Page 125 of Hate Mates

(Un)Known Scars by BL Jones

ONE

Then: Roux

My parents die on a Tuesday, at 10:35 p.m. They’re run off the road by a drunk driver on their way home from a bimonthly date night.

My brother wakes me up at 11:56 p.m. to tell me our parents are dead. That’s how he says it. He says that they’re dead. He doesn’t tell me they’re gone or lost or taken. Alex sits down on my bed and tells me the worst thing in the world without hesitation or blunted metaphors, and it’s the first time anyone has treated me like a man. He tells me that we’re orphans now, just so, justthis is how thingsare, like it’s something he thinks I can handle.

Maddox isn’t here to be told. He snuck out to a concert with friends earlier. Alex tried to stop him, but Maddox never listens to anything our older brother says. He seems to buck under Alex’s authority more than he did Mum and Dad’s.

After I find out the very worst possible thing, I sit there on my bed, facing my oldest brother, still partially covered by the duvet. I want to think it’s a joke or a lie, but Maddox is the one who pulls pranks like that, and Alex never lies, not to our parents or to me or anyone else.

Alex doesn’t reach out to hug me, because he knows I don’t like to be crowded when I’m trying to process something. It makes me feel trapped, pinned down like a butterfly under glass, boxed up and caged in like a hunted animal. I need space to think; otherwise my mind will ramp up speed, and my thoughts will spiral in a confusing mess of anxiety.

Alex lets me have my moment, and he allows that moment to stretch on for as long as I need it to.

When I’m ready, I release the sob that’s been building inside my chest. It feels torn from my throat by vicious talons of anguish, clawing me raw and shredded and bloody.

Alex takes that as his cue to move in, grasping hold of my much smaller body and folding me into the safety of his arms. He’s wearing his black coat, like he’s been outside, and it smells vaguely of cigarette smoke, which means that he needed a moment to process his own initial reaction before coming to speak to me.

There are a lot of ways in which my brother and I are different, but we both have what our dad used to call “windstorm brains,” predisposed to chaos and clutter. Our minds don’t always link up quite fast enough with our mouths, and sometimes all that mess, that terminal untidiness, comes spilling out in a seemingly unending torrent.

Alex doesn’t send me back to bed after he tells me the very worst thing, reasoning there’s no chance I’m going to sleep. That’s his official reason, but I think he mostly just wants to keep me with him. At eighteen, my brother would never admit to needing comfort from anybody, let alone his baby brother, but I can tell it settles him to have me by his side. He takes me into the living room, and we set up on the sofa with blankets and too many pillows. Alex switches on the TV and puts on something neither of us are really watching.

When Maddox comes home, it’s three in the morning, and he’s blitzed out of his mind. He probably only got home in one piece because his best friend, Freddie Steivater, brought him. Freddie is, in contrast to my brother, startlingly sober.

Maddox makes the loudest racket imaginable, coming in through the front door and stumbling into the room, half hanging off Freddie. It’s a somewhat-funny sight as Freddie is, even at fifteen, twice the size of any Nova, absurdly tall and too broad for his age.

Freddie seems to know that something is off right away. His bright-green eyes meet mine from across the room, and I feel immediately captivated by them. He has intelligent eyes, serious and watchful, has done ever since I’ve known him, which is always. Freddie’s parents are best friends with mine, and so our families spend a lot of time together. I’ve always thought of him as being larger than life, big enough to block out the sun, his golden-blond hair acting as a replacement for it.

Alex’s body stiffens next to mine when Maddox comes in, and his face takes on a harder cast when our brother laughs drunkenly at the sight of us on the sofa, slurring, “Uh-oh, the favourite son is going to be in the shit when Mum and Dad find out you’ve let our baby brother stay up past his bedtime.” He tuts mockingly and tries to waggle his finger but somehow manages to poke himself in the eye, which is just ridiculous enough to be amusing to me. At any other time, I would fire back something far more scathing about him being afraid that I’m looking to usurp him as the family delinquent.

But my parents are dead, and Alex is seriously pissed off, so I just slap a hand over my mouth to stop myself from speaking. Freddie notices the action, recognises it for the self-preservation tactic that it is, and one corner of his mouth lifts in a fond smile. On most days, I would count getting Freddie to smile, inany capacity, a win, but Alex’s obvious anger at our brother’s drunken state dampens the victory by quite a bit.

Maddox clearly has no idea what time it is, because then he’d know our parents should have been home hours before, or perhaps he isn’t coherent enough to care. Either way, Alex ignores Maddox’s taunting and shifts his attention to Freddie, who draws himself up under Alex’s gaze, ready and waiting for some explanation for what’s going on.

“Freddie, can you stay in here with Roux for a bit?” Alex shoots another look of grim disdain at Maddox, which is harsher than he usually is when Maddox messes up, but the circumstances are what they are. “I’ll take Mads up to bed.”

“’Course I will,” Freddie