“Sometimes,” I said, feeling my face warm as I snatched it from him before his curiosity led him to open it. “Sorry about your parents.”
“Yeah, well, that’s life, isn’t it? It sucks, and then you die,” he said, staring at my notebook. “Can I see? I won’t laugh...unless it’s supposed to be funny.”
“No,” I said, tucking the book away before he could grab it. Come to think of it, he could get it from me even if it was tucked away. He’d beaten Matt Garrett after all, and no one had done that before. He wasn’t as big as Matt, but he was still pretty big for a kid our age. I...was not. I was a scrawny kid, actually. Mom always said my dad was big, so I probably would be one day, but I wasn’t going to wait with bated breath. For all I knew, she was lying to make me feel better, which she did sometimes. She loved me, but sometimes she didn’t always tell me the truth. For all I knew, my dad was some drunk she met at a bar, and she just liked to say he had been big and strong to make me feel better.
He stared at me for a moment, then shrugged, leaning back against the tree. “Okay, whatever. You got any brothers or sisters?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got some now, and I don’t know if I like it or not.”
“What do you mean you have them now?”
“Oh, my mom’s best friend, Marty, adopted me after my parents decided a plane crash was more interesting than coming home to me,” he said with a snort. “I mean, I already knew them. Mom and Dad used to visit Marty all the time. But like...it’s weird as hell to think that they’re my brothers and sister now, you know? Mason and Moira are cool, I guess. Moira is kind of a hard ass, and Mason is an ass. Milo’s just a kid, and Eli isn’t much better, and her and her new husband aretalking about getting some new, weird kid, and...I’m boring the fuck out of you.”
“I’m just kind of lost,” I admitted with a laugh.
He grinned. “Yeah, well, that’s how I’ve been feelin’ lately, you know? It’s like everyone, even Marty, keeps telling me it’s alright if I want to be sad about my parents or whatever, but c’mon, that was a year ago, isn’t that enough time?”
“Is it?” I wondered. “If my mom died, I don’t think I’d ever get over it.”
He frowned. “What about your dad?”
“Dunno. Took off, I guess. Mom says he was important, but I guess that means he was too important for us. So fuck him.”
“Mason would say that your mom already did, and that’s why you’re in this shit.”
I snorted. “My mom would slap the shit out of me if I told her that, even if it was someone else who said it first.”
“He says stupid shit like that all the time, makes me laugh,” he said with a shrug. “And yeah, alright, fine, I miss them, alright?”
“Your parents?”
“Yeah. Everyday. But I can’t just, like... be sad all the time, you know? I’ve gotta do something other than be sad.”
“Like beating Matt up?”
“Oh, please, he was an asshole, and deserved it. I don’t care if Aunt Marty says I have anger management problems; that kid was a dick.”
“He is...and it’s okay to be sad about them. But I don’t think they’d want you to be sad all the time.”
“See? You get it. Everyone keeps asking me how I feel, and it’s annoying.”
“Do you tell the truth?”
“What, like I cry about it and shit?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Like, you don’t cry about it, or you don’t tell people.”
“I don’t tell other people.”
“You just told me.”
He stared at me. “Yeah, okay, I did, so what? You sit over here all the time and don’t talk to anybody. Who are you going to tell?”
