Things We Swore We'd Never Do

<p><b>Set against long Texas summers filled with pinky promises and the bittersweet magic of growing up, <i>The Things We Swore We’d Never Do</i>, a new story from Jillian Dodd, is about losing your person and learning how to live a little louder in the silence they leave behind.</b></p><p>Growing up one broken rule at a time.</p><p>It started with a list.</p><p>The things we swore we’d never do.</p><p>Kiss boys. Lie to our parents. Wear push-up bras.</p><p>We were nine years old and certain of everything.</p><p>McKenna Moore was everything I wasn’t—fearless, opinionated, and always one step ahead. I was the quiet one, never needing to be the center of anything. But standing next to her always made me feel braver.</p><p>We spent summers at the lake, made pinky promises in the dark, and bottled our girlhood like fireflies in a jar.</p><p>We thought we had forever.</p><p>But growing up has a way of breaking things wide open.</p><p>Of shattering the pieces you thought would always fit.</p><p>Now the list is back—and her older brother, Callum, the boy who faded from our world as we grew up, wants me to finish it.</p><p>He wants me to break every rule we swore we never would.</p><p>Every crossed-out line, every broken rule, feels like a step toward something I’m not sure I’m ready for.</p><p>But maybe becoming who you are means letting go of who you thought you’d always be.</p>