he spoke the word aloud. “I think I do.”

Becky nodded and gave him a half smile. “Good.” Then she reached down from the register and grabbed a bag of chips. She scanned it and pulled out her pink wallet to pay for it. “You remember what we talked about yesterday?”

“I do,” Will said.

“Well I had a thought,” Becky said, “about what I could do to help. And I might have… made some calls.” She made change for the chips and snapped the register closed again.