chapter seven

then…

There were advantages to having a twin. Jem was always around for company. He always stood up for me. If he was…pushy sometimes about getting me to branch out, it was from love.

Not aggravation.

Not because I wasn’t enough.

We were twins. My thoughts appeared in his mouth. I finished his sentences. I could be myself…until other people were around.

Like that Saturday afternoon when Jem’s latest girlfriend twined around him while we waited for Ander to finish work. Sunshine slanted sideways through the trees. We were parked in the shade, but the heat still clung to everything, like we were breathing through a warm, wet washcloth.

“How much longer do we have to wait?” Callie was straddling Jem, wedged between my brother and the truck’s steering wheel. “I thought we were going swimming.”

Jem gave her a lazy smile. “Just give him a minute.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to.”

“Don’t. Want. To.” Her voice was singsong, the kind of tone you’d use to offer little kids crayons, and I was going to have to listen to it for the rest of the evening.

“I’ll go look for him,” I said, sliding off the seat and slamming the door behind me. I scuffed across the gravel drive toward Mr. Farley’s massive two-story barn. The heavy doors were propped open, throwing a wide wedge of sunlight across the sawdust floor.

“Ander?” I hovered at the edge, feeling like a trespasser. As a rule, I hated bothering him at work—especially at this work. The barn smelled like sawdust and dirt and birds. There must have been hundreds of quail crammed into wire mesh cages that lined the barn walls. They watched me draw closer and hid from my shadow.

When you smell something, you’re actually tasting it, I thought, fighting the urge to breathe through my T-shirt.

It was Ander’s job to look after the quail and, sometimes, the hunters, taking out wealthy visitors to shoot. According to most of the people in town, Farley was a pretty decent guy to work for. According to Ander, he was better than decent, but he would never elaborate on why.

There was a scrape above me. Dirt rained down as Ander stuck his head over the side of the hayloft. “Grace?”

I grinned. “Hurry up before Callie pitches a fit.”

A smile walked up one corner of his mouth and lingered. “She still around?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Step back, okay?”

I did, and a sixty-pound hay bale crashed to the floor, flinging more dust into the air. I looked up again, squinting against the sunlight. It turned the dust motes gold.

I coughed and waved one hand in front of my face. “Do y’all ever wash this place out? I think this is how you catch bird flu.”

“Says the future science major.” Ander scaled down the ladder, kicking up an explosion of gold when he landed. We were almost toe-to-toe, and it was too close. I dropped my eyes—still no good, though, because now I had to watch his throat slide as he swallowed.

“Hey,” Ander whispered.

“Hey.” I lifted my chin, then lifted it higher. “Are you almost done?”

I hoped he couldn’t hear the prayer in my voice. I stuck both hands in my jeans pockets. It felt awkward. I took them out. It felt worse.

Ander’s attention shifted, pinned to something behind me. “Hey, man.”

A dark-haired boy was carrying in another set of cages, and when he turned, the lowering sun cast him into a tower of shadows.

Ander gave me another smile—a real one. “Grace, this is Finn. Farley just hired him. Finn, this is Grace.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, noticing how Finn hesitated ever so slightly before joining us. I knew that hesitation. I did it myself when meeting new people.

“Hey.” Finn took my offered hand in his, and I had the briefest feeling of his fingers—long enough to brush my heartbeat through my wrist—before he pulled away.

“You were on the boat last week, right?” I asked, slowly recognizing him. He was the guy struggling with the motor. “You were with Amanda and Callie?”

Finn nodded. “Amanda’s my cousin.”

Ander tugged at his work gloves. “He’ll be a senior with us.”

“That’s great,” I said. “It’s a nice school. I hope you like it.”

Finn’s smile was slow and deliberate and promised that he was counting on it. Honestly, so was I. Finn was half a head taller than Jem and Ander, and had the kind of face that would incite girl fights.

And maybe boy fights.

That smile set off the bronze to his skin, made his eyes stand out even more. They were the lightest brown I’d ever seen, like whiskey in sunlight in one moment, then turning summer-moon yellow in the next. Finn was going to be the only thing Boone High talked about. Would he be okay with that? I wouldn’t be.

“Ten more minutes?” Ander asked, and I nodded. He bumped his chin toward Finn. “We’re going down to the hollow for a swim. You want to come?”

My mouth opened on a silent puff. Ander never invited anyone else to hang out with us. Why now?

