Chapter 8 Ivy #2
“Don’t sass me, snot. You should be asleep.” I cross my arms to appear more intimidating, but I’m so depleted of energy, I can’t even be mad at him right now. I barely feel the soles of my feet as it is.
“Yeah, yeah. Give me a second.” He puts on his headset again, clicks his mouse a few times, and says to whoever is also online, “I have to go. Ivy just got here. Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
“Ethan?”
“And Bradley,” he confirms, stretching out his arms over his head.
“Another two snots who should be getting their beauty sleep as we speak. You know you have to be up and running in, like, six hours, right?”
“I’m not a baby. I can stay up until later,” he argues but still rubs his eyes and yawns, all in the span of five seconds. He sends a sheepish smile to my arched eyebrow. “I just wanted to wait for you. Make sure you got home okay.”
Damn it. He knows he’s got me there. Yet I still try to be the responsible adult who has to make sure he sleeps a solid eight hours every night. “I told you I’d leave a note on your nightstand for when you wake up.”
“It’s fine. I wasn’t tired.”
Where do teenagers get the energy to argue about everything all the time?
I decide to drop it for now. “Did you eat dinner?”
“Yeah, a sandwich. I left one in the kitchen for you—turkey with mayo, cheese, and lettuce. No tomatoes because I’m a great brother.”
He’s trying to bribe me, I know that. He’s not exactly being subtle about it. And I must be a shitty guardian because it’s working.
I go up to him and plant at least twenty very loud kisses on his sweaty cheek, and he only bats me away twice.
“Who’s the greatest brother in the entire world?”
He groans. “You’re talking to me like I’m a dog.”
“And dogs are better than most people, so I’d take that as a compliment if I were you.”
I put him out of his misery by planting one last loud kiss on his forehead and ruffling his hair that’s starting to grow a little too long. “Take a shower before school tomorrow. I can smell your armpits all the way from here.”
He gives me his signature eye roll. “How was work?”
Unable to stand up any longer, I sit on his bed—a bed that’s full of laundry that should be folded and stored away in his wardrobe, but I’m too tired to scold him for it.
“The resort is gorgeous. I’m talking rich wood panels everywhere, high ceilings, a fancy restaurant…
.” Against my better judgment—because I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get up now—I lie on top of his pile of clothes, which thankfully smell of detergent and not sweat, and stretch my legs.
“Cleaning the spa is sort of relaxing too. It’s a small room, and it’s just me, so I listened to a podcast while I worked.
I can’t feel my feet, but as far as jobs go, this one’s not so bad. ”
His frown takes me aback.
“What’s wrong, Jojo?”
Something about my brother and me is that we don’t keep secrets from each other. Whatever we’re feeling, whatever we’re worried about, we always tell the other. Our relationship has always been a judgment-free zone.
Also, our feelings show on our faces; we couldn’t hide them if we tried.
“Come on.” I grab one of his pillows and throw it at him. He catches it easily and places it on his lap. “Tell me.”
Lowering his gaze to the pillow, he goes and splits my heart in two.
“I don’t want you to have to work a second job because of me, that’s all.”
To this day, I sometimes struggle to see Joe as the teenage boy he is. Not because he’s immature—he’s not—but because part of me is in denial about him growing up. He’s still a baby—my baby, who puked all over my old ABBA T-shirt and taught me what loving unconditionally means.
But the truth is that Joe is no baby. He understands everything that’s going on with our father, and he’s very aware of our financial situation.
And while the last thing I want is to burden him with any of it, because he’s still a kid and his only responsibility is to be a kid, he’s smarter and more observant than I ever was at his age.
“Joe,” I start carefully, thinking my words through because I need him to understand this, “I got this second job for us, all right? Just for a while, to get us back on our feet after Dad.”
“Because flight school is too expensive, you mean.”
The worst thing is, he doesn’t sound angry when he says it, only resigned. A bratty teenager, I can handle. A disappointed one, though? It’s heartbreaking.
The defeat in his voice pushes me to my feet even though my entire body groans in protest.
I place a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, there’s no point in denying that flight school is expensive—that’s just a fact. But you know what else is a fact?”
He doesn’t answer.
“That you’re going no matter what,” I say firmly, leaving no room for arguments.
“You know I have a savings account for it. Between that and the grants we’ve been looking into, we’ll cover everything.
You just need to trust me and not worry about anything but getting good grades. That’s all I ask of you.”
