Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FLETCHER
“So.” Jacks sizes Chris up from across the kitchen table, folds her hands together on the surface, and leans forward. “You a social worker?”
Chris’s eyebrows pull together. “No.”
Jacks doesn’t blink. “Shrink?”
Chris turns to me.
“Jacks,” I sigh.
She throws her hands up. “Well, I know you roped her into this somehow, so you might as well just tell me.”
“She’s not—” I rub my eyes.
This all has been one never-ending day. We stayed up most of the night talking—catching up, me trying to convince her dropping out of school is a bad idea—and I barely got a few hours of sleep. It’s not that I’m not glad to see her. Of course I am. Of all the foster siblings I’ve had in my life, she’s the one I was closest to. The one I’ve wondered about the most. The one I’ve worried about. But seeing her after all this time…it’s stirring up a lot that I’ve kept carefully buried for years.
A headache pulses behind my eye sockets. “Christine is my…” I meet her eyes. “Girlfriend.”
I gauge her reaction to the term, but she doesn’t seem opposed to it. We pretty much agreed to as much, just without the label. After keeping us a secret, it still feels like I’m doing something I’m not supposed to by saying it though.
But I like it.
In fact, I’d like to say it again.
Jacks throws her head back and laughs. No, cackles . “How long have you been into cougars?”
My attention snaps to her. “Jacks!”
“What? No offense, obviously you’re hot. But how old are you?” When Christine doesn’t answer right away, Jacks sighs and pushes on. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those chicks that thinks it’s rude to talk about age. Laaaame. It’s not rude to ask girls that until, what? After twenty-one? That’s just perpetuating the stupid idea that women can’t age.”
I put my face in my hands. I feel like I’ve been running— sprinting —trying to catch up with Jacks since the moment she got here. She was always free-spirited growing up. But it was nothing like this. Or maybe it was. Maybe this is what the eighteen-year-old version of that looks like.
Christine laughs softly beside me. Thankfully, she doesn’t seem offended. If anything, that smile she’s giving Jacks looks approving.
“You know, you’re right,” she says. “I hadn’t really thought about when women start to think that way. To answer your question, I’m about nine years older than your brother.”
Jacks leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.
“So Fletcher tells me you don’t want to go back to school.”
Jacks’s eyes narrow to slits as she turns to me. “And let me guess,” she deadpans. “You’re going to try to talk me out of it too.”
“Well, no.”
Jacks and I both whip toward her in surprise.
Christine shrugs. “Have you thought about getting your GED? That’s what I did after I dropped out at sixteen. Then at least you’ll have more options available to you moving forward, just in case you want them.”
I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me until now that Christine is probably the perfect person to talk to about this stuff considering her own history.
Jacks uncrosses her arms and starts picking at her black nail polish. “You dropped out at sixteen?”
Chris nods. “And ran away from home.”
Jacks’s fingers pause.
“So all I’m trying to say is, I’m not here to talk you out of anything. I know you had your reasons. But maybe Fletcher and I can help you figure out what to do now to set you up for something better.”
She actually seems to be listening to Chris, something she definitely was not doing with me, so I stay quiet.
“Have you thought about taking the GED?” Chris asks.
Jacks shakes her head.
Chris shrugs. “Well, I’d be happy to help you study if you decide you want to.”
“Why would you do that?” asks Jacks. She sounds utterly perplexed, as if no one’s ever offered to do something nice for her before.
The guilt that’s settled into the pit of my stomach since the moment I realized it was her grows heavier and heavier.
She gave me the gist of what happened to her after I left, but I could tell it barely scratched the surface. It’s not that I haven’t thought about her, wondered about her. It’s not like leaving her behind was easy. But even if I’d stayed, we would’ve been split up as they sent us off to new houses anyway. At least, that’s part of how I justified it to myself at the time.
After the fire…I felt like I needed to put all of that behind me. To cut all ties. I was barely keeping my head above water back then. And with the crowd I left town with, taking Jacks with me wasn’t an option.
They were older, all sixteen to eighteen, and stoned or drunk half the time. Between the breaking and entering, vandalism, and the armed robbery that finally made me split ways with them…there was no way I was bringing an eight-year-old into that.
But at the time, it looked like my only way out, so I took it.
Chris doesn’t seem taken aback. If anything, she smiles like the question is exactly what she’d expect. “Because you’re clearly important to Fletcher, and Fletcher is important to me. And when I was your age, someone who didn’t know me helped me, and it probably saved my life. Call it paying it forward.”
