No Regrets Read Free Page A

said a little bitterly. “Dude’s loaded.”
    I was totally confused, so he explained it to me. “All the money they get from the casino? They give it to the people in their group, or whatever. If you’re a kid, they put it in the bank for you every year until you turn eighteen. Then you get it.”
    So when Marquis said, “Don’t go, Layla. Come with me. I can take care of you,” I knew he was telling the truth. And his money was legal, so I wouldn’t have to worry about him going to jail or something.
    I didn’t want to have someone taking care of me forever, but we could be together while I went to college and then I could get a job. At least, that was what I was thinking, but I never said that to Marquis.
    â€œI have to finish high school,” I said.
    â€œYou’re smart. You’d be fine,” he said.
    â€œBut—”
    He pulled me close for a kiss. “I don’t want to go home without you,” he whispered.
    I pulled back. “But—what would I do?”
    He looked confused. “What do you mean?”
    â€œIf I dropped out of school? Would I get a job?”
    â€œYou’d do whatever you want, same as me. Sometimes I work for my uncle. Mostly I hang out.”
    â€œBut I can’t go to college without finishing high school.”
    â€œWhy you want to go to college anyway? Just to get some job you’ll probably hate to make enough money to pay the rent and be able to party on the weekends. But like I said, I can take care of you. It don’t take much to live on the reservation, and I’ve got plenty of money.”
    I wanted to ask how much. Sometimes my parents thought they had plenty of money, too, but it never lasted long. I wanted to ask if he had enough for me to go to school. Except if he really wanted to stay on the reservation, I couldn’t see how that would work. I know my friends wouldn’t believe it, but I had trouble asking Marquis the hard questions.
    Maybe he’d move for me, at least while I went to college. But what if he didn’t, and I had dropped out of high school to be with him? I could always leave. Would my parents let me come back? Maybe I could pass the GED right now. But Ms. Butler said the GED didn’t look as good as a high school diploma because finishing high school shows you have “soft skills” or whatever. And she said the GED test was getting harder.
    I put my head in my hands. I needed to stop this. I had been through all this a million times, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere except staring at my phone, feeling all torn up about whether I should call him.
    So how could time travel and changing stuff help me? What did I wish was different? Or what did I need to know now?

chapter eight
    When the guy in my dream had said I couldn’t go back more than a year, I thought about my parents. I wondered, what if I could go back and fix my parents so they wouldn’t end up where they are now? Especially my mom. There must have been a moment when she made that one big mistake that led her to where she was now. Maybe it was when she took the job instead of going to college. Maybe it was when she agreed to marry my dad.
    Somehow I blamed my parents and their mistakes for making me scared to say yes to Marquis. But even if my parents were perfect and we weren’t living life on the edge all the time, would it have seemed like a good idea to run off with some guy I barely knew, drop out of high school, and go live on an Indian reservation and hope it all worked out?
    I realized I was digging my pen through three layers of pages in my notebook. I didn’t want to admit I might have said no to Marquis no matter what. On TV or in the movies, when it’s true love these things always work out. In fact, the trouble always starts when someone doesn’t believe in the true love enough. I felt like it was my parents’ fault that I couldn’t believe in stuff