I squinted at the hint of lavender flaring on the horizon. I couldn’t tell him I’d been given his precise coordinates but I couldn’t lie either. “Ending your life . . . it won’t bring Samback.”
“How do you know aboutSam?”
“I read abouthim.”
The accident of the little boy found floating in a swimming pool had shaken the entire city, raising controversies about parents entrusting younger children to their oldersiblings.
Trevor’s red-rimmed gaze dropped to the river belowus.
“Your parents loveyou.”
I touched his arm, and heflinched.
“No, they don’t. I killed mybrother.”
“You didn’t killhim.”
“Idid!”
I recoiled from the harshness of histone.
“I was supposed to watch him, and instead I was—I was playing Fortnite.” His voice broke, in volume and in strength. And then his shoulders hunched, and he started to shake. “I can’t goback.”
“Accidentshappen.”
“He died because ofme.”
“Do you believe in life after death,Trevor?”
The shadow of facial hair lined his trembling upper lip. He was only a year younger than I was, but grief had lent his boyish face a graveedge.
“Because I do,” I said. “And I believe your brother was collected by angels and brought toHeaven.”
He watched me without saying aword.
“I believe he’s looking down at you and wishing you wouldn’t feel so much grief andguilt.”
Trevor leveled his glum gaze on thehorizon.
“I believe he’d want you to get away from here and find yourparents.”
“I told you . . . they hateme.”
“They don’t hate you,Trevor.”
“Stop saying that. You don’t know them! And you know nothing aboutme!”
I knew everything about him and about them. I knew he was worth six feathers, which was more than most twelve-year-olds. I knew jealousy had earned him his first sinner point—he’d peed in his cousin’s field hockey trophy. He’d netted the other five points for having left the patio door unlatched and wearing headphones to play his video game, thus missing the loudsplash.
He grabbed my shoulders and shookme.
Wait . . . no.That wasn’t possible. The only time he’d touched me that day was to take my extended hand, finally allowing me to help him back up onto the ironrailing.
He’d never shakenme.
“Feather?”
I blinked up into a set of eyes shadowed by so many lashes it was impossible to tell what theyhid.