It’s selfish and small because this is not at all about me, but I can’t help from smiling all the same. Fletcher is important to me.
Jacks goes back to picking at her nail polish, and her forehead wrinkles like she’s thinking hard about something. I think this is the first time she’s been this quiet since she got here. I can’t tell if it’s because Chris is getting through to her in a way I couldn’t, or if she’s shutting down because she feels ganged up on.
“Is Jacks short for something?” Chris offers.
“Jacklyn,” she mutters.
Chris’s phone vibrates against the table, and she doesn’t even glance at the screen before silencing it.
I curse under my breath as what she said on the porch finally sinks in. Work . They both turn to me as I push to my feet. “I’ll be right back.” I pat my pockets as if my phone will have magically reappeared there. Hopefully I’m right and it’ll be sitting in the car waiting for me. “I need to call the bar.”
I lock eyes with Christine again, and she nods as if to say Go on, we’re good here.
Jacks, at least, no longer has that calculating glint in her eye. Despite how different she seems now, I recognized that look immediately. The one that, back in the day, told me I’d probably have one of the kids come running and crying into my room later to tell me all about what she’d done. The pranks were usually harmless—taking the laces out of their shoes, hiding their stuffed animals—just enough to make sure they knew she was upset with them.
Jacks rolls her eyes when she notices my hesitation. “Leave so I can tell her embarrassing stories about you.”
“You could at least pretend to be grateful,” I mumble as I head for the garage.
“It’s not real gratitude if you have to beg for it!” she calls.
I snort as the door closes behind me.
“You’re really showing your age here with this.”
I sigh as my car falls off the cliff— again —just as hers crosses the finish line. In my defense, I haven’t touched this game in probably five years.
This is also her first time ever playing, and she’s still kicking my ass, so maybe I just suck.
Video games have never interested me much, but this game was one of the first things my parents bought when they took me in—I guess they figured, what fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t be excited about an Xbox? Other than the occasional night with Leo and Liam, it usually collects dust in my closet.
I don’t know why it was the first thing to pop into my head after Chris left earlier. It was just something for us to do together that got her to stop staring at me. She’s always had that piercing gaze—even as kids—the kind that makes you feel like she can read your mind.
Barely a few seconds into the next game, my car plummets off the cliff again.
Jacks cackles and peers at my controller. “Are you even hitting the right buttons?”
I pull it closer to my chest so she can’t see—but I do double-check that I am, in fact, using the right ones. “Maybe I’m letting you win. Trying to make you feel welcome and everything.”
“Just remind me to never get in a car with you in real life.”
I scoff. “I am an excellent driver.”
Her eyebrows inch up as my car takes another dive. “I really see no evidence of that.”
We play another few rounds in silence, but I catch her smirks in my periphery every time I nosedive off another cliff.
I bite my lip to hold back from asking what she thinks about all the GED stuff she and Christine were talking about. She said she’d think about it, and I have a feeling if I keep asking, I’ll push her in the opposite direction.
“You could’ve called,” I say quietly.
“So could you,” she says, her voice clipped.
My eyes close for a second. I could’ve reached out after I left. Not knowing where she was placed after Joan and Bob was the excuse I’d told myself, but the truth is, I never looked back, never tried to find her. Not that it would’ve been easy—maybe even impossible—to track her down, but I’d never even tried.
I clear my throat. “I meant before coming all this way. What if the address you’d found was wrong? Or?—”
“I figured it’d be harder to tell me to get lost if you had to look me in the eye first.”
I set the controller on the couch between us. “I never would’ve told you to get lost.”
She stays focused on the screen as her car passes the finish line.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice coming out rough. “That I left. That I never checked back in.”
Her jaw hardens, and she nods.
“But I would really, really like to make it up to you now.”
That, finally, gets her to look over at me. “If what you actually want is for me to leave, I’d rather you tell me that than pretend.”
I shake my head and scoot closer to her on the couch. “I’m not pretending.”
“I know it’s weird,” she says as she turns back to the screen. “Me showing up here. I just…” Her shoulders slump on her exhale. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Weird?” I lean back and kick my feet up on the coffee table. I cast her a sideways smile, hoping to defuse the tension. “I would’ve been insulted if you’d gone anywhere else.”
She rolls her eyes, but smirks as she hands me my controller. “Come on. I’ll give you some pointers.”