The Favor Read online

  “Language,” their father said, and Andy looked chastened.

  “You burned yourself? Let me see.” Ignoring the old man, Gabe took his brother’s wrist. Carefully, he uncurled the fingers. A blister was rising on Andy’s palm, but it didn’t look bad enough to need a trip to the emergency room. They’d had their share of those visits over the past few years. “Be more careful.”

  “I was being careful,” Andy said stonily. “It was my hand. My goddamned hand, it just doesn’t work right....”

  This time, their dad said nothing about the cursing. Gabe found some bandages in the kitchen drawer and wrapped Andy’s hand after applying ointment. Then he cleaned out the burned pan, emptied the crumb drawer, pitched the burned toast and eggs, and made them all breakfast.

  Andy ate in silence, carefully picking at his food. The old man shoveled down two helpings of everything, then pushed away from the table without so much as a thank-you, to disappear into the living room and watch television. Andy got up to put his plate in the sink, and nearly dropped it; Gabe bit out a command to just freaking leave it. Andy put the plate down but didn’t leave the kitchen.

  “What?” Gabe barked.

  “I was thinking about later, umm...I was going to see if maybe Janelle wanted to go see a movie with me. Think she would?”

  “The hell if I know,” Gabe said. “Why are you asking me?”

  “Did she...like me, before? Ever?”

  “I’d be more worried about if she likes you now,” Gabe said, treading carefully, not sure what to say. The thought of Andy asking Janelle out was enough to stun him. “What difference does it make about before?”

  Andy rubbed at the stripe in his hair, frowning. His gaze went a little blank, his mouth slack. It passed in seconds, with him blinking rapidly before focusing on Gabe again.

  “Get out of here,” Gabe said quietly. “I’ll clean up.”

  Andy did, without another word about Janelle. Gabe looked around the mess of the kitchen, still stinking of smoke. Forget about napping all day, forget about sleeping for a few hours. He wanted to run away. But this was his life, he thought as he got up from the table to start cleaning up. He’d made his choice, and he was stuck with it.

  Stuck.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Then

  EIGHTEEN’S SUPPOSED TO feel different, but so far it’s only been more of the same. Nan’s making lasagna and homemade garlic bread for dinner, Janelle’s favorite. The aunts and uncles and cousins will all come over and sing to her, maybe slip her a five dollar bill in a card or something. Her mom already called this morning to sing the birthday song she’s sung to Janelle every year of her life that she can remember. This year it should feel different, if only because she’s living with Nan, because she’s almost an adult, because the last time she saw her mom it was through the back window of a car and her mom had turned away without waving. Because, because.

  Eighteen doesn’t feel any different at all.

  “Are you going to invite any of your friends?” Nan asks. “I have plenty of food, I just need to know.”

  Janelle does invite some friends. Mandy, Dawn, Kendra, Barbie. Not Gabe. It would raise questions, maybe earn some good-natured teasing that might hit too close to home. She doesn’t want anyone getting even an inkling that there might be something more to her and Gabe than being neighbors.

  Her friends and family sing “Happy Birthday” to her and there’s cake. Chocolate, Nan’s homemade. Ice cream, too. Her friends, who’ve lived in St. Marys their entire lives, know Janelle’s cousins better than she does. It’s not the first time she’s reminded that she doesn’t really fit in here. Not all the way. Not the way she would’ve if she’d lived here with her dad as a kid instead of visiting every once in a while.

  Then again, Gabe has lived in St. Marys his entire life and he doesn’t exactly fit in, either. It’s because he doesn’t try. People would like him better if he just tried. That’s what Janelle tells him later that night when she opens her window to crawl into his.

  “You’re going to kill yourself one of these days.” He ignores what else she said.

  Janelle doesn’t. “It’s not that you weren’t invited because they don’t like you, Gabe. Or even because I don’t like you.”

  She likes him too much, as a matter of fact, but she won’t say so.

  He frowns and closes the window behind her. “Who says I even care?”

  She holds up the note he taped to the outside of her window and starts to read aloud. “‘If your done,’ it’s spelled y-o-u, apostrophe r-e, by the way. ‘If your done with your fancy party and want to hang out—’”

  Gabe tries to snatch the note from her, but Janelle dances out of reach. Laughing, she ducks his much-longer arms. She can’t escape him entirely, though, she discovers when he grabs her by the hip and spins her. He backs her up to his bed, and she falls down on it, looking up at him. Daring him to get on it with her.

  Gabe takes the note away, crumples it up. Shoves it in the trash. “Fine. There.”

  Janelle scoots back on the bed to prop herself up on his pillows. “I didn’t think you’d want to come over. It was all family. And Mandy and them. You don’t even like them.”

  Gabe frowns. Then scowls. Shrugs. “I don’t care.”

  All at once, Janelle wishes he did. “I thought we agreed, that’s all. About anyone knowing anything.”

  “We did. It’s cool.”

  It’s really not, but she’s not going to push it. She rolls over to reach for the tin box beneath his bed. Gabe watches without expression when she pulls out a joint he already rolled. She holds it up, then digs in her pocket for the Zippo lighter her dad left behind in the closet. He’s never come back for it, so finder’s keepers. She flicks it open, then closed. Open again. Gabe loves this lighter, and she knows it.

  “Happy birthday?” she says.

  “You already helped yourself, might as well go ahead.” After a minute or so, he sits beside her. He takes the joint from her and takes the first toke.

  Janelle waits for her turn. She watches him. When he hands her the joint, she takes a drag from it without taking it from his hand. When she looks up at him, she smiles.

  Gabe smiles back.

  Some time later, flat on their backs on the bed with Janelle’s feet propped on the slanted ceiling, she says, “I should’ve brought you some cake.”

  “I don’t like cake.”

  She’d sit up if it didn’t feel so good to keep still. “What do you mean, you don’t like cake? That’s...that’s like saying you don’t like blow jobs.”

  “No, I like blow jobs. I just don’t like cake.” Gabe sounds drowsy and warm.

  She turns her head to look at him. “Why?”

  “Because blow jobs are awesome.”

  His grin makes her want to rub herself all over his face. “I’m sure they are. But why not cake?”

  “I dunno. I just don’t like it. I like pie. I like cherry pie. I like apple pie. I like blow job pie.”

  “You’re an idiot,” she tells him.

  “That would be the best kind of pie, ever.”

  “I think I’d rather have cake.”

  “You wouldn’t think that if you’d ever had a blow job.”

  Janelle can hear how slow and syrupy they both sound. How silly. She laughs, then some more. “Girls can’t get blow jobs.”

  “Sure they can. It’s called something else. Something complicated. But it’s the same thing.”

  “Well. Duh.” She knew that, of course she did. Oral sex. “Going down. It’s called going down. And I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You never...did it?”

  She’s blown him dozens of times by now, so she knows that’s not what he means. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Nobody ever offered,” Janelle says, for the first time realizing how annoyed she’d been by that.

  “I’ll do it,” Gabe says.

  They’ve never, no matter how high or d