He puts on a white collared shirt, reconsiders, replaces it with a dark blue T-shirt, the color of dusk, tops it with a red Cortaca High School sweatshirt. He shovels his books and binders into his backpack, heads to the kitchen.
Jewel is at the table eating pancakes. She looks happy. Her hair is a mess—she hasn’t brushed it at all—but she’s wearing a pair of black leggings and a black sweater over a black T-shirt. Jessup smiles. “Looking pretty goth this morning, kiddo.”
She grins, a gross, deliberately openmouthed grin, bits of pancake showing.
“Ugh,” he says.
David John slides a plate onto the table. “Here you go,” he says. “Syrup’s on the table, cut-up melon in the bowl. No bacon or sausages. Sorry. You want an egg or something, too?”
“No. Thanks. I’m good. Where’s Mom?”
“Sleeping,” David John says. “She doesn’t feel well. Going to take the day off.”
Jessup takes a bite of the pancakes. Chews. Lets it sit. He can’t think of the last time his mom missed work. She gets sick sometimes, a cold, a cough, but nothing serious, nothing that would make her miss a paycheck.
As if David John can read his mind, his stepfather puts a glass of water down in front of Jessup and says, “Don’t worry. She’s fine. Just tired, I think. She deserves a day off. Been busting her ass since I went to prison. I told her she needs to quit her job at Target. It’s too much.”
“We need the money,” Jessup says.
David John’s eyes go tight. “No,” he says. “We don’t. That’s not what I care about right now.” But he softens immediately. “I’m sorry. We’ve got a cop car camped outside. I’m worried. On edge.”
“Me too,” Jessup says.
David John rubs his head. His hair is bristly. Shorter than Jessup remembers him keeping it, though maybe that’s because it’s shot through with silver, though he doesn’t really look any older. A wonder, Jessup thinks, after four years in prison. He knows the same won’t be true of Ricky. Four years without seeing his brother. Is he going to go another sixteen without a visit?
While he’s thinking, David John drops a set of keys on the table. “Take your mom’s car,” he says. “Can you get Jewel to school okay? I’ve got two jobs lined up this morning.”
Jewel jumps up, says to Jessup, “I’m going to brush my teeth, and then can you do my hair, please?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. Just zips out of the room. Jessup picks up the keys, mutters, “Wish I had my truck.”
“Get over it, Jessup. It’s gone.” He tries for a joke, pops his fingers together and says, “Poof. Gone, like magic.” It falls flat. “What did you expect? Earl found somebody to get rid of it, no questions asked, nothing to come back to you. With that gone, you’re good. All you got to do is stay quiet. Nothing to tie you to nothing.”
Nothing, Jessup thinks, but the guilt. He’ll always have that sound, the thump, Corson’s body. That will never disappear.
David John reaches down and pushes the keys closer to Jessup. “You okay?”
Jessup isn’t, but he nods.
He’s thinking of what David John said the night before, about how David John has to take responsibility for his own part in Ricky’s actions, about how he has to own not just Ricky’s wasted life but Jermane Holmes’s and Blake Liveson’s lives as well. David John might have taken care of the truck, but as much as he’d do anything to protect Jessup, David John can’t take care of this, can’t ease the burden of guilt.
That’s something that both Jessup and David John know to be true.