I laughed. “Like the plane?”
“No. Like the color.”
“What color?”
“Black.”
“You’re named after the color black?” That was even worse than my name. He nodded. “Oh. Well, it could be worse, you could be called purple.”
“Or puce.”
“What’s puce?” I asked him curiously.
“Pink . . . I think.” He grinned at me, and I started to giggle.
“I think Jett suits you.”
He scratched his head and looked back toward his house. “We’re playing in the pool. Do you want to come?”
“I can’t swim.”
His eyes rounded in shock. “My brother and cousin are there; we will help keep you up.” A large hand extended toward me. “Come on, I won’t let them drown you.”
“Are there girls?” I asked cautiously as I stepped closer to him.
“No!” Jett looked horrified. “Girls suck.”
“ButI’ma girl.”
Jett looked me over before he grinned again. “Nah, you have a boy’s name,” he said as he grabbed my arm. “Come on, Quinn, let’s teach you how to swim.”
“I need a bathing suit!” I protested as he pulled me along behind him, looking down at my shorts and T-shirt.
“You’re fine.”
When we got to the big house that sat back from ours, half-surrounded by trees, I stared up at it as he pulled me along the fence until we were in a back courtyard with decking, chairs, and a large pool. Tearing my attention from the grand house, I saw two boys playing in the water. One looked so much like Jett he had to be his brother, and the other one was bigger but looked like them, too. Both stopped playing and stared at me.
“Where’s her brother?” the one who looked like Jett asked.
“This is Quinn,” Jett said before he jumped into the water. When he surfaced, he shook his wet hair out of his face. “She can’t swim.”
“Then why is she here?” the other boy asked.
“So we can teach her how to swim.” Jett swam over to the end of the pool and got out. His shorts and T-shirt stuck to him, and as he looked down at his clothes, he looked back up at me and smiled. “See, you don’t need a swimsuit,” he told me confidently.
“I don’t want to teach her to swim,” the boy who looked like Jett said.
“Okay. Ash and I can do it,” he told him as he walked toward me before adding, “you can sit and sulk like a girl.”
I watched the boy glare at his brother as the other boy, Ash, laughed.
“You’re called Ash?” I asked him. He nodded. “What’s your name?” I asked the other boy.
“That’s my twin, Gray,” Jett told me. “I’m older.”
“You all have strange names.”
“They all mean dark or black,” Jett said as he reached me. “Our older brother is Onyx.”
