EMERSON
Seth had been gone less than twelve hours and I already missed him.
He’d always been my most annoying brother. The most arrogant. The biggest instigator. The one of them who showed the least interest in having a little sister.
But . . . it was lonely here without him.
If I was being completely honest, it wasn’t just Seth’s absence. I was just plain lonely.
I wouldn’t last forever. I just needed to get through the next few weeks. Then I’d be off to Arizona. The internship there might not be my dream job, but at least I wouldn’t be living right next door to Lucas anymore. I wouldn’t bump into him every time I turned around. I wouldn’t constantly be wondering what he was doing.
Who he was doing.
Out of sight, out of mind, and all that crap.
Thankfully, today was Monday, so at least I had work to pass the time. That’s how I knew I’d hit rock bottom: I was looking forward to work days.
Better to be at work than sitting at home though, because being so close to Lucas was killing me. Ever since running into him at the party Will had taken us to, I’d become fixated on him again, counting the minutes till I’d catch another glimpse of him, and then feeling guilty for letting him infiltrate my brain. He was like a parasite.
One I needed to excise from my life, once and for all.
“Hey, McLean, wait up a sec.” It was one of the older kids, a boy named Makai or Malik. Or maybe it was Niko.
Shit, I sucked at names.
“Hey . . . you,” I hedged, as the boy came lumbering down the front steps toward me. A week ago, this kid would’ve scared the crap out of me. Now I saw him for who he really was, a gentle giant being raised by a single mom on welfare. His jerk of a dad hadn’t stuck around long enough to get to know him. That was the story of a lot of these kids—raised by single moms, bounced around through the foster system, parents on drugs or in prison. Or the luckier ones who had both parents, but happened to live in shit neighborhoods. Those kids spent their time here just to stay out of trouble.
This place was a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
“Markus,” the boy informed me with a devious grin.
Crap. Markus, that was it.
“I knew that.”
But the look he gave said he definitely wasn’t buying it. Smart kid. “So, uh, I was wondering . . .”
I waited, to hear just what it was he’d been wondering. “Uh-huh,” I prompted, when he seemed to have a hard time getting there.
He shrugged. “Yeah, well, the thing is, I sorta heard who your ol’ man is, and I was thinking . . . ” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I was thinking maybe you could hook me up.” His eyebrows rose hopefully.
I dropped my chin and gave him my own skeptical look. “You want me to hook you up? With my dad? Sorry, but I don’t think you’re his type, Markus.”
At the edge of the lot, I realized we’d drawn a small audience when I heard a group of kids bust out laughing.
Markus made a face. “Nah. Not like that. You know what I mean.”
I started walking again, pretending the conversation was over. “I don’t think I do. Sounds to me like you’re not entirely sure either.”
The kids at the edge of the lot were laughing harder now, only this time they’d edged closer. One of them hollered, “Her daddy’s not Electric Earl. You wasting your time, M.”
I stopped and cocked my hip, addressing the big kid who was still trailing me. “You think you’re wasting your time, Markus? ’Cuz I’m startin’ to feel like you’re wasting mine.” I gave him a pointed look. “You got something to say, might as well say it.”
For some people it was easy, asking for what you wanted out of life. For others, it was a skill that had to be learned. Markus had something on his mind, I could see it written all over his face, but he definitely fell into the latter category.
But I wanted him to ask. I wanted him to know how to do that for himself.
Markus shifted on his boat-sized shoes. “I was thinking . . . that maybe you could ask him . . . maybe . . . if he’d . . . you know, sign somethin’ for me.” He inhaled sharply, once the words plunged free from inside him. Then, he grinned sheepishly.
I grinned too, pride welling inside me. “So . . . not for a date?”
Beneath Markus’s dark skin, his cheeks flushed. “Definitely not a date.”
I nodded. “I think I can work something out for you, Markus. Give me a coupla days. But I’m pretty sure it can be arranged.”
As I got in my car, I heard the other boys shouting that they wanted to be hooked up too. But I’d already started my engine and started pointing to my ear, miming that I couldn’t hear them as I put the car in gear and drove away.
I laughed almost the entire way home.
Laughed because, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was doing something good. For me, and for the kids at the rec center.