Page 106 of Swept Away

“Lyra.” It’s Jeremy this time. He sits forward, taking a can of lemonade. “Back off.”

“No, you’ve always gone too easy on him, Jer.” She rounds on me. “You have so much potential. You could be someone. And you just waste it dossing around and whining. This whole experience could be the making of you.”

The making of you.Like I’m currently unmade, a messy bed.

“I know you’re different from me and Jeremy. I know you don’t have the focused gene—I know you missed out on the Ravenhill IQ, but— What?”

I think I sort of snorted.

“Nothing.”

“No, what? That wasn’t nothing.”

“It doesn’t matter. Go on. I’m useless, you and Jeremy got all the good genes…”

“That’s not what I said at all.”

“She’s just trying to say she gets that you’re not quite like us, Ezekiel,” Jeremy says. “It’s not your fault. It’s just the way you were made.”

His tone is so patronizing, and suddenly it just doesn’t seem to matter, holding this back. I don’twantto. I’m miserable, and for a nasty split second I don’t see why I should have to be miserable and everyone else gets to live in blissful sunny ignorance.

“Actually, I wasn’t made different.Youwere.”

Jeremy frowns behind his square glasses. He used to wear dorky round ones, but his wife, Veronica, chose him these. She’s been slowly improving him, polishing him up to shine like the successful man he is.

“What?”

“You weren’t Dad’s kid.”

As soon as I’ve said it, I regret it. This is all wrong. Jeremy’s everything I’m not, but he’s still my brother—I still love him. And I don’t want to hurt him.

“Jer, I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “I shouldn’t have told you like this.”

He lowers his drink. Behind him, a group of children run by, yelling something about invaders coming to the castle. One straggles behind, using his sword as a walking stick to help him scale the slope.

“You’re serious?” Jeremy says. “Dad? He…”

“I’m sorry. It was all…He had this folder of documents hidden on the boat. Paige knew, you know, his neighbor?”

“The weird one?” Jeremy says. He sounds slightly strangled.

“Yeah. It was her brother. He was your biological dad.” My heart pounds. “Mum had an affair with him in the nineties.”

“Mumdid?” Lyra says. “I mean, obviously Mum did. I just can’t…” She trails off, staring blankly at me. “I cannot imagine that. Are yousure?”

“I’m sure.”

I guess this part’ll be harder for them than it was for me. I always thought my mum had cheated on Dad. I always thought she was a liar. It was never particularly hard to believe, either: my mum’s good at secrets, one of those stiff-upper-lip people who’ll never show you even a hint of their trauma. Her emotions are so packed away I’m not sure she’d know how to start talking about them. The idea of her making a bad decision is pretty mind-blowing, but the idea of her hiding it from us? Not so much.

“But…Paige’s brother died,” Jeremy says. His forehead’s wrinkled.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “He did.”

I’m pretty sure he died before I was born. I don’t know if it’s better or worse to know that the man was gone by the time he wrecked my parents’ marriage, but it hurts to think that he never had the chance to know Jeremy.

“Oh,” Lyra says.

She reaches for Jeremy’s hand. I look away. Lyra’s never once held my hand. I don’t know how it happened—how the two of them became a two. But I’m so sick of desperately wanting to worm my way into the space between them when they’ve never left me room.

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