Finn made a noncommittal noise. “Not really my thing. I only went that one time because Amanda asked.”

Poor guy. I scuffed the toe of my tennis shoe in the dirt. I knew how that went.

“Trust me,” Ander said, heaving one hay bale onto its side. “Swimming is everyone’s thing around here. It’s the only way to cool down.”

Another hesitation—only this time it stretched and stretched. I glanced at Finn and realized he was looking at me. His gaze dipped to his feet. Quick.

Not quick enough to stop the heat that surged up my neck.

“Maybe next time,” Finn said at last. “That big hunt’s coming through, and Farley’s riding my ass. I’ll see y’all around.”

Funny how Finn didn’t look like anyone from Boone, but he sure talked like us. Ander dumped the hay bales near the cages as Finn ducked out of the barn. I watched as Ander checked the locks, the water. He ran one hand along the chicken wire, and the birds fluttered away from him. They clawed the walls.

“Why aren’t you helping Farley with the hunt?” I asked.

Ander’s shoulders went tight. “I wanted to be taken off. I couldn’t do it anymore. I—you ever feel bad about this?”

“About the birds? Yeah.” Farley made his money off hunting, bringing in groups to use his land. The prey varied depending on the time of year, but quail were always popular even if they weren’t always legal.

Ander hooked two fingers around the wire and tugged until it bent. “I remember when Farley had only about twenty of them.”

That was a long time ago. Probably when we were ten? Eleven?

“He has way more now,” I said, my eyes going from cage to cage. There were so many, all pressed together, all staggering over one another.

Ander released his grip on the wire. “Most of these birds never see outside these cages until we drop them in the woods. They get to see the world for a few hours until I kick them up and they get shot.”

“Or not.” I nudged him with my elbow and smiled. “You said those guys were more likely to hit you than the birds.”

He didn’t respond. Probably meant I didn’t say the right thing, which was typical. I never said the right thing. Or maybe it was because there was nothing right, nothing that could be right when Ander got like this. You had to just wait it out.

Or wait until he drinks enough. The thought was small and hard and right. We were supposed to go swimming, and I already knew Ander would ask us to stop at the gas station that never checks ID.

I already knew. Did he?

Maybe it was just another unsaid thing between us—unsaid because it didn’t need to be said. We knew everything about each other.

“I feed them,” he said quietly. “I keep them safe, keep them caged until they don’t even know how to function without me.” His eyes swung toward mine, stuck. “If I let them go, they’d die anyway.”

There was an edge to his words, and I couldn’t tell what worried me more: that I couldn’t name what Ander was feeling or that he was somewhere I couldn’t reach. “It’s just a job.”

He didn’t say anything. The birds fluttered in their cages, and when I swallowed, I was convinced I could taste them on my teeth. “That’s their purpose, isn’t it? They were born to be hunted.”

“Terrible reason to be here.”

It was. And usually I would agree with him, because we were always honest with each other and he was right, only there was something living behind his eyes that warned me off.

And then I did something that felt stupid and unstoppable and…necessary? Yeah, it felt necessary. I touched one finger to Ander’s forearm. His breath caught.

If I do this, there is no going back.

Only as soon as I thought it, I realized there was never any going back. This was inevitable. I traced the ridge of muscle where his shirt met skin, and he swallowed.

“You take good care of them,” I said, pushing out the words because my tongue was suddenly too thick. “It’s better to be born and live a little than to never exist at all, right?”

Ander spun around, eyes huge and haunted. “Is it? Because I don’t know anymore, Grace. I really don’t know.”

I wanted to step back, and I couldn’t. I wanted to press into him, and I didn’t dare. “Ander…what’s going on?”

He shook his head. Hard. “Nothing. Just…home. Don’t worry about it.”

Impossible. I nodded anyway, like I could forget it, like I would do exactly as he asked. Sometimes you have to be the friend that someone needs you to be, right?

I cleared my throat. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah.”

But he wasn’t moving. I took an uneven breath and turned, retracing my footsteps. There was the briefest pause, and then I heard him behind me. He caught up and together we tugged the sliding doors shut. Under the half-dead oak, Jem’s truck was rocking.

I stopped. “Gross.”

“Are they going to be like this all night?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, yeah, stupid question.” Ander trotted ahead, then turned so he was walking backward toward Jem’s truck and I could see nothing but him. “Guess that makes me yours.”