“How the hell did you—actually, don’t answer that. I don’t—why is my face on this website.”
“I—what?” I take the phone back and flick through the images on their slideshow. There—it’s the picture of Jasper leaning against the motel wall, hands in his pockets, hoodie pulled up. But they’ve put it in grayscale and added sans serif font over the image. It doesn’t matter where you come from—it matters where you go next.
“Okay, that’s . . .” I don’t know what it is. Weird, funny, sweet, awkward? The expression on Jasper’s face suggests it’s none of those things, that I have screwed up on a colossal scale.
I rush forward, trying to skate over it. “The semester starts in August, which is a little ways away, but—”
“So I’m already enrolled. Like, you enrolled me.”
I wet my lips. “Yes?”
“Because you thought I would be happy at”—he takes the phone back—“Stonewood Academy. Where Greatness Grows.” He taps the screen. “Jesus, how did you find someplace whiter than Eden?”
“I didn’t—it won’t be like that—”
“This is like Charlotte shouting at the principal all over again. I know she meant well, but those next few weeks were hell.”
I feel like someone who has just leapt out and shouted “Surprise!” on the wrong date, to the wrong person: defensive, embarrassed, even a little angry.
I take an unsteady breath. “Look, we can talk about all that . . . later. What matters right now is that you have to get out of here now. Like, tonight. There’s something I should have told you a while ago.” I take a small, bracing breath. “Our mom was Old Leon Gravely’s daughter. So . . . you and me are Gravelys. Technically.”
The silence that follows is so profound it presses on my eardrums. I can almost hear Jasper’s neurons firing. He says, carefully, “So . . . did they pay for this? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“What? Hell no, those vultures don’t give a damn about us!”
“Okay, then why—”
“It’s the curse. Whatever you want to call it. It—they go after Gravelys, they always have—”
“Opal?” Jasper inhales carefully. “I know. I already know all this.”
“You—what?”
“I’ve known for a while. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t sure you were ready to hear it.”
Jasper pauses, but I can’t think of anything to say. I may, in fact, never think of anything to say again.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Well, thank you, first of all. I don’t know how you paid off a private high school, but it’s . . . I know you were just trying to help.” He says it earnestly—too earnestly, like a parent thanking their child for a homemade Christmas gift. A sense of foreboding thickens the air.
“Second, I’m sorry, like really sorry, but”—he hands the phone back to me and wraps my limp fingers around the case—“I’m not going.” He’s rarely sounded more sure about anything.
“If you think you’re working at the goddamn power plant you’ve got another think—”
“Because I’m starting at U of L this fall.” Jasper pauses, giving the syllables time to arrange themselves in my head. “I got a scholarship and financial aid, and the counselor says there are loans available, so you don’t have to worry about anything.”
In the original script of this conversation, I’m fairly sure that was my line. I was the one showing him the door out of Eden, handing him the keys to his own future. “You’re sixteen.”
Jasper smiles, a little shy, a little proud. “There’s no age requirements. It’s all test scores and credits and stuff. Charlotte helped me with the application and the SAT”—Charlotte, my former friend, who I now see is a stone-cold traitor—“and Logan’s mom helped with the state aid paperwork, and Mrs. Gutiérrez gave me a ride to the library today. I just met with my advisor. I’m already registered for classes.”
The enthusiasm in his voice falters a little, turns younger. “I know I should have told you, but I wanted it to be a surprise.” He fiddles with the button on his shirt cuff, sliding it in and out of the hole. “I applied for a couple jobs, first. Didn’t even get a reply. I guess I wanted to wait until I had a sure thing. And I wanted to show you I could do it. That you don’t have to take care of me anymore.” He looks back at me, forcing me to turn abruptly away and scrub my sleeve across my cheeks. The smell of my shirt only makes my eyes burn worse.
“Opal, hey, it’s okay. I’m not leaving you for good. I’ve got it all planned: I’ll major in business, get a job straight after graduation. And then it’ll be my turn to take care of you.” His hand lands tentatively on my shoulder, as if he isn’t sure whether I’ll bite it.
I sort of want to. How dare he scheme and sneak behind my back? How dare he tell Logan before he told me? How dare he not need me? Instead, I say, “I didn’t know you liked business.”
He laughs a little, like the question is silly, like I’m naive for asking it. “Guess I’ll find out.”
“You like movies. Film. Art.”
He lifts his shoulder. “So?”
“So, your stuff is really good. You’ve worked really hard on it. Why don’t you—”
“I don’t remember what Mom looked like. Did you know that?” He says it without inflection, like a man sliding the rug neatly out from under his opponent. “When I try to picture her face it goes all blurry in my head, and all I see is you.” He addresses the windshield, eyes fixed on the bulbous amber lights of the diner, voice low. “Opal, you’re bossy and you always think you know best and you have horrific taste in men. But you think I don’t know what I owe you?”
I thought my ribs had healed up, but I must have been wrong, because there’s an awful pain in my chest. My bones themselves feel wrong, chalky and friable, like old plaster.
I wait, breathing carefully around the hurt, until I can say, “You don’t owe me shit, Jasper. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
It’s suddenly vital to me that he understands, that he knows there are no scales balanced between us, no debts; that I’m nothing like our great-uncle, offering kinship only on certain conditions. That I love him, and love wipes every ledger clean. “No, I’m serious. You think I took care of you because I had to, but I didn’t. I could’ve handed you over to the foster system—maybe I should have, for your sake.” Jasper starts to object, but I talk over him. “But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to. You remember you used to sleep in my bed every night?”
An adolescent pain crosses his features, as if the mention of his childhood habits has caused him injury. “Because I had nightmares,” he mutters.
“No, meathead, because I did.” I swallow. “Because we did, I guess.”
It’s true. Every night it was either the house or the river, or sometimes both: rooms full of rushing water, stairs that disappeared into rancid white foam, black water pouring through broken windows. The only way I could sleep was with Jasper’s spine against mine, his breath whistling over the hum of the radiator.
Now he’s the one clutching his rib cage, bent like he’s in pain. I soften my voice. “I’m proud of you. For real.” I’m also pissed and sad and preemptively lonely, unable to conceive of my world without him in it, but he doesn’t need to know that. “You should definitely go to U of L. But please don’t major in business. Major in film or art history or fucking interpretive dance. Make weird art with the nerds from your forums. Scare the shit out of me, okay?”
“Okay.” He sounds uncertain.
“No, promise me. I wanted to give you a gift, remember?” I wave my phone at him, where the Stonewood website is still cycling through its slideshow: ivy creeping up old brick; girls with high blond ponytails; libraries with arched windows; Jasper, standing like the bleak “before” picture of a before-and-after remodel. “But it turns out it was a shitty gift. So just let me give you this, instead.”