Chapter 7Almost as soon as it had happened, I regretted my moment of weakness. Rather than soothing me or confirming our uninterrupted comradeship, it was as if a bandage had been ripped from a scarcely healed wound. The truce I had strived for in the previous weeks, and the easy camaraderie I had felt as Jem worked willingly in our fields dissolved in disarray.
Like the coward I was, I avoided Jem. I did not want to display my jagged emotions that he would only find bewildering. Instead, I kept my bleak feelings to myself as they festered.
After each long day was done and I could no longer distract myself with mindless tasks, despair flooded me. It was a kind of self-torture, lying in my lonely bed at night, tears slowly leaking from my eyes, telling myself over and again that Jem could
