“I’d offer to help out, but honestly, I kind of suck at most things.”
From the way she looked at me, it was the first thing I’d said all day that she’d believed. “It’s not too difficult.”
“Then is it…” Of the eight million wrong things to say, I couldn’t even think of one. “I don’t know, are you just being a dick?”
Probably I shouldn’t have given myself points for the fact that Jaz at least hadn’texpectedthat one. “What?”
“Sorry. Bad phrasing. It’s just…either there’s a reason you’re not doing homework or there isn’t, and if there is we can help but if there isn’t then, like…”
“Then I’m just being a dick.” She looked sullen. And possibly like she was internalisingis a dickand adding it tois traumatisedandmakes bad choiceson her roster of self-definition.
“No!” I insisted very fervently. “Not, you know. Not actually. I mean sort of actually but only in the same way that… Look, can we pretend we had this conversation without the being-a-dick framing because I don’t think it’s helping.”
Jaz buried her face in her hands. “How did I get stuck with you?”
“Spat on a security contractor?”
“If I spat on you, do you think they’d send me to somebody who isn’t shit?”
“Doyou?” I gave her a meaningful look. Then realised that I was meant to be meaningfully looking at the road, oversteered, and very nearly swerved into oncoming traffic.
“We’re going to die,” Jaz said calmly. “I’m going to die in a car crash because the socials decided my mum was too fucked in the brain to look after me and gave me to a guy who can’t drive.”
“I can drive,” I insisted in the face of all the evidence.
“Prove it.”
Fortunately, while I had a great many self-destructive impulses, the desire to show off behind the wheel wasn’t one of them. So instead, I tried, “I’m sorry about your mum.”
“Don’t talk about my mum.”
I kept my eyes squarely on the road. “Right. Sorry.”
“You know nothing about her.”
“Gotcha.”
“Or me.”
“Right.”
“Are you just agreeing with everything I say now?”
It hadn’t been a deliberate strategy, but it seemed to be working. “Looks like.”
“You suck.”
“Yup.”
“Odile O’Donnell is a shitty musician.”
“Hey!” I de-road-eyed for a tenth of a second, then got control of myself. “I’ll lay off your mum but you lay off mine, okay?”
I couldfeelJaz rolling her eyes. “Whatever.”
“No. Seriously. My mum is off limits.”
“What’ll you do? Ground me?”
