Totally and Completely Fine(10)

I did.

I also couldn’t stop glancing toward my bag. Ben was probably busy. After I’d turned him down, he probably just asked someone else. To talk about food.

Sowing those oats and all.

“I think Lena would probably love having a day that’s just the two of you,” I said.

Gabe relaxed. “You think so?”

“Well.” I paused. “She might not seem like she’s enjoying it, and she might not act as if she is, but maybe in a few years she might casually admit that it wasn’t the worst thing she ever experienced.”

“I really fucked up, didn’t I?”

My poor brother. He had such a big heart but fumbled with it.

“She’s a teen girl who misses her dad,” I said. “Remember how that was?”

There were times I wished I couldn’t.

Gabe winced. “I don’t know how Mom put up with us.”

We sat in silence, looking through to the kitchen, where Lena was standing with Teddy at her feet, hoping desperately for scraps.

“You’d really be okay with me taking her for the day?” Gabe asked.

“Yes,” I said.

I wasn’t going to text Ben.

“You’ll be okay by yourself?”

Then I thought about his eyes. About how they’d made me feel.

One text couldn’t hurt.

“I think I’ll manage,” I said.

Chapter 7

Then

After Dad died, money was tight, and everything was so much harder. Mom did her best, but there were plenty of nights when all we had in the house was a box of noodles and some butter. Or weeks with jelly sandwiches for lunch. It was bad enough living without a parent, but being dad-less and hungry? All the time? I couldn’t handle it.

I set up a secret poker game in the basement. Jessica helped.

I was the dealer, but she played the host—and she took to it like a pro. One night she even showed up wearing a big fake diamond necklace because she said it added an aura of class. We were a formidable team.

It was pay-to-play, and it wasn’t long before I started raking in my classmates’ allowances and the older kids’ paychecks from after-school jobs. I felt less bad about taking money from students whose parents had enough to give them, but in the end, I’d collect my share no matter how the player got their hands on the cash.

Gabe—who could never say no to me—was the bouncer. I was pretty sure that if he’d had to actually enforce anything, he’d turn and run, but his presence ended up being enough to keep my classmates in line. He also liked how Jessica would call him “the muscle.” I caught him once flexing and checking himself out in the mirror.

Spencer hadn’t liked it at all, but things had gotten tense between him and our family. Between me and him. After the whole thing with his mom—all that weeping and wailing at the funeral of a man she’d never met—we’d started getting letters from her church.

They wanted to plant a tree for him in their garden. They said we could visit it whenever we wanted. They said that the congregation was praying for us and that we were welcome there anytime.

Dad had been an atheist; Mom was a lapsed Protestant. We celebrated Christmas and sometimes Easter, but mostly for the candy and the presents, not the religion.

And we didn’t need a tree. We didn’t need prayers. We needed to pay off my dad’s medical bills. We needed a new roof. A better water heater. A car that didn’t break down in the summer. Groceries. Gabe needed new shoes. I needed a haircut. We needed help. Real help.

I didn’t want to go to Spencer’s church with him and his mom, but Gabe was interested. He went one Sunday, but when he came home, he went straight to his room and wouldn’t talk about it until I sat on him and demanded he tell me what happened.

I knew he wanted to tell me because he could have easily pushed me off. He was just at the beginning of a growth spurt.

Spencer had taken him to a youth group meeting where Gabe had been told that Dad was in hell because he hadn’t believed in god and that unless Gabe made a change in his life, he’d go to hell too.

I was furious.

Gabe refused to tell Mom, and he didn’t want to end his friendship with Spencer either.

“It’s not his fault,” he kept saying. “His family is just like that.”

But Gabe was a more forgiving sort than I was.

The next time Spencer came over, I cornered him in the kitchen. He wasn’t as big as Gabe, and I knew how to be terrifying. I stabbed my finger into his chest.

“Don’t you ever—ever—take my brother to see those people again.”

He went white and quiet but nodded.

“I just wanted to help,” he said. Almost whispering.

“Well, you didn’t,” I said. “Asshole.”

I could see that he wanted to say something else—probably chastise me for my language, which he had done in the past—but he smartly kept his mouth shut. Lately my temper had felt like a caged animal, just looking for someone to come close enough to the bars so I could swipe them with my claws.

We kept our distance from each other after that. Which was good, because I knew for a fact that he wouldn’t have approved of the super-secret basement poker game, or the complete lack of guilt I felt taking money from some of our shittier classmates.