“Dad was hitting Johnny so hard, I thought he was going to kill him. So I went to the neighbors, who called 911. And when the police got there, they found Dad’s meth lab in the garage. Fast-forward a few weeks later, Dad’s in jail and his auto body shop is permanently closed, and we’re at Carla’s, in a new school district.”
“That’s why you were so mad at me when you came back to school,” I say.
He shakes his head hard. “I was never mad at you. It was all my fault.”
“Finn.”
He looks at me, shoulders sharp. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“I told you already. I don’t need saving, Parker.”
“But . . .”
“But nothing. It’s just how it was. How it is.”
“None of that was your fault. You were just a kid. Your dad should have never hit Johnny. Johnny should have never hit you. That’s not right.”
He sucks in his breath, leans back, his eyes meeting mine evenly.
I realize then that for the first time since I met him, Finn is mad. Beyond mad—he’s furious. This must be what he looks like when he fights, all his angles getting sharper, his hollows emptier, his face harder.
“You don’t know me,” Finn says, each word a hit. “You don’t know my family.”
I flinch. “I guess I don’t.”
I sit back, emptied out from the morning, and look out the window, realizing Finn’s family isn’t the only one I don’t know.
I can’t even make things right with my own brother.
But the longer I sit there, stewing in the silence between Finn and me, an idea starts to take root, small and careful, a seed of hope.
If I can’t help Finn, maybe, just maybe, I can help Alice.
Forty-Two
I’M AT MY DESK, clicking through different travel websites, researching the costs of flights between Cincinnati and Austin, trying not to look at my phone.
But then I give in and check.
No message.
Even though it’s been a little more than twenty-four hours since I last saw Finn and I doubt he’d text even if he did want to talk, I can’t stop hoping he’ll reach out. After our spat about his brother at Zip’s, we didn’t talk much, other than my insistence that I’d get the bill since he drove me (a proposition he didn’t appreciate), and then his gruff “Sorry” when he dropped me off.
I hear Ruby’s laugh from the backyard, and a quick glance out the window next to me confirms it: She and Charlie are approaching the giant hammock under my bedroom window.
I wonder if Charlie told her he knows my secret about the internship.
This morning, at breakfast, I was pretty sure the jig was up.
Dad was reading the paper while Charlie and I were doing our best to ignore each other’s existence, when out of the blue, Mom asked me how things were going with Henry.
All the blood rushed from my face. “You know?” My spoon clattered in the bowl as I turned to Charlie. “I thought we had a deal! You weren’t going to tell them!”
“Tell us what?” Mom asked.
“No, Parker,” Charlie said, purposefully shooting meaningful eyes at me. “You told them about the new patient, remember?”
Relief made me dizzy. Of course. I had told them about the “new patient” Henry.
“Oh, Henry! That Henry. Sorry! Clearly I’m not entirely awake today yet. He’s good. He’s made some friends—Harriet and Peggy and Lorna—and I think it helped him feel a little less alone.”
“I had a great-aunt named Lorna,” Dad offered over the paper.
Mom looked confused. “But you said something about a deal with Charlie?”
“Parker made a deal to help me with my chem homework tonight, right?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, of course, yes,” I said, wondering why he was bailing me out, wondering if he was stacking up more material to use against me.
Mom didn’t seem entirely satisfied with the explanation, but lucky for me, she decided to drop it.
As I watch him now, Charlie holds the hammock steady for Ruby while she considers the best approach to hopping on. He’s careful with her, making sure she has a steady net and then gingerly lifting himself on next to her.
I realize they’re so much more coordinated than Em and me, who have more than once knocked each other off while trying to share the space. The last time, Em ended up with a bruised tailbone.
They both stretch out, Charlie’s arms behind his head, a bare foot gently rocking them back and forth, Ruby with her curly hair hanging down from the side, her eyes studying the canopy of green above her. Lightning bugs are starting to wink around them.
I’m just about ready to lift the screen and call out hello when Ruby turns to him.
“So, did you make a decision on baseball next year?”
I freeze, waiting for Charlie’s face to go sullen, his voice to go hostile, but instead, he says, “Lift your head for a second.”
She does, and then he stretches his arm out, so Ruby can rest her head in the crook of his shoulder.
“Yeah. I don’t think I’m going to go back on the team after all,” he says once she’s settled.
Surprise rushes through me—at the fact that he answered her and at his answer. I angle myself to the side, clicking off my desk lamp so they can’t see my silhouette from below.
Charlie loves baseball. And he’s a pretty sure shot for a baseball scholarship now that he’s healthy again. He’s obviously not thinking this out clearly.
“And you feel good about it?” Ruby asks him.
“Yeah, I actually do. I mean, Coach Franklin’s going to be disappointed. And I’m sure Dad’ll be pissed and Mom will be quietly worried and Parker will chalk this all up to some chemo side effect where I’m not thinking clearly, but yeah, it’s what I want to do.”
I frown, immediately defensive that I’m so predictable. I turn my back to the wall, sliding down on the floor, and hug my knees to my chest.
I shouldn’t be listening. But I don’t get up.
“What are you going to do with all that free time?” Ruby asks.
“I don’t know. But that’s the good thing. For the past year, everything has been planned down to the second—chemo, doctor appointments, checkups. Now the whole world is open in front of me, and it’s mine to fuck up however I want.”
“Charlie,” Ruby starts, her voice worried.
“I’m kidding. I just mean that it’s all up to me for the first time in ages.”
For a second I feel envious of the blank slate in front of him.
“And, of course, there’s this junior I have my eye on that I’m hoping to hang out with. . . . What’s her name again? Rudy?” he continues.
“Hey! You’d better know my name,” Ruby says, then giggles, and then they’re quiet, and it takes me a few seconds to realize they’re probably making out.
My face goes red. I’m being a total creeper. I start to straighten, when I hear Ruby say, “You know, you shouldn’t be so hard on your sister.”
I wait for Charlie’s reply, but it doesn’t come, and then I hear Ruby giggle.
“Charlie, stop kissing me, just for a second, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” he says in mock exasperation.
“What I was trying to tell you before I was so rudely interrupted is that I’ve always wanted a brother or sister. You’ve got a really good sister. You’re lucky.”
It sounds like Charlie mutters something that sounds like “Hardly,” and then I hear him go, “Ow!”
“I mean it. Your sister is the first real friend I’ve had in ages.”
“Come on,” Charlie starts.
“No, it’s true. People don’t always like me. My mom says it’s because I try too hard, that I’m too much. She says on a scale of one to ten, with ten being too much, I’m, like, a thirteen.” Ruby laughs, but it’s hollow. “Your sister is, like, the first person in forever who actually listens to me and wants to hang out with me.”
My heart breaks for her, and I hold my breath, waiting for Charlie’s response.
“Meeting you is the best thing that’s happened to me in ages, Ruby Collie. If other people can’t see how amazing you are, it is one hundred percent their fucking loss. And I’m sorry to say that includes your mom.”
I let my breath out. Charlie might actually be worthy of my bighearted friend.
It’s weird seeing—or more accurately, eavesdropping on—this side of him, a side I haven’t seen since Matty’s surprise pool party last summer, when I discovered the broken blood vessels on Charlie’s back.