eighteen.
Sitting beside her in the booth, Marsden watched Wynn struggle happily with her Burger Pit Cheesebigger and grudgingly accepted that, over the course of a single lunch, her little sister had fallen head over heels in love with a bunch of teenagers.
Marsden poked at the tray of chili tater tots on the table in front of her, sipped her Coke, and mentally reviewed what she’d learned about Jude’s friends, cheat sheets that hung in her mind like bright white laundry from a line.
One thing she’d discovered: If she’d ever wondered how much he’d leaned on them in the immediate days after Rigby’s death, or doubted exactly how much they needed him, she needn’t have bothered.
They loved one another like family. A real and normal one.
Owen, all dark eyes and summer-tanned skin and a jawline that might as well have been chiseled from stone. Seventeen years old on the surface but ancient underneath, he was the worrier of the group, the one who tended the foundation of their friendship. He was so protective of those around him that he was often the one left in danger, a mother bear charging a hunter without pause to save her cubs.
Karey, with enough dimples to prove that life was, indeed, unfair. His smile was beatific and blameless, nearly as bottomless as the sea. Marsden would have thought him a goof, a misplaced beach bum stumbling happily from one foaming surf to another, if she hadn’t caught glimpses of his cutting intelligence, a keen awareness he seemed to not mind hiding.
And Abbot, who insisted their lunches be on the house, who gave her sister brand-new boxes of crayons to use on the paper on the table, who teased her the same way Dany sometimes did. She was, for Wynn, fun and lighthearted in ways Marsden could never be, as confident with her looks as any of Nina’s girls—again, nothing like her dull and plodding big sister.
And she was close to Jude in a way that left Marsden envious, left her chest shot full of small holes and tiny aches. She knew it was jealousy and hated herself for it, for wanting that same kind of closeness to a boy she barely knew and wouldn’t even want to know, if she were being smart. And safe. And logical. She was hiding something from him that he would hate her for if he knew. Not that she had a choice about doing it.
And maybe she wasn’t always those things.
Maybe, sometimes, she didn’t really want to be.
Which bothered her—a lot.
She stuffed a tater tot into her mouth, relished the rude sting of chili pepper against her tongue, and prayed for Wynn to eat faster.
“By the way, Jude, listen.” Karey burped behind a salt-dusted fist and poured more ketchup on his potatoes. “Langston is bugging me to get you to stay over for a couple of days. He says he’s still waiting to beat you in that Atari tournament you guys started a while ago.”
Jude stared at him, then lifted one brow. “Your little brother says he’s still waiting to beat me at Atari? So I’m welcome to stay over at your place for a while?”
“Yeah.”
“For a tournament. That we started. Last summer.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t,” Jude said in a low voice. “It’s fine.”
“But he really—”
“You guys, just . . . drop it.”
Just like that, the restaurant around their booth faded—the clang of silverware, the chatter from other diners at other tables, dialed to low—and a tension as thick as the river’s mud swam in.
It carried with it the presence of Leo Ambrose. Marsden felt as if he were suddenly seated right there at the table with them.
Karey slowly shoved three tater tots into his mouth at once. She saw his eyes go to Owen—once, and quickly, as though unsure of what to do next—before going back to Jude. “C’mon. It’s just Langston. And Atari.” Beside him, Wynn drew another cat on the paper that covered the table, oblivious to the conversation.
“Except it’s not,” Jude said, sounding terse.
“I think it’d be nice for Langston to get to hang out with you.” Abbot stirred her Fanta Orange with her straw. “Think about the poor kid, with someone like Karey as his only role model.”
Karey coasted a tater tot along the table so that it fell into her lap. “I can re-create the periodic table in my sleep. Langston is blessed, I tell you.”
Jude picked up his burger and proceeded to not eat. “Tell Langston he wins by default.”
“You’d get a break from your old man,” Owen said quietly. “He’ll have space to adjust.”
The discomfort Jude couldn’t hide . . . Marsden felt it herself. She hadn’t known how much he hated being pitied. She wondered if her being there made it worse for him, or easier, or if it made any difference at all. If he would have walked out already, still bent on escape, if not for feeling bad about leaving her and Wynn behind.
“Home is fine,” he muttered. “Leave it, you guys.”
Suddenly, Wynn leaned forward, the hem of her Scooby-Doo T-shirt dragging through the mound of ketchup on her plate, and whispered loudly to Marsden: “I have to use the washroom, but I don’t know where it is.”
“I’ll show you.” Jude was up like a shot. His eyes met no one’s. “Need a refill for my Coke anyway.”
Wynn hopped down from the booth and followed Jude down the aisle.
