“There’s this thing called online shopping,” I say, “and they deliver the goods to your house, and then when security rifles through my mail—namely you—they don’t touch anything postmarked Maximoff Hale X.” Creepy bastards send me mail under my name, so I always add the X to my personal purchases.
His smile expands. “Such a precious smartass.” He pops the lid off the box, and he laughs. “As I was saying.” He lifts up a gray and black triangular patch.
The stitched words read: Asshole Merit Badge.
I motion to the patch. “For the amount of awards you’ve given me: valor, honesty, integrity, resourcefulness, humility—I thought you must’ve been feeling lonely with zero of your own.”
He can’t stop smiling. He rubs his mouth a few times, but that smile is not vanishing any fucking time soon. He laughs and nods repeatedly. “You want me to join your little wolf scout club.”
“Maybe.” I breathe fully, happiness spreading across my face. Clear and free. Something light lives inside of me.
Farrow edges near, his thank you written all over his gaze. Even before we kiss.
I SKATEBOARD into my kitchen while dialing a number on my phone. Farrow and I split apart for lunch. He’s back in his townhouse. Keeping up appearances with Quinn. Accomplishing a few other security tasks. Like filling out his logs.
I open my cabinet and grab a bag of flaxseed chips. FaceTime rings and rings. I have no problem calling my fourteen-year-old brother twenty or fifty more times until he fucking answers.
Right when I think the call drops, the screen switches to an image of a packed freezer.
My brows bunch. “What am I looking at?” I ask, not needing to say a greeting to Xander. If my siblings don’t call me, I call them every day. Even if it’s just for two or three minutes.
“I’m trying to find my breakfast; I just woke up.”
I dump chips in a bowl. “It’s two p.m.”
“It’s Saturday. I would’ve slept till four if Kinney didn’t blast her screamo music in my bedroom.” In the video chat, his hand shifts the frozen chicken. I can’t lie—I miss being at home whenever I hear these small stories. Miss seeing them firsthand.
But that’s the thing about growing up, getting older—for whatever and however much I lose, I gain something new with someone new.
“What are you looking for?” I ask while skateboarding to my refrigerator.
“Mom just bought more Toaster Strudles, and Luna keeps hiding them.”
Toaster Strudle War is a real Hale thing. Luna thinks that Xander purposefully chomps down all of them, but he usually saves her two that just get eaten by Kinney.
Xander asks, “What are you eating?”
I flip my camera as I grab a bag of shredded cheese and skateboard to my bowl of chips. “Nachos.”
All of a sudden, twenty frozen items cascade out of his freezer and thud to the floorboards. I hear our family dog scamper off in the background.
“Fuuuuck,” Xander curses. The camera is pointed at the mess for literally a full minute while he contemplates putting it all back. “Ughhhh.”
I’d clean it for him if I were there. “Just make your breakfast. Pick it up after, Summers.”
My nickname for my brother is a play on his X-Men namesake: Alexander Summers. Likewise, my namesake is also X-Men related.
Pietro Maximoff.
As in Quicksilver.
Xander has the Strudle box in hand and heads to the toaster.
I rotate my camera back to my face and sprinkle cheese on my chips. “So I heard you haven’t been outside in weeks.”
“Do you blame me? No one will tell me how Mom and Dad ended up being photographed from the backyard, Moffy. The backyard, in a gated neighborhood. I’m not going out there.”
I know how they were photographed.
Farrow shared the security info with me. I get why my parents would want to keep this secret from Xander. They’re worried the truth will ramp up his anxiety.
I have the fucking power to unveil the curtains. And I have the power to hurt my brother. One choice. I could say, hey, Summers, paparazzi’s remote-controlled drones flew over the house. There may be more flying overhead if security doesn’t catch them in enough time. There’s no guarantee.
So I set the whole truth aside and say, “I don’t blame you. But you have to face the fucking world. Even if it sucks sometimes.”
“All the time,” he corrects and rips the plastic off his frozen pastry and puts it in the toaster. I slide my bowl of chips in my microwave.
“Flip your camera,” I say.
With a sigh, Xander rotates his camera, the screen showing his face for the first time. Sharp jaw structure, messy brown hair, expressive amber eyes, and a Hobbit T-shirt over checkered boxers. As a child, he was lauded as a “classic beauty” and that hasn’t changed.
You know Xander Hale as the most beautiful fourteen-year-old boy in the entire world. As said by you. You swoon over him like he’s the lead singer in a boy band or a famous social media star. You covet any photos you find online and cause his name to trend weekly. You’ve made his money-shots worth quadruple what mine sell for—and in effect, paparazzi stalk him like he’s the rarest, most hidden antelope of the pack. When in reality, he’s an endangered, timid bird.
I know him as my little brother. An amazing human being who speaks Elfish if you hang around him long enough. Who’s just trying to live in a world that’s a little too big for him. Who I’ll never give up on.
I just want him to be able to feel the light now and then. If I have to wrangle the sun out of the fucking sky with my bare hands, then I’ll withstand the burn. I’d give it all to him if I could.
Fair warning: imagine your toes being sawed off, and that’s what’ll happen if you fuck with my brother.
“You look like shit,” I say honestly. “You know what would help that?”
“Two more hours of sleep.”
“Swimming in the backyard pool with your big brother.”
Xander sighs into a glare. “Just come here and play video games with me. Stop trying to make me so…”
“Healthy, thriving, a human who goes outside—”
“Alright, alright,” he says. “Jesus, you’re relentless.”
My microwave beeps. I pull out the bowl of chips, and when I return to my phone, I notice Xander squinting at the screen.
I give him a look. “You picking your nose?” I eat a chip.
He scratches his cellphone like he’s trying to wipe a smudge off the screen. “What…what is that on your neck? Is that a hickey?”
I cough on my chip. Fuck. I drop my phone on the counter and fill a cup of water under the faucet. I down the water while Xander yells, “What, where’d you go—I need details!”
What’s the chance that Farrow would be that careless and give me a grade-school hickey? Slim. Maybe it’s not that bad.
I return to my phone and examine my neck in the screen. A dime-sized spot is faintly red. Probably because it happened recently. I doubt it’ll last. “What kind of details do you want?” I ask my brother.
He contemplates my question for a long moment and he settles on this: “Is the other person alive?”
I smile. I love my family.
Xander explains, “Luna says that whoever you hook up with instantly disintegrates into astral particles. Never to be seen or heard from again.”