“You have a sister named Crumbs?” I asked under my breath.
“I have a sister named Jen who makes everyone call her Crumbs,” he whispered back.
“And she calls you Fudge—why?”
“Did you ever read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing?” he asked. When I nodded, he said, “My oldest sister thought I looked like Fudge when I was a baby. I didn’t eat a turtle—”
“It was a tadpole,” Crumbs interrupted. “And it was going to be Abby’s best friend. She cried for days.”
Brandon scrunched his face toward his sister. “What are you doing down here?”
“I’m catching my baby brother running away from smarty school.” Where Brandon’s voice was woolly, hers rode the line toward raspy. It was like ice cubes rubbing together. “And sucking face with a very pretty girl.”
He brushed his hair back into his eyes with the heels of his hands and spoke rapid, furious French at her. I sat on my hands to keep still as she threw a stream of French back at him. It was fascinating, but from Brandon’s deepening frown and his sister’s lifting chin, I got the feeling that the conversation wasn’t going well. I took a bite of gelato as Brandon threw himself to his feet and switched back to English.
“You can’t make me go with you,” he snarled.
“Um, go where?” I asked.
“Anywhere,” Brandon huffed.
Crumbs looked at him with blasé pity. I knew that look. It was how I looked at Isaiah when he said something particularly stupid, or when Ethan threatened to tattle on me.
“I can call Dad,” she said. “And he can cart you back to Rayevich. Or I can take you back and you can say, ‘Thank you, Crumbs. I love you so much more than Abby and Darcy.’”
“We have a ride,” he said. He cut his eyes at me and then back to Crumbs. His tone disintegrated into ragged sincerity. “S’il vous pla?t ne pas.”
She ignored him, swooping forward with her arm outstretched to me. “Sorry, pretty girl. Any chance you have a younger brother?”
I awkwardly shook her hand. Her hand was smaller than mine, but her grip was viselike. “I do, actually.”
“Then you’ll understand that I have to stuff mine into my car and drive him back to genius camp before he gets into even deeper shit than he’s already in. Are you a smarty-smart-pants too?”
I nodded. There was no point in lying. I wasn’t going to let Brandon get dragged back to camp and go to the movies by myself.
“Great,” Crumbs said. She jerked her head toward Brandon’s abandoned cup of peanut butter cup gelato. “Hand me that ice cream and we’ll be off.”
*
The back of Crumbs’s car was much more cramped than Harper and Cornell’s Prius and smelled faintly of cigarettes and fake cotton air freshener. The fabric on the roof was peeling in places, undoubtedly leaving bits of fluff in my hair. The radio was turned down low, letting in a distant rattle of drumbeats.
“I’m so sorry,” Brandon said in a choked whisper, passing my phone back to me after borrowing it to text Harper that we wouldn’t be needing a ride back. He stuffed a list of phone numbers back into his wallet. “This is truly fucking humiliating.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered back. “I know like three different kinds of self-defense. If I didn’t want to go with you, I could have taken her down. It seemed like shitty etiquette to roundhouse your big sister.”
He almost smiled. “Not this sister.”
“You can passive aggressively whisper all you want,” Crumbs said, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m so not going to be responsible for you flunking out of another super expensive institution. It’s getting embarrassing how much money Mom and Dad are spending on your education. Have I mentioned that I have two jobs?”
“And yet you were ready to go drinking on a Friday night,” Brandon shot back. “Yeah, you must be swamped with work.”
I wet my lips to ease the jolt of shock that raced up my back. “Flunked out?”
“He was expelled,” Crumbs said over her shoulder.
Mortification drained the color out of Brandon’s skin. “I wasn’t invited back. They gave my spot on the roster to another applicant.”
“Because he flunked out,” Crumbs sang out, the lights of passing headlights bouncing off her teeth in the rearview.
He swallowed hard and turned away from me, pressing his forehead against the window. “This is a new low.”
I reached over and set my hand on his knee. “Hey. I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” I waited for him to look at me before I asked, “How familiar with The Importance of Being Earnest are you?”
“Moderate to very.” He frowned. “Why?”
“Ask me when we get back to campus.”
Maybe by then I’d have the courage to say it out loud.
29
We waited for ten minutes after Crumbs dropped us off before sneaking back through the trees to the front of the school, where we were less likely to encounter any wandering counselors. Brandon was really patient as I explained my Oscar Wilde–inspired decision to leave home, take the train over state lines, and spend three weeks living under a false identity. He even waited until I stopped talking before he totally freaked the hell out.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he chanted, slamming the back of his head against the Rayevich sign. “Ever, this is really serious. Are you even eligible for the scholarship if you’re here under a pseudonym?”
“It’s not technically a pseudonym,” I said, drawing my knees up to my chest. Sitting on pine needles wasn’t super comfortable. “It’s a nickname and one of my last names. I used my real social security number.”
His hands started to flap and fist at intervals. I wished I had a pencil for him to twirl. “But what if someone finds out? What if you get sent home? Or what if your brother gets sent home and then they find out about you?”
“Oh.” I bit my bottom lip, tasting the honey-scented beeswax of my new lip balm. “Isaiah isn’t really my brother. He’s my cousin. And he’s fifteen. No. Wait. Yesterday was his birthday. He’s sixteen. He’s also a giant sack of crap who will drag me down with him if he gets caught up here. He told Cornell that we’re twins so that they’d let him compete under age.” That felt like a lot of bad news to drop in one go, so I added, “I do have a real little brother. Ethan. He’s nine. I miss him a lot more than I thought I would.”
He rubbed his eyes and stared at me blearily. “I don’t know how to process all of this. Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because when I freaked out about you faking a Rubik’s Cube and then vomited basically all of my hopes and fears on you, you didn’t even tell me that you’ve been lying about the school you go to.”
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “I haven’t gone to any other school yet.”
I snorted. “Oh my God. That is such a weak technicality. You flunked out of the Messina, Brandon.” He flinched. “It’s okay, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just tell me. I feel like an idiot for grilling you for details about it. Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me the truth?”