Starling House(85)
The enthusiasm in his voice falters a little, turns younger. “I know I should have told you, but I wanted it to be a surprise.” He fiddles with the button on his shirt cuff, sliding it in and out of the hole. “I applied for a couple jobs, first. Didn’t even get a reply. I guess I wanted to wait until I had a sure thing. And I wanted to show you I could do it. That you don’t have to take care of me anymore.” He looks back at me, forcing me to turn abruptly away and scrub my sleeve across my cheeks. The smell of my shirt only makes my eyes burn worse.
“Opal, hey, it’s okay. I’m not leaving you for good. I’ve got it all planned: I’ll major in business, get a job straight after graduation. And then it’ll be my turn to take care of you.” His hand lands tentatively on my shoulder, as if he isn’t sure whether I’ll bite it.
I sort of want to. How dare he scheme and sneak behind my back? How dare he tell Logan before he told me? How dare he not need me? Instead, I say, “I didn’t know you liked business.”
He laughs a little, like the question is silly, like I’m naive for asking it. “Guess I’ll find out.”
“You like movies. Film. Art.”
He lifts his shoulder. “So?”
“So, your stuff is really good. You’ve worked really hard on it. Why don’t you—”
“I don’t remember what Mom looked like. Did you know that?” He says it without inflection, like a man sliding the rug neatly out from under his opponent. “When I try to picture her face it goes all blurry in my head, and all I see is you.” He addresses the windshield, eyes fixed on the bulbous amber lights of the diner, voice low. “Opal, you’re bossy and you always think you know best and you have horrific taste in men. But you think I don’t know what I owe you?”
I thought my ribs had healed up, but I must have been wrong, because there’s an awful pain in my chest. My bones themselves feel wrong, chalky and friable, like old plaster.
I wait, breathing carefully around the hurt, until I can say, “You don’t owe me shit, Jasper. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
It’s suddenly vital to me that he understands, that he knows there are no scales balanced between us, no debts; that I’m nothing like our great-uncle, offering kinship only on certain conditions. That I love him, and love wipes every ledger clean. “No, I’m serious. You think I took care of you because I had to, but I didn’t. I could’ve handed you over to the foster system—maybe I should have, for your sake.” Jasper starts to object, but I talk over him. “But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to. You remember you used to sleep in my bed every night?”
An adolescent pain crosses his features, as if the mention of his childhood habits has caused him injury. “Because I had nightmares,” he mutters.
“No, meathead, because I did.” I swallow. “Because we did, I guess.”
It’s true. Every night it was either the house or the river, or sometimes both: rooms full of rushing water, stairs that disappeared into rancid white foam, black water pouring through broken windows. The only way I could sleep was with Jasper’s spine against mine, his breath whistling over the hum of the radiator.
Now he’s the one clutching his rib cage, bent like he’s in pain. I soften my voice. “I’m proud of you. For real.” I’m also pissed and sad and preemptively lonely, unable to conceive of my world without him in it, but he doesn’t need to know that. “You should definitely go to U of L. But please don’t major in business. Major in film or art history or fucking interpretive dance. Make weird art with the nerds from your forums. Scare the shit out of me, okay?”
“Okay.” He sounds uncertain.
“No, promise me. I wanted to give you a gift, remember?” I wave my phone at him, where the Stonewood website is still cycling through its slideshow: ivy creeping up old brick; girls with high blond ponytails; libraries with arched windows; Jasper, standing like the bleak “before” picture of a before-and-after remodel. “But it turns out it was a shitty gift. So just let me give you this, instead.”
“But—”
“Look, I’ve had a really long day, so just shut up and pinky swear that you won’t give up on your dreams for my sake, alright?” I stick out my pinky finger. Jasper looks at it with a helpless half smile on his face and a question in his eyes: Really?I nod once. The smile spreads, wide and young. He looks drunk on his own heady future; he looks happy.
He shakes my pinky with his.
I let go before I burst into tears, and grab Arthur’s wallet from the cupholder. There’s a genuinely upsetting amount of money in it, the bills so crisp and green they must have been withdrawn directly from the bank. I unzip Jasper’s backpack and shove the cash in the top pocket. “Go get yourself a Greyhound ticket to Louisville. You’ll have to stay in a hotel until campus opens, but I’ll get you more cash if you run out—”
“Hold up. You mean now? Like, right now?”
“It’s getting worse.” My voice is entirely without affect, like I’m reading from a newspaper. “Whatever’s under Starling House, it’s getting meaner and stronger. And Elizabeth Baine is probably only one padlock away from setting it loose. Today, when I thought you were in the motel—” I pause to swallow several times. “Yeah. Right now.”