Without Merit

“Barnaby.”

“I honestly thought she’d be over it by now,” Luck says. “She’s right. Maybe I should have called first.”

“Be over what?” Honor asks. Luck swings his gaze to Honor and he gives her a familiar smile, but then his smile disappears when he notices me.

He looks back at Honor, then back at me. Then he points between us. “Which one of you gave me a ride today?”

I lift my hand.

“Thank you for the hospitality, Merit.” Luck walks toward the table. He introduces himself to Utah, Honor, and then Sagan. When he gets to Moby, he kneels down in front of him. “You must be my nephew.”

“I’m a nephew?” Moby asks. “Merit said I’m a bastard.”

“Almost a bastard,” I correct.

“Luck,” my father says, interrupting the introductions. “Can we please sort this out first before you make yourself at home?”

Luck stands up and puts his hands on his hips. “Yeah, sure. But . . . I just woke up from a four-hour nap. Kind of already made myself at home.” He laughs, but he’s the only one laughing. I have to hand it to him. Luck is cheerful, if anything.

He follows my father to Quarter Three. I’m sad they’re moving the conversation out of Quarter One. I was enjoying it.

“Sounds like your day was productive,” Honor says to me. “At least you weren’t wasting away your entire life by sleeping all day.”

I can put up with a lot, but Honor’s snarky attitude about my decision to stop going to school is my boiling point. I toss my roll back on my plate. “Tell me, Honor. What have I missed this week that’s going to miraculously prep me for life beyond high school?”

“An opportunity to graduate, maybe?”

I roll my eyes. “I can get a GED before Christmas.”

“Yes, because that’s a reasonable alternative to a scholarship,” she says.

“You want to talk to me about reasonable?” I challenge. “Does your new boyfriend know how reasonable you’ve been when it comes to your past relationships?”

Honor’s jaw clenches. I’ve hit a nerve. Good. Maybe she’ll back off.

“That’s not fair, Merit,” Utah says.

“Whatever,” I mutter. I tear off a piece of my bread and pop it in my mouth. “Of course you’re going to defend her. She’s your favorite.”

Utah leans back in his chair. “I don’t have a favorite sister. I’m defending her because you always get too personal with your attacks.”

I nod. “Oh, right. I forgot. We like to sweep things under the rug and pretend Honor doesn’t need therapy.”

Honor glares at me from across the table. “And you wonder why you have no friends.”

“Actually, I don’t wonder that at all.”

The raised voices coming from Quarter Three interrupt our sibling bonding. It’s too muffled to make out what they’re saying, but it’s clear that Luck and Victoria aren’t having the homecoming Luck was hoping for.

“Did anyone else notice how strange his accent was?” Sagan asks.

“Thank you!” I say. “It’s so weird! It’s like his brain can’t decide if he grew up in Australia or London.”

“He sounded Irish to me,” Utah says.

Sagan shakes his head. “Nah, that was just the kilt playing tricks on you.”

I laugh and then glance down at Moby, who is still seated next to me. He’s looking down, so I can’t see his face. “Moby?”

He doesn’t look up, but he sniffles.

“Hey. Why are you crying?”

Moby sniffles some more and then says, “Everyone is fighting.”

Ugh. Nothing can make me feel worse than when Moby is upset.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Sometimes adults fight. It doesn’t mean anything.”

He wipes his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “Then why do they do it?”

I wish I had an answer for him. “I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “Come on, let’s wash up and I’ll tuck you in.” Moby has always been a great sleeper. He’s been sleeping in his own bedroom in Quarter Two since he was two. His bedtime has always been seven, but I heard Victoria tell him a few days ago that she would change it to eight in a few weeks.

The rest of us don’t really have a bedtime. My father likes us to be at the house on school nights by ten, but once we’re in our rooms, he never checks on us. I’m rarely ever in bed before midnight.

I take Moby to the bathroom and help him brush his teeth and wash his hands. His bedroom is right across the hall from where Luck is staying, which, by the sound of the shouting continuing in the other room, might be my father’s office again within the hour. Victoria puts Moby to bed most nights, but occasionally he’ll ask for Honor, Utah, or me to do it. I enjoy tucking him in at night, but I only do it when Moby specifically asks for me. I don’t like to do Victoria any unnecessary favors.

Moby’s room is whale-themed, which I hope changes before he starts having sleepovers. It’s bad enough he was named after a murderous whale, but for Victoria to actually go so far as to extend the theme to his bedroom is just asking for Moby to get bullied.

Moby likes the whales, though. He also loves that he was named after a whale. Moby-Dick is Victoria’s favorite book. I also don’t trust people who claim for a classic to be their favorite novel. I think they’re lying just to sound educated, or they simply haven’t read another book beyond high school English requirements.

My favorite book is God-Shaped Hole. It’s not a classic. It’s better than a classic. It’s a modern-day tragedy. I’ve never read Moby-Dick but I can almost bet it doesn’t leave you feeling like you have less skin than before you opened the book.

I tuck Moby into his bed, pulling the whale-themed blanket up to his chin. “Will you read me a story?” he asks.

It’s not entirely inconvenient so I nod and grab a book from his bookshelf. I choose the thinnest one, but Moby protests. “No, read ‘The King’s Perspective.’?”

That’s a new one. I glance back at the bookshelf and scan through them but I don’t see one with that title. “It’s not here. How about Goodnight Moon?”

“That’s for babies,” he says. He picks up a stack of pages from the table beside his bed. “Read this one. Sagan wrote it.” He shoves it toward me.

I take the pages from him. They’re stapled together in the top left corner. In the center of the front page it reads: The King’s Perspective

By Sagan Kattan

I sit down on the edge of the bed and run my fingers over the top of the page. “Sagan wrote you a story?”

Moby nods. “It’s a true story. And it rhymes!”

“When did he give you this?”

Moby shrugs. “Like seven years ago.”

I laugh. Moby is the smartest four-year-old I know, but he cannot, for the life of him, grasp the concept of time.