Page 35 of Again with Feeling

He stared back at me.

“You realize this is completely inappropriate,” I said. “He doesn’t have any right to—to spy on me.” I wanted to be mature enough to stop the rest of it, but it came spilling out. “Is this what he’s going to do after he moves out? Have you tell him everything I do?”

For a moment, Keme’s composure broke, baring the unhappiness that lay underneath. “Dash—”

“And what—if I go do something, you’re going to follow me?”

Keme tightened his arms across his chest and looked away.

That confirmed my suspicion.

“You’re going to call Bobby?” I asked, my voice rising again—disbelief mixing with outrage.

“He’s worried about you,” Keme mumbled. “He just wants to make sure you’re okay.”

“He needs to worry about himself because the next time I see him, I’m going to wring his neck.” I took a deep breath. “Here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to go live your normal life like a normal teenage boy, and you’re not going to spy on me because Bobby has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Meanwhile, I’m going to leave and go live my life independently and autonomously like an adult.”

But when I stepped around Keme and started for the stairs, he trailed after me.

“Keme, I’m serious. Go play Xbox or scroll on TikTok or bother Millie at work.”

He just stared at me.

When I turned for the stairs, he took a step after me.

“Keme!”

His face darkened, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes, but he hunkered down like he was going to root himself in place if I tried to make him leave.

I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, Indira’s voice floated up the stairs. “What’s all the yelling about?”

Here’s the thing about Indira. She’s so smart. And composed. And calm. And mature. And all of those traits make me painfully self-conscious when I’m working myself up for a royal hissy fit.

I still managed to sound surprisingly petulant, though, when I said, “Bobby is making Keme spy on me. It’s not necessary, and on top of that, it’s not appropriate to put Keme in that position.And—” Genius struck. “—it’s teaching Keme bad life lessons about, um, trust and relationships and stuff.”

Admittedly, it lost some steam at the end, but I still thought I’d made a very good point.

Indira, though, only looked up at me from the bottom of the stairs. Then she called, “Keme, could you help Millie and Fox finish unloading the van?”

Keme glared at me—if looks could kill—as though this were somehow my fault. He stomped past me, which was pretty impressive in slides, and thundered down the stairs. A moment later, the front door banged shut, and then Indira and I were alone.

To my surprise, she came up the steps, her pace slow and measured. When she reached me, she asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Like the Jeep rolled on top of me.”

A hint of a smile touched her face. She looked lovely today, of course. She always did—cream-colored trousers; a white top; a long, lightweight gray wrap that looked like the intersection of bathrobe and cardigan (in a good way). “Maybe you should take it easy today.”

“I appreciate that, but I’ve got things to do.” I struggled for a moment, and then the words burst out of me: “And I know Bobby is stressed about the move, and he’s probably tied himself in a million knots about making everything perfect with Kiefer because, you know, he’s Bobby, and he’s not sleeping well, and he had that awful panic attack yesterday after we got in that argument—” As I listed all the things Bobby was dealing with right then, my anger started to melt. “—but this is crossing a line.”

Indira listened. Then she was silent, and one of Hemlock House’s very expensive clocks ticked away the seconds. Finallyshe said, “Bobby had a panic attack after you got in an argument.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was super dysregulated, you know, no sleep, lots of stress, and then we fought and…” I couldn’t read the look on her face. “What?”

She made a sound that might have meant anything. Then she said, “Bobby didn’t ask Keme to spy on you. Bobby said he was worried about you. He was…upset last night, after you went to bed.” And I got the feeling thatupsetwasn’t the word Indira had originally been thinking. “Keme took it on himself to keep an eye on you. Because he loves you. And because he’s worried about you too.”

I mean, yes, at some level, I knew Keme and I were…attached, maybe? I don’t know—whatever word you’re supposed to use for your brother. Like, you can’t get rid of them, and they steal your stuff all the time, and one time they gave you a dead leg that, like,reallyhurt. But the logical part of me, the part that understood this relationship, was having a hard time reconciling the wordsloveandworriedwith the same boy who had, less than a week before, told Millie,Watch this, and then proceeded to strangle me with my own hoodie strings. (A surprisingly effective method of killing someone, I decided after I could breathe again. I was eager to have Will Gower try it on an annoying teenage hoodlum who ate all the snickerdoodles before he got any even though Will Gower had told him they were his favorite. Er, his favorite that week.)

“Frankly,” Indira said, “we’re all worried about you, Dash. This has become much more serious after yesterday’s events. And we don’t want you doing it alone.”

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