“Mom likes Tom.”
“Likes? You mean likes him like she likes your dog, Pirate, or likes likes?”
“Likes likes.” She cut him a sideways look. “Tom’s hot.”
“That’s sick,” Benny said.
“You look a lot alike, you know,” said Nix.
“Please kill me now,” Benny asked the heavens.
“Why can’t you be around Charlie without your mom or Tom?” Morgie asked. Unlike Benny, Morgie had become infatuated with Nix. And with more than her new figure. He actually liked her. Morgie had never made that oath about never dating friends, and Benny couldn’t quite grasp how he was able to fixate on Nix without feeling weird about it.
“She says that he doesn’t treat girls the right way sometimes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Benny, his voice sharper than intended.
Nix gave him a long considering stare. “You can be so naive sometimes.”
“I repeat, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that guys like Charlie seem to think that anything they put their hands on belongs to them. Mom’s afraid to be alone with either of them, and I wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with them either.”
“You’re nuts.”
“You’re not a girl,” Nix said. “Or let me put it another way: You’re a boy, so therefore you’re probably incapable of understanding.”
“I understand,” said Morgie, but Nix and Benny both ignored him.
“Is your mom just saying this stuff or did something actually happen?” asked Benny. His voice was heavy with skepticism, and Nix simply shook her head and turned away. She kept staring off at the distant fence line.
“Well, I think Charlie and them are really cool,” said Benny.
The moment stretched too thin to support any more conversation, at least on that topic, so they let it go and said nothing. After a while a cool breeze came along, and they all laid back and closed their eyes. The breeze blew the tension away like fine grains of sand.
Without looking at Benny, Nix said, “Did you get a job yet?”
“Nah.” He told them about all the jobs he’d applied for and how each one had turned out.
Nix and Morgie were not yet fifteen. They hated the thought of getting jobs nearly as much as Benny hated the process of finding one, but at least they had a couple of months before they had to go looking.
“What are you going to do?” Nix asked, propping herself up on her elbows. The sunlight on the water flickered like flecks of gold in her green eyes, and when Benny realized he was thinking that, he made himself look away.
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you ask your brother for a job?” she said.
“I’d rather be tied down over an anthill.”
“What is it with you two?”
“Why does everyone ask me that?” Benny snapped. “Tom’s a loser, okay? He walks around like he’s Mr. High and Mighty, but I know what he really is.”
“What?” asked Morgie.
Benny almost said it, almost called his brother a coward to his friends. But that was a line he hadn’t ever crossed. On some level he felt that if he called Tom a coward, then it might make people wonder if he was one too. They were only half brothers, but they were still related, and Benny didn’t know if cowardice was something that could be passed on through blood.
“Just leave it alone” was all he said. He sat up and fished on the bank for stones that he could throw. He found a few, but none of them were flat enough to skip, so he plunked them far out into the stream. Morgie heard the noise, sat up, and joined him.
Nix grabbed her notebook and wrote for a while. Benny tried very hard not to look at her. He mostly succeeded, but it took effort.
“Well,” said Nix sometime later, “summer’s almost over, and if you don’t get a job by the start of school, they’ll cut—”