“Hold up, dude, we’re getting refills, too.” Owen and Karey scrambled their way from the table to catch up. Their intentions—to corner Jude in another attempt to keep him safe from his father—were, to Marsden, as loud and clear as the clank of the Burger Pit’s cowbell hanging over the front entrance.
“So, hey, I didn’t know you and Jude were hanging out.”
She turned and faced Abbot.
On Owen, the twins’ shared beauty was a study in classic good looks, a painting where each stroke was preordained, made to flow only one way. Words like handsome and elegant and smooth suited Owen perfectly.
But on his sister, that same beauty turned sharp, its edges hard and precise and without give.
“We’re not really.” Marsden knew the best lies were half-truths. She picked up a fork and toyed with it, hating that she was nervous.
The other girl nodded, absentmindedly tracing one of the doodles on the table. It was one of Jude’s, a bouquet of flowers he’d drawn for Wynn at her request. Their lines were messy, and not too sure of themselves, but there were tulips, daisies, lilies—Jude’s world when he was at work.
“Do you guys just know each other from school?” Abbot asked. “Or something else?”
The question shouldn’t have bothered Marsden, but it did. Especially if she admitted she’d been wondering the same things about Abbot.
And what about you two? Just how close are you guys? How close have you ever been?
“Just school,” she finally said, reminding herself Abbot was only worried about Jude, was as protective of him as Owen and Karey were. It wasn’t her fault that Marsden found her intimidating. That Marsden was also painfully aware of who she herself was in this town, who Shine was, and all the labels that came with those things.
How could Jude ever consider anyone like her?
“Can I say something without making you feel bad?” Abbot’s gaze held none of the subtlety of her twin. “Because I really don’t mean to. And normally I wouldn’t say anything at all, because it’s none of my business, what Jude does. . . .”
It was clear that Abbot did think it was her business. That she had a say in what Jude did.
And that Marsden did not.
But Abbot hadn’t been there to see him that day in the library, when eight-year-old Jude had come running in to find Rigby, his cheek on fire. She wasn’t the one he’d gone to see at the covert, his eyes miserable and vulnerable, needing something. She wasn’t the one trying to hear the dead for him, even if her reasons for doing it weren’t entirely selfless.
Marsden set her fork down. “It’s not any of your business, no. But I know you’re just worried about him, and that’s why you’re wondering how to tell me nicely to leave him alone.”
The older girl’s eyes went flinty and cold. “His brother just died. Jude doesn’t need anything else to deal with right now.”
It struck Marsden then, the particular construct of their group, the thing that made them work—if Owen was the foundation, Karey the brains, and Jude the heart, then Abbot was the fighter. The warrior.
She’d almost regretted figuring it out. Abbot being jealous was baseless; Abbot being protective was something else. Rigby’s note, still hidden away in her room, was a grenade with a half-pulled pin.
“I know about Rigby,” Marsden said. “Everyone does. Just like how I know you guys know about his dad drinking again. Why you’re just as worried about that.”
She’d caught Abbot by surprise, her knowing about Leo—the other girl’s eyes widened, and she sat back in her seat—but the victory was hollow, sour.
“I never thought he’d ever tell anyone,” Abbot said.
“Outside of you and your brother and Karey, you mean.”
“He never had to. We’ve always known everything, right from the start.”
Except about her, and their searching the covert—another meaningless victory.
“Jude’s not weak or anything.” Abbot’s face was softer than Marsden had yet to see it, more like her worrier of a brother’s than a warrior’s. “Even with Rigby not here for him. But maybe he should be, for a while. Just . . . don’t be someone else disappearing on him.”
The moment was over. Wynn slid back into the booth, a cookie from the cow jar clutched in her hand. Owen and Karey were arguing in thin code over who they thought were regulars of the Burger Pit’s side business. Jude—dark eyes apologetic for having left her at the mercy of his most ferocious friend—passed Marsden a fresh soda.
Later, biking home with Wynn as the Indigo curled its way alongside them and with Jude still at the edge of all her thoughts, she considered what she would have said to Abbot before they were no longer alone. How she would have defended herself against being the one to hurt him. To explain her confidence in him being fine after she walked away. That he would barely even notice, once he’d gotten what he needed from her and the covert.
The answer, when it came, hurt.
She already knew she was going to be sad to see him go, would start thinking of reasons for him to stay the day he was finally free to leave what had never been anything but temporary to him.
Abbot assumed Jude was the one at risk.
The truth was, Marsden was the one who was no longer safe.
Don’t worry, Abbot.
This time it’s Jude who gets to disappear on someone else first.