Page 5 of Cruel Winter with You

He was grounded after that, though I can’t recall for how long. What I do remember, with stunning clarity, is his betrayed look, and the instinctive knowledge that this would mark the end of an era.

The following year, instead of valentines, I received embarrassing nicknames, incessant teasing, and a newfound rivalry with my best friend’s little brother.

In hindsight, Marc was less of a “difficult” kid and more of an under-stimulated, high-energy one. Eternally bored, a little too smart for his own good, and definitely too skilled with computers. He was put in every sport under the sun and succeeded at all of them. But there was a restlessness inside him, and the endless pranks and constant mischief helped assuage that.

“Typical gifted child acting out,” one of Dad’s girlfriends once said. She was a psychologist, and I really liked her. In fact, she may have been my favorite out of all the women he’d brought home. For a while I hoped she’d become my stepmom, but none of Dad’s relationships seemed to last more than a couple of years—a problem, since I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself from growing very attached to them all. But for one reason or another, his partners always left, and even though Dad recovered quickly, their departure never failed to make me feel alone, abandoned, and maybe a little guilty. Was it my fault? Was I too needy? Should I have mademyself scarcer when they came over? Was that why Mom had left me right after I was born?

Or maybe this was just the nature of relationships: Transient. Fragile. Finite. Not worth pursuing.

Over time, I formed my own coping strategies. All I could control was my behavior; I needed to be as considerate and high-achieving as possible, and if I accomplished that, maybe people would contemplate sticking around. And if they didn’t ... I taught myself to be grateful for what they would leave behind. I’m grateful to Dad’s girlfriends for teaching me how to fish, how to use tampons, how to bake bread. And, of course, that Marc Compton was a bit of a misunderstood genius.

I saw hints of it, too. The speed with which he’d finish his homework if it meant getting out of the house to hang out with his friends. The books he’d read sprawled on the living room couch, all above his age level. The surgical precision of his jabs, as though he knew exactly what to say to annoy the crap out of everyone.

But all in all, once Marc stopped being the boy I adored and became something between a little goblin and a full-blown villain, Tabitha and I began spending more time at my house, and that seemed to suit him just fine. For a few years, he seemed to forget my name and didn’t address me as anything but Four Eyes, Shorty, Nerd, Cheese Grater, and a few other zingers that managed to address whatever physical attribute of mine was most prominent (and most insecurity-yielding) at the time. He eventually settled on Butt Paper, after a mortifying two hours in which I walked around our middle school with toilet paper stuck to my shoe. Marc was the one who told me to get rid of it—Tabitha was at home sick, and I clearly had no other trustworthy friends—but the nickname proved impossible to shed. Then again, since heconstantly addressed Tabitha as Her Royal Shittiness, while Tabitha called him Mom and Dad’s Oopsie Baby, things could have been way worse for me.

I pushed back some. Called him Marky, which I knew he hated. He had some funny-looking years, too—he was gangly, tall and skinny to the extreme, his bones too long for his body and too prominently structured for his face. But I still felt protective of him, and deep down I knew the constant badgering was the only way he could relate to us. As we got older, as Marc became busier with his own life, as the teasing morphed into something lazier—something that felt a lot like ignoring us—I almost missed it.

And then he started high school.

“How is my crappy little brotherpopular, andyou and Iaren’t?” Tabitha asked me during PE, in the middle of a partner stretch.

“Well, we aren’tunpopular.”

She gave me her bestAre you for fucking real?stare, but I didn’t back down.

“Tab, we’re fine. We have friends. Boyfriends. We have each other, and great grades, extracurriculars and band, National Honor Society. We write for the school newspaper, and the other day Mrs. Niles said we’re her favorite students—” I realized how shrill and desperate I was starting to sound, and abruptly shut up.

It was halfway through junior year. Due to the incomprehensible sorcery of the school district’s calculations, Marc was only two grades behind us. And, shockingly, seemed to have the entire school in his thrall.

“Why on earth have three girls—one of whom is asenior—asked me for his number in the last two weeks? Why is half the soccer team hanging out with himat my house?”

I blinked. “Isn’t Marc a freshman?”

“Yes!”

“Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t share his contact information with a senior, then—”

“I’m not giving out my loser brother’s number to a senior oranyone else, but I need to understandwhythey want it andwhyhe has a giant friend group who seems to have nothing better to do than coming over at seven a.m. to drive him to school!”

I cocked my head and tried to conjure Marc Compton. He was less childlike than even the year before, for sure. His voice wasn’t as squeaky and prone to cracking. He had a crooked smile and seemed at ease in his body, and if Ireallyapplied myself to some method acting, I could maybe figure out what the girls saw in him. “Well, he’s growing into his looks. He’s good at sports. He’s charismatic and probably fun to be around—”

“I once saw him kiss a slug with my own two eyes.”

“Oh, I was there. Those other girls, though? They did not bear witness to that opinion-making event.Weknow the real Marc, but who else does?”

Tabitha rolled her eyes, muttered something about how humanity was doomed, and went back to stretching her quads.

But things had changed. In the hallways at school, Marc no longer acknowledged me—not even to make fun of me—and that year I exchanged fewer words with him than with the mechanic who fixed my car at the Jiffy Lube. If a vengeful angel were to drop from the skies and chop off three of my fingers, I could still count our interactions on one hand.

The first was in the school cafeteria, after I patted my pockets and realized I must have left my wallet in my locker.

“I’m so sorry,” I told the notoriously ill-tempered lunch lady, mortified. “I’m going to go grab it and run back—”

“I got it, Butt Paper,” a familiar but surprisingly deep voice said from somewhere behind me. A handful of bills appeared on my tray, but when I turned to thank Marc, he was already immersed in conversation with someone else and I was forgotten.

The second was a few months later, when he walked in on me doing my homework in the Comptons’ kitchen. I’d heard someone enter the room but didn’t look up, figuring it was Tabitha. A couple of minutes later, when I lifted my gaze, I found him stopped in his tracks, quietly staring at me with a soft smile on his lips.

Weird.

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