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.”
Jasper pulls the backpack into his lap, one hand already reaching for the door. “If that’s true . . . shouldn’t you come with me?”
I scratch at my collarbone, where sweat and smoke have caked into an itchy gray film. “Probably, yeah.”
“But you’re staying.”
“Yeah.”
“Because of him?”
“No.” Yes.
“But you understand you don’t have to, right? You and me had the same dreams, for years and years, but it doesn’t mean anything unless we decide it does. You can choose.”
“Yeah, I know.” And I do know. I can see Jasper’s choice in every eager line of his body, in the forward tilt of his shoulders, go go go. He was never going to stay, no matter what he dreamed in secret. And I was never going to leave, no matter what I said out loud. “I’m choosing.”
I can feel Jasper wrestling with himself, trying to decide if he should handcuff our wrists together and drag me onto the bus behind him.
I shove him, not gently. “Will you just go already? You’re not my dad.”
He rolls his eyes and holds out his pinky again. “Swear you won’t die in some very stupid and gruesome way.”