“Well, I’m worrying about it,” he argues, those baby blues that are the exact shade of mine landing on me. “Those grants we looked at, they are really hard to get. We can’t count on them. You’re working too much, and you don’t have to. I could get a job.”
“You’re not getting a job. We talked about this.”
“I won’t fall behind at school,” he insists.
“You’re mowing Ford’s lawn, and now his brother’s too.
That gives you some pocket money to go out with your friends, which is more helpful than you think.
We’ve had this conversation a million times already, and I won’t change my mind.
You already have a job, which is to do well at school.
Without that, there’s no flight school in the first place.
Let me take care of the rest, okay? I’m the adult here. ”
“I just… I don’t do anything. I feel like a leech,” he says, making my heart sink. “I didn’t tell you because I knew it would make you upset.”
And it does, but I try to mask it by giving his shoulder a squeeze with a reassuring smile. “You’re not a leech, Jojo. You’re a kid, and kids don’t have to work. I promise we’re okay. I wouldn’t lie to you if things were truly bad.”
“But the hospital bill—”
“I’m taking care of it.” It may have put a dent in our savings, but I’ll earn that money back in no time. If I have to get a third job, I will. “You help out more than you think.”
“How so?” He sounds skeptical.
I start listing things off with my fingers.
“You clean up after yourself—at least outside of your bedroom, stinky—you don’t talk back or get in trouble, you don’t do drugs or get drunk, you get good grades…
. It may seem like nothing to you, but you’re preventing me from having a heart attack at twenty-six. ”
That manages to pull a small smile out of him. “I guess.”
“I don’t need you to work. I only need you to keep being the most amazing baby brother. Can you do that?”
When he nods, I ruffle his hair again and yawn, ready to call it a night.
Until it hits me that I still haven’t told him about that.
“Since we’re already talking about serious stuff,” I start, regretting not having brought this up earlier, but also not. He was having fun at the festival, and I didn’t want to ruin it. “Dad called.”
His shoulders stiffen. “What did he want?”
“To check in on us. I didn’t tell him anything other than we’re fine.”
“Okay.”
“His hearing is coming up,” I tell him, not bothering to say that he asked us to go. When he doesn’t say anything to that or ask any questions, I add, “And Aunt Sherry might drop by.”
That gets a reaction out of him. “What? Here? Why?”
I let out an exhausted sigh. “Yes, here. And who knows why. To give me that heart attack you’re saving me from, possibly. We need to be prepared.”
His oh-so-serious nod makes me chuckle despite the circumstances. “I’ll dust the house every single day just in case.”
I poke him in the cheek. “Sounds like heaven to me. Good night, Jojo. And go to bed; no more video games tonight.”
“Yes, boss. Good night.”
I drag my feet toward the hallway. “Love you, snot.”
“Love you, Ives.”
I don’t know what I’m doing here. I should be dozing off under the covers, given that my alarm is going off in five hours. But after taking a shower, putting on clean pajamas, and wolfing down Joe’s sandwich, sleep was suddenly not in my immediate plans anymore.
Careful not to wake him up—his faint snores tell me he’s finally asleep—I grab my journal, wrap a blanket around my shoulders, turn on the porch light, and sit on the steps outside.
It’s not a cold night. The wind is more of a light breeze, the clouds aren’t covering the stars, and the universe feels infinite.
The blank pages stare back at me in a way that feels daring. The game is Draw something that doesn’t suck, and I’m losing.
When was the last time I had one of my late-night doodle sessions? I used to love them. Mom would sit with me in bed after dinner and give me all kinds of silly prompts for me to draw.
A parrot wearing a party hat.
A woman in a cowgirl outfit riding a seahorse.
Baby Joe racing a car down a mountain.
It was my favorite time of the day. Just me, Mom, and a blank page full of possibilities.
But Mom is gone, and so is my ability to draw anything remotely decent.
I start flipping through my journal to avoid bursting into tears when I think about her.
The first few pages aren’t blank—illustrations of Central Park, random Brooklyn brownstones, and that little kiosk in Bryant’s Park I always stopped by before sitting at the park for hours breathe a kind of life into the pages that has been lost since.
“It’s not that hard,” I mutter to myself, my fingers tightening around the pencil.
But my perfectionism, or doubts, or who-knows-what sinks its claws into me. Pencil meets paper, and I freeze.
The sound of a car pulling into Ford’s driveway brings me out of my head. The car stops. A door opens, then shuts.
“Ivy?”