“I don’t know,” Omar says quietly.
“You think I don’t know I look crazy?” She’s quiet too. “I know. You think I don’t know what this crusade is costing me? But what does it cost to think we never deserved any better, and this is just the way it is, and there’s no point in fighting?”
“Maybe it’ll be different this time.” He wraps his fingers around her fists.
“It’s too late.”
“Only for us.”
“Who else is there?”
“Them. Unfortunately. And they don’t owe us anything.”
“They owe us everything.”
“All we can hope for is their good grace.”
“Well, in that case”—Nora unclaws her hands from under his—“we are truly, truly fucked.”
One
The point my sisters ganged up on me to make in the hallway outside tutoring yesterday is the one it always is: it’s the least I can do.
It’s not that Mirabel inspires me in some sparkly-disabled-sister-inspirational-rainbow way. More like she shames me in a regular-sister-who’s-both-smarter-and-nicer-than-I-am way. It’s the least I can do, not the way Mrs. Radcliffe says when she makes us tutor: I am blessed so I should serve. More like: Mirabel can’t, but what’s my excuse? If Mirabel could, she would shout down the kids kicking River’s ass, demand protection for him from the school administration, use her body to shield his, use her fists to give as good as River got. I guess it makes sense Mirabel feels a kinship with anyone at the mercy of bullies, circumstance, their own physical limitations, and shit they inherited from their parents that isn’t their fault, but the only way she can help is to make me do it for her.
You know that saying “Easier said than done”？ This is true even when you can’t talk.
Still, I was convinced. Am convinced. Can you be reluctantly hell-bent? I am that. What I can do and whether I should do it for River Templeton may be in question, but anything I can do for Mirabel, I do, if not always gladly then resolvedly.
So I submit that into evidence. Okay, yes, a part of me is thinking that if I help him, he’ll help me back, actually do what he said he would, spy harder on his father, get us proof we can use. But part of me—a bigger part—decides to help him because I love my sister. Petra would call this exculpating.
Our last class of the day is English, and River’s knee bounces through the whole of it. He sits one behind, one over from me, and I can feel him through the floor. When he catches me looking back at him, he smiles then winces. His bottom lip is split again.
The bell rings, and he’s up like Pavlov’s dogs, but I was prepared for that, so I meet him at the door and push him back into the classroom as everyone else files out.
“You don’t look so good,” I tell him.
He makes bodybuilder arms. “How about now?”
Flirting with me. Because he likes me or because he wants me to like him? Because he likes me or because he doesn’t want to talk about how he’s getting his ass kicked?
“Your arms look fine.” They do, actually. “It’s your face that concerns me.”
“Fine?” Mock offended. “Feel these.”
I do. Flirting back, I suppose, but what choice do I have really? And anyway, I don’t know what I’m feeling for—it’s the first biceps I’ve squeezed that I’m not related to—but I see his point. “Better than fine,” I admit. “Nice.”
“Nice? That’s even worse. We’re looking for mighty. Epic. Awe-inspiring.”
“They make your head look tiny in comparison,” I offer.
“That’s my only goal,” he says.
“I think you should expand it.”
“My head?”
“Your goal. I think you should shoot for tiny and intact.”
“I don’t want to get greedy.”
“Let me help you,” I say.
“Help me what?”
“Survive high school.”
“Depends how. Are you going to disguise me?”
“A disguise will never work.” It’s hard for me to say because I don’t do this very often, but whether he’s flirting or evading, I think he’s pretty good at it. “You’re too distinctive. What with all those big muscles.” Me too, I’m pretty good at it.
“True, true.” He pretends to stroke his pretend beard thoughtfully. “Will you fashion some kind of unbreachable transport for me to take back and forth to school? Like the popemobile?”