Holding a glass of deep red wine, she sits on the chair farthest away from Brandon. He’s so busy looking for two markers in the side table that he doesn’t notice.
Jamie comes back with a whiteboard from the office. It’s still covered in neon-colored Post-it notes in the corner. He pulls them off one by one and sets the board up next to the fireplace.
“Kiko, you want to go first?” he asks.
Brandon tosses me a marker, which I don’t catch because I’m uncoordinated as well as unprepared. “Two creative types on the same team? Seems rigged to me.”
From the partially reclined chair, Elouise clenches her teeth and pulls her eyes closed for a very long blink.
Jamie notices. He looks like he’s regretting convincing his mom to play.
“How about girls versus boys?” I offer meekly.
I feel Elouise open her eyes toward me, but she doesn’t say anything.
Brandon slaps his knee. “All right, yeah.” He points to his eyes and then to Jamie. “We got this.”
I move toward the whiteboard, and Jamie passes me the game cards that came from their old Pictionary box.
Dropping like flies.
I tighten my mouth and look apologetically at Elouise, and then spend sixty seconds doodling something that resembles an ugly waterfall. She doesn’t guess it.
Jamie gets “Planet of the Apes” and Brandon guesses before half their time is up.
Then Elouise gets “sunburn” and I guess right. She high-fives me.
The boys miss the next one, which irritates Brandon and makes Elouise smile.
After three more turns each, Elouise and I are leading by four points. She’s so happy, we may as well have won the game already. I think she finds it bizarrely satisfying to see Brandon getting so worked up.
Jamie slumps down next to me on the couch and shakes his head like he knows I have the better teammate. I laugh.
“One more, one more,” Brandon urges.
“We’ve been beaten. Let’s call it a night. I’m tired.” Jamie yawns.
Elouise wiggles in the chair to our left like she’s doing a victory dance. She raises her glass in the air. “Good job, Kiko.”
“Thanks.” I grin. I’ve never seen her so happy, and certainly never toward me.
Brandon growls and covers his face in his hands. “I can’t believe this.” He pulls his hands away, laughing loudly like he’s forgotten any rules about volume. “I should have known Kiko would be good at board games. Do you remember that time at Charleston Grove when—” His face falls immediately. His jaw clamps shut.
Elouise stands up and leaves the room.
Brandon waits about two and a half seconds before he gets up and follows her to another room in the house.
“What just happened?” I’m watching Jamie carefully because he looks startled. I feel like I’ve seen into a door I wasn’t supposed to. I know where Charleston Grove is—I’d been there a few times as a kid. They have live music and festivals, and lots of families take picnics there. But I have no idea why it would upset Elouise so much.
Jamie rubs his neck like he has an itch. Muted shouting starts from his parents’ bedroom.
“Do you want to go for ice cream?” Jamie asks almost desperately.
We get into his car, but he doesn’t drive to get ice cream—he drives to the neighborhood park. When I look over at him, his blue eyes darkened by the lack of lights, he looks stoic and frightened.
“Are you okay?” I ask. It feels weird, like we’ve traded places. I’m usually the one who looks scared. I’m usually the one who looks like the world is about to split in half.
“I don’t want to lie to you. I don’t. But what’s going on with my parents—it’s not my story to tell.” His voice cracks in the dark. When he turns his head, I know he’s looking at me, even though his expression is lost in the shadows.
“Is it about me?” I ask softly. When he doesn’t move, I add, “If your mom hates me, I’d rather know. I don’t want to stay in her house if I’m making your parents fight.”
“It’s not about you, okay?” Jamie’s voice is loud—borderline shouting even.
It doesn’t feel good to be yelled at by anyone, but especially not Jamie. I turn away from him, but I can see his body relax in the corner of my eye. He’s caught himself.
He reaches for my hand but finds my knee instead. “I’m sorry.” I feel his finger move in small circles. Okay, maybe he meant to find my knee. “Look, I know it’s not fair, but can we not talk about this anymore? I don’t know how much time we’ve got left, and I’d rather talk about superheroes, or Hiroshi, or Brightwood, or . . .” His fingers stop moving, but they don’t leave my knee.
“Or what?” The noise comes from me, but it doesn’t sound like it. My voice is all high-pitched and raspy and far, far away.
“Or we don’t have to say anything,” he says, his voice smoky. “Can we just . . . sit for a while?”
I look down at my hands. I wish I knew how to help, but how can I when he won’t tell me what’s bothering him?
I’ve always felt like I desperately needed to say my feelings out loud—to form the words and get them out of me, because they’ve always felt like dark clouds in my head that contaminate everything around them. But maybe Jamie feels better keeping his words in. Maybe it’s how he keeps his own clouds from growing.
When I look back up his eyes are soft and his lips are parted, and then I understand. He doesn’t need to share his feelings—he needs the company. Because sometimes when the world doesn’t make sense, it just feels better if there’s someone around to make it a little less lonely.
Jamie is always trying to be what I need. Right now I want to be what he needs.
“Okay,” I say, settling into the chair.
He nods back, and it feels like enough for now.
We listen to the radio for twenty minutes, and then we drive back to his house and find his parents in separate rooms pretending as if nothing happened.
? ? ?
I draw two warriors with swords made of starlight, pointing their weapons at each other and drawing lines in the sand.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
On the first day with Hiroshi, Jamie sits in the café while I sketch in the studio. On the second day, Jamie wanders around the shopping center while I paint shards of broken cerulean glass onto the stretched canvas. On the third day, Jamie drops me off and goes back home while I paint a woman with milky-white skin and even whiter hair. On the fourth day, I take my own car and I drive myself.
It feels like a big step, doing things on my own. It’s scary, but it makes me feel stronger, somehow. I feel like my feet are heavier than I realized and if the wind blows I won’t be knocked over. Except it’s not my feet that feel strong; it’s my heart.