Even the smell is enough to make me swallow hard to keep tears from welling. It doesn’t just remind me of Jesse. It reminds me of myself. Of who I was. What I had. How my life was before.
Once I get past the front hall, though, the house has changed. Completely changed, as much as it could without gutting and rebuilding.
As Dr. Mandal leads me into the living room, I don’t recognize any of the furniture or even the arrangement of it. There are only a few trophies on a bookshelf, far fewer than Jamil earned. There are others, too, bearing Jesse’s name.
When I spot an orange cat on the sofa, I smile and say, “Hey, Phurri,” and he turns, and I see my mistake and say, “Oh.”
“Phurri died a couple of years ago. That’s Fluffy.” She spells it out as Phluphi.
I smile again. “Jasser named him, too, I’m guessing?”
Her own smile falters, and her gaze drops as she takes a chair. “No, I did, following his naming convention.”
I sit on the sofa. “I’m sorry. About Jamil. I didn’t say that earlier, and I should have. I’m sorry for what happened to him, and I’m sorry Luka…” I choke on his name. “I’m sorry my brother…” Tears fill my eyes, and I inhale sharply.
Just get this out. It’s important. Get it out.
“I’m so sorry Luka… Luka…”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
“What?” I look up sharply.
“Your brother.” A wry smile. “Silly question, isn’t it? Of course you do. I know how close you two were. You must miss him so much.”
I try to say sure, I miss him, kind of, but after what he did, that’s all changed, so nope, I don’t really… don’t really…
“It’s okay to say you miss him, Skye.”
I open my mouth to deny it, and I burst into tears.
Jesse
The minute Jesse walks in the door, he knows he’s in trouble. Well, worse trouble than he was when he left, which is saying something.
His parents have always been what one might call average disciplinarians, leaning toward permissive. Since Jamil’s death, that lean has become a dangerous slant. In a heartbeat, Jesse became their only child. He’s struggling, and they want to give him space. He’s only sixteen, a junior, bright enough to turn things around in his senior year, or – if that’s too much to ask – no one would begrudge him a victory lap.
This weekend, though, he is in trouble. The kind he hasn’t been in since before Jamil died. The kind he really can’t remember being in at all.
His parents are disappointed. They don’t say that, of course. They never say that, even when he does disappoint them. At most, he’ll get prods.
Jesse, why don’t you call up Mark, see what he’s doing this weekend?
Jesse, your teacher says you have a biology project – how about we work on that together?
After last night’s track meet, though, they’re pissed. Any pride he bought with his win, he more than canceled out by being an ass to Skye.
An ass. His mom actually said that. Well, she told him he was being “a bit of an ass” but only because she couldn’t quite bring herself to go all the way.
He had been, though. No doubt about it. A complete ass.
“She came to watch you, Jasser.”
“Me? No, she just stopped by —”
“I saw her go to the fence for your race. After you blew her off, she admitted she’d like to talk to you, and then she was embarrassed when she realized she’d said that.”
“You misunderstood.”
“How can we misunderstand ‘I’d like to talk to him’? She made it clear she means when you have time. When you’re up to it. She completely understands this must be hard for you and doesn’t want to do anything to make it harder. Apparently it’s true what they say, about girls maturing faster than boys.”
He flinched at that. Flinched not only at his mother’s disappointment, but at the knowledge that he was being a brat.
Now he comes home after Skye’s visit, and he has only to look at his mother’s face to know he’s sunk even lower.
He tries to avoid the subject of Skye. He shows his mom a couple of shirts he’s bought, and even tells a funny anecdote about some little kids in the food court. But his mom has that look on her face, the one that says she has something to say and he can tell her about his trip to the mall later.
So he braces himself and asks, “What did Skye say about me?”
Not a word. That’s what his mother tells him. His name never came up.
“She’s been through hell, Jasser. Have you even thought about what it was like for her?”
Skye didn’t complain to his mother, of course. His mom says she just cried. Cried and cried, and that hurts more than if she had complained about how badly he’d behaved.
Jesse has never seen Skye cry. She caught him once, just a stupid thing, Jamil being a jerk on a day when Jesse already felt like shit. Skye found him and sat down and said, “Huh, guess Jamil’s been getting the same emails I have,” and he said, “What?” confused enough to forget she’d caught him crying. “Emails for penis enlargement pills,” she said. “He must be buying them, too, because he’s being a bigger dick than ever.” That made him laugh so hard he choked. It was only afterward that he realized he’d never even told her Jamil was the cause of his tears. She’d known, without a word.
But Skye never cries. He can’t even picture it happening.
She did, though. She sat on his couch and broke down with his mother, and he was part of the reason for those tears.
He made her cry.
Guess Jamil’s not the one buying those pills these days, huh?
“Do you know how she was treated after she left Riverside?” his mother asks.
Better than she’d have been treated if she stayed.
He doesn’t say that – it would sound flip. But as much as thirteen-year-old I-feel-rejected Jesse resented Skye leaving, sixteen-year-old Jesse understands that Skye was better off elsewhere. Or so he thinks, until his mother directs his attention to the comment sections on old articles.
When he reads those comments, he can barely breathe, outrage and confusion choking him until he says, “But she wouldn’t have read those, right?”
“Does it matter? People may not have said this to her face, but this is how she was treated.”
He’s sick then. Physically sick. And not just for Skye, either. He knows how hard it would have been for his mother to look up those articles, to revisit the shooting. Yet she did it so she would understand what Skye was going through… and because Jesse himself couldn’t be bothered.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That you… had to look…”
“I didn’t have to,” she says. “I chose to. Sometimes, showing compassion for others means doing things that are painful for us.”
He goes into the kitchen after that. Makes his mother tea and silently drops it off before he retreats to his room. He sits on his bed and thinks. Then he strides into the living room and tells his mom he’s going out.
“Can I expect you for dinner?” she asks.
“Probably not.”
There’s a pause, and he knows she wants to ask where he’s going. She won’t. That’s all part of giving him space. Showing they trust him. She only says, “Do you want to take my car?”
“I’m fine.”
A rattle of keys. “Take it. Just be home by dark. You don’t have enough experience driving at night.”
That’s the trick, then. Please take my car… because it guarantees you’ll be back by dark.
Not that he ever stays out late. Jesse isn’t exactly a party boy. That’s one part of Jamil’s life that his brother can keep.
He takes the car. He owes his mom that much, and he doesn’t expect he’ll be long.
He’s going to apologize to Skye. No more following her around, trying to work up the courage to say something. Twice now she’s had the guts to make that move. It’s his turn.
Skye