He points a warning finger at me. “Clara, I swear….”
“That’s great,” I say. Maybe this will turn him around, give him something positive to think about. “I’m glad you like someone. I felt bad when—”
Now it’s my turn to stop myself. I don’t want to dredge up his ex or that horrifying scene in the cafeteria last year when he dumped her in front of the entire school. Kimber was clearly not his soul mate. She was a cute girl, though. Nice, I always thought.
“Kimber was the one who called the police on me, I think,” he says. “I guess I shouldn’t have told her I started the fire.” I open my mouth to bombard him with questions, but he doesn’t let me get them out. “No, I didn’t tell her what I am. What we are. I only told her about the fire.” He scoffs. “I thought she would think it was badass or something.”
“Oh, she did. She really did.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and then we both start laughing quietly.
“I was kind of an idiot,” he admits.
“Yeah, well, when it comes to the opposite sex, it’s hard to keep your head on straight. But maybe that’s just me.”
He nods, takes another drink of OJ. Looks at me hard.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Tucker,” Jeffrey says then, which catches me off guard. “It’s not fair to him, what happened. I’ve been putting some money aside. It won’t be a lot. But something. I was kind of hoping you’d give it to him, once I get it together.”
I don’t fully understand. “Jeffrey, I—”
“It’s to help buy a new truck, or put a down payment on one. A new trailer, a saddle, trees to plant on his land.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what he needs. I just want to give him something. To make up for what I did.”
“Okay,” I say, although I don’t know if it will work for me to be the one who gives it to him. Last night between Tucker and me did not go well. But Tucker has a right, I remind myself, to be mad at me. And I never even apologized for what I did. I never tried to make it right. “I think that’s a great idea,” I tell Jeffrey.
“Thanks,” he says, and I can see in his eyes how he knows it isn’t enough, given all he’s taken from Tucker, all we’ve taken, but he’s trying to make amends.
Maybe my brother’s going to turn out okay, after all.
After breakfast I head back to Stanford, full of carbs and deep thoughts. I plan to have a nice, low-key kind of day, maybe take a nap, get started writing a paper I’ve been procrastinating on all week. But I run into Amy as I pass by the Roble game lounge, and she ropes me into a game of table hockey. She rants about how the administration has canceled the Full Moon on the Quad—which is where students meet up around midnight on the night of the full moon and kiss each other while a local band plays romantic music in the background, basically a ritualized-and-thereby-socially-acceptable, well-lit make-out session—because they’re afraid we’re going to spread mono all over campus.
“I don’t see how they can stop us, though,” she’s saying. “I mean, there’s still going to be a full moon and the quad’s still going to be there and we’re still going to have our lips.”
I nod and grumble agreeably about how unfair it is, but I could care less. I’m still ruminating on the conversation at breakfast: Jeffrey with a new set of opinions and a new love interest and a new vision.
“Well, I think it’s kind of gross,” Amy says. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s so much older than she is.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Wait, who’s older?”
“You know. The guy Angela’s hooking up with.”