“I need to go back tomorrow.”
I feel the tension through her arm before she trails her fingers through my hair, and she shifts her focus. “But you’re going to miss seeing your brother. He leaves tomorrow evening.”
“I’m seeing him now,” I say.
She shakes her head. “He’s going out after dinner. Some baseball thing. Oh, you should go.” Then, she calls louder, “Julian! Do you think you could bring Jessa with you?”
“Ugh, Mom, stop.” The last thing I want is to be dragged around as an appendage to Julian. It’ll be a bunch of people I’ve known for what feels like my whole life, mixed with my classmates who know me with Caleb. A blending of worlds, and I won’t know which person to be.
“It’s fine,” he says, stepping out of the kitchen, where he was undoubtedly helping my father, because Julian can also cook, of course. “I’m going back to talk to the team at the coach’s place.”
It’s fine, he says, like I am the chore.
“God, don’t do me any favors, Julian. What if I don’t want to go?”
My mother mumbles at the television, picking up another shirt to fold. Julian grins and tilts his head. “Would you rather…,” he says, letting the thought trail off. He raises his hands in a balance of scales, as if to say: Pick, Jessa. A night home with your parents asking you questions, trapped in this house? Or an escape.
“Ugh, fine,” I say. I roll my eyes at him, and he laughs. I hate that I like my brother as much as I do.
—
I’ve sort of inherited Julian’s car, in that the car is here, and Julian’s usually gone. But when he’s home, I’m reminded that it belonged to him first. He takes the keys from their familiar spot hanging in the kitchen. He sits in the driver’s seat. I stew silently, wondering if he’s noticed the keychain with my name (well, it’s really a Jesse, the e turned into an a with red permanent marker, the closest name Caleb could ever find on the store display; I was always searching for my name, everywhere), or the seat that’s been adjusted to my height, the mirrors angled to my field of vision.
He adjusts things smoothly as I make a show of sliding into the passenger side, but he leaves the radio on my station at least.
The coach’s house isn’t far from campus—an older colonial that makes me suddenly wonder how much history teachers–slash–high school baseball coaches are paid.
Julian, as if reading my thoughts, says, “Mrs. Peters works in banking.”
There are cars already filling the driveway, a few parked along the curb. “So,” I say, “you’re giving, like, an insight-to-college talk or something?”
He shrugs. “They do this yearly alumni-family gathering thing. Like a chance for the kids to ask questions about applying, or scouts, or whatever.” He fidgets with the controls on the car, turning the lights off. “We don’t have to stay long. Maybe we can catch a movie on the way home. Or get some ice cream. Or whatever.”
He stares out the front window as he says this, and I groan. “Oh my God, did Mom put you up to this?”
“No, I just thought—”
“I’m fine, Julian.”
“I know, I know, it’s just—”
“We broke up,” I say, and he sits straighter. “Caleb and I had broken up.” I did not lose my boyfriend. That, at least, was a role I could figure out how to fill. The tragic figure left behind. A future full of never-haves and what-might-have-beens.
“Yeah, I heard that. Still…” Still. You missed a week of school. You stopped showing up to cross-country. You don’t see your friends. You go to school and back, stuck in a lifeless cycle, like a ghost.
“Still, what?” I’m going to make him say it, sharing in the discomfort of the moment.
But before he can answer, someone knocks on the window; another alumnus, a year older than Julian. Terrance Bilson. He smiles widely, and Julian launches himself out of the car, laughing, embracing his old teammate. I trail behind as they walk together toward the house, and then Julian gestures toward me, saying, “You remember my sister, Jessa?”
Terrance’s smile fractures for the slightest moment. If the outside porch light hadn’t been trained directly on him, I wouldn’t have noticed. But I did. I do. Then the smile is back, and he says, “Right, hi, Jessa. Nice to see you.”
Inside, there’s a spread of finger food on the long dining room table. There are kids I recognize from school who nod their hellos after they fawn over Julian. Sometimes there’s a benefit to being Julian’s sister, to fading into the background, to being generally ignored. I let the conversation hum around me. I check out.
I sit on a hard-backed chair with a plastic cup of soda in my hand, and I take out my phone, pretending to look busy. Pretending like anyone has texted me in the last month.
Someone’s knee nudges mine, and I ignore it at first, assuming it’s an accident. I shift my legs farther to the side. But then they’re bumped again, and I look up, catching Max’s eye briefly before I look back at my phone. “Oh, hi,” I say. “My brother’s in the kitchen. Though I see you’ve picked your seating strategically.”
But he ignores me. His leg is bouncing beside mine. “How long were you over there today? I left for work, and your car was still there.”
“Yeah, till dinnertime.” And then, in the silence, I tell him. Hoping it will mean something to him as well. That he will sit a little straighter, lean a little nearer, drop his voice in surprise. “I can’t find his glasses,” I say.
His leg stops bouncing. “You mean the ones from middle school? Thick rimmed, black?”
I nod.
“I haven’t seen those in years. He still had them?”
“Yes, he still wore them.”
He laughs, and the sound makes me mournful. It was a piece shared only with me, then.
“Maybe he finally tossed them,” he says.
Nothing. No spark. No meaning.
“I’ll check again tomorrow,” I say.
I feel him looking at the side of my face. “You’re going back?”
Of course I’m going back. It’s all that’s left of him, whether his mother is punishing me or not. It’s the first time I’ve been invited back into the house since before that day. It’s my last chance for answers, for some sort of absolution, to see if I can uncover what he was doing, where he was going. The cause and effect that led us all here. “It’ll probably take me at least a week,” I say.
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll do it. Don’t show up, and I’ll just do it, okay?”
“Max,” I say, and I am so serious, so deadly serious I grasp onto his arm so he will understand how serious I am. “Do not touch that room.”