Matt opens his mouth robotically and I guide the spoon into his mouth. His lips close around the silver and I slide it out while he gulps down the mouthful. His eyes don’t leave my face and I feel my cheeks heating up. “This little grieving phase you’re going through? They’re only trying to hurry you through it so you can get back on track and hold up your end of the deal.”
I focus hard on the silverware wobbling in my grip. This time, broth dribbles down Matt’s chin and I have to dab down his neck to clean the mess. “It’s not a phase,” I mumble.
“If you ask me, I think they’re being entirely too delicate about it, treating you with kid gloves, sending you to see a fancy psychiatrist.” I shovel in another spoonful, hoping to shut him up. “I get it, I guess. They hope you’ll come to the right conclusion on your own. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Because you already promised, Lake,” he says, his voice flat and serious this time.
“I know what promise I made,” I say softly.
“Mom and Dad, they told me. You told me—”
“Told you what?” I snap.
“That if I lived until your eighteenth birthday, your choice would be me.”
“As if you had another choice.” But that’s not exactly true. I remember the time before our parents cut the deal with Matt. How Dad caught him trying to drive his wheelchair into the ocean, only the wheels got stuck in the wet sand. How many attempts before he’d figure out a way to do it?
Matt’s eyes go hard. “He was a high school boyfriend. You would have broken up anyway.” There’s a weird tingly sensation in the back of my throat. “And you would have gone off to college and lost touch with Penny. There’s a whole big world out there, Lake. Trust me, you’re not losing as much as you think.”
He pauses to maneuver the robotic arm of his wheelchair to pat me condescendingly on the head. It’s about the only thing he’s able to do with that wheelchair arm of his.
The heat in my cheeks transforms into something solid, a veil that creeps into my line of vision and I can hardly see except through pinhole slits to a world colored in rage. The spoon clatters to the table and I don’t know whether I threw it down intentionally or whether I lost my grip. Droplets land on Matt’s nose and forehead. I make no move to wipe them off.
“You’re jealous.” My voice quakes. “Jealous that I loved them and that they loved me. Jealous that anybody loved me when you’re so…so…” I search for the right word but can’t find one that would cut deeply enough. I can just make out Matt’s face through my anger—and through what I realize now are tears. He’s once again mopped his features clear of expression. He’s gone unreadable again and it infuriates me. I stand up, knocking over my chair. “I…could never…miss you a fraction of the amount that I miss them.”
I stare down my nose at him. My brother looks very small and frail. I wait, heart pounding, for the regret to seep in. Usually when Matt goes on his tirades I suffer an odd sort of double vision. I see the old Matt hovering behind those cold eyes like a ghost. The one before the accident, the one who used to sit on my bed at night and read me The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and make sandcastles with me in the morning.
But I’ve never spoken to him this way. I’ve never allowed myself to form the words even in my head. But as I wait, I find nothing inside but hatred. He’s spent the five years since the accident tearing any bond we had apart and I’m done trying to figure out why.
“Get your own damn soup,” I say, and leave my brother at the table to starve.
When my mom gets back I tell her that I’m going to see Penny’s parents and Will’s mother alone, though the plan had been for us to go together. Matt doesn’t rat me out. But she takes one look at the full bowl of soup and must know. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t argue about me leaving her there, even though I sort of want her to. For once, I’d like her to look at her two children and choose me. But she looks too tired to argue, and besides, how many times has she met Penny’s and Will’s parents anyway—like, twice?
I tell myself it’s better this way as I change into the appropriately selected all-black outfit she’s laid out on my bed, and get back into my car. Plus, I need to look for the first scavenger hunt clue, so it’s an added bonus that Mom won’t be getting in my way at Ms. Bryan’s house. I get a flutter in my stomach when I think about what the first clue might be.
Will always knew the right thing to do in every situation. I am especially thankful for that part of my boyfriend, now that he may have left me the only bread crumbs back to him and to Penny.
As I stand on Ms. Bryan’s doorstep, a pair of black flats blocking half the message on the doormat that reads no place like home, I feel nervous for the first time since Will first introduced me as his girlfriend. Ms. Bryan and Penny’s mom—Tessa—are best friends. They’re both like second mothers to me. In the past few years, I’ve probably spent more combined time at the Bryan and Hightower residences than my own home.
I pull down the hem of my dress. It’s too long and it keeps bunching over my stomach. The fabric is wool, and since it’s ninety degrees out, the dress feels itchy on my skin, like tiny ant mouths are biting me. I use the fingers sticking out of my white cast to clack the brass knocker. Then I reach down and scratch my ankle through a thick pair of hose that seemed like a respectful gesture at the time but are now just turning me all sweaty.
Ms. Bryan comes to the door in no time at all and I barely get my foot back to the ground without toppling over. She’s been expecting me.
My whole body is numb. Will’s mother ushers me into their home through a tiled foyer and into the kitchen, where his older second cousin, Jeremy, stands at the counter holding strands of cooked spaghetti in his grubby fingers and dropping them into his mouth. Jeremy rents the basement downstairs. He’s okay, kind of a screwup, and his half of the family doesn’t get along with the Bryan half. At least that’s what Will told me. Having him there helps Ms. Bryan out with the mortgage, though, and, according to Will, it gets Jeremy off his own mother’s hands. Every family needs a black sheep and, although I suppose Jeremy is the Bryans’, I’ve always kind of liked him.
“Jeremy!” Ms. Bryan scolds him, turning pink in the cheeks. Considering that her son is dead, I personally don’t think it matters what Jeremy does with spaghetti.
Jeremy shrugs and slurps a noodle. “Hi, Lake,” he says, mouth full. I wave my giant white cast monstrosity and instantly feel guilty. I have a broken ulna, a fractured elbow, a rib contusion, and a colorful array of bruises, but at least my heart’s still beating.