Cameron was in the kitchen; pots, cupboard doors, kitchen drawers were clanking in his path. I
was sitting at the kitchen table where he had bidden me to park myself after shooing Rocco away
from the television into his room. I was trying to blink through the pain that was streaming
into the back of my eyes from the very bright overhanging lights.
“How much did your brother tell you—about what he was up to when he was gone, away from you?”
Cameron asked me.
“He didn’t need to say much,” I replied, rubbing my temples with two fingers. “The police
reports and school records spoke for themselves.” There were also all the rumors that were
floating around, things that were being whispered, things that I had heard my father scream at
my brother behind the closed mahogany door of his study. I didn’t feel the need to tell Cameron
this.
“What about when the police reports stopped after he left school? Did he ever talk to you about
what he was doing?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “I didn’t see him very much after he ran away. He would sneak back
into the house mostly to just boss me around, tell me what not to do.” I exhaled. “We argued a
lot toward the end.” This I regretted more than anything.
“Hmmm,” Cameron mused over the sizzle of the frying pan.
He brought two large glasses of chocolate milk and came back with grilled cheese sandwiches and
—bless his heart—a bottle of ketchup.
“Earlier, you called me Emmy, you know,” I mentioned while I squeezed the red stuff on the
side of my plate.
He sat down, facing me and raised his eyebrows. “I did?”
I nodded and handed him the ketchup bottle, which he refused.
“Your brother used to call you that,” he said, watching me carefully.
“You knew him well enough to know that,” I surmised. He took a bite of his unsoiled but boring
grilled cheese. Though my stomach grumbled, I left the sandwich there and waited.
“Well?”
He shifted in his seat. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“Starting from the beginning seems to work for most people.”
“Starting from the beginning would take a very long time.”
This made me almost giddy, but I tried to keep it cool and shrugged, “Apparently I’m not going
anywhere for a while, so talk as long as you need.”
His lips curved up at the corners. “I don’t need to talk. I’m doing this for you,” he
stalled.
I crossed my arms over my chest, not giving him any other opportunity to delay what I needed to
hear.
“Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “If you eat, I’ll talk.”
I picked up a half of the grilled cheese and dunked it in my pond of ketchup. I brought it to my
mouth and waited to see if he was going to keep his end of the bargain.
“Let’s see,” he said with his eyes turned to the ceiling. His gaze then came back to me,
attached to a crooked smile. “The first time I met Bill Sheppard, he beat the crap out of me.”
I took a bite of my sandwich and almost choked.
“Your brother had just been transferred to my school—”
“Which school?” I tested with a mouthful.
“Saint Emmanuel.”
Saint Emmanuel was the last private school my brother had attended before being shipped off to
live with his uncle. “That’s one of the most expensive schools in the eastern United States.”
Cameron’s stare bore into me. “What shocks you more—the fact that I went to a private school,
or that I went to school at all?”
“Neither,” I told him. “I just didn’t peg you for the snooty type.”
His smile returned. “I’m not. What’s your problem with rich people anyway?”
This was obviously another stall tactic—even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t going there. “So you met
my brother at Saint Emmanuel’s, and he beat you up. Why?”
“Bill had decided that he was going start selling to the kids at school. One day, he caught me
selling on what he thought was his turf, so he beat me up to teach me a lesson. I was just a kid
back then,” he clarified, “and I thought for sure that Spider was going to kill him for giving
me a black eye—”
“How long have you known Spider?” I interrupted.
“A long time,” he replied. He hesitated before he added, “We were roommates in juvi … Spider
had come up with the same plan as your brother a couple of years before.”
“You were in juvenile detention?”
“Yeah, for a little while.” His face slightly flushed, and he hurriedly continued, “By the
time your brother came along, Spider and I already had the school as our turf and had spent a
lot of time building business with the rich kids—”
“What were you selling, exactly?” I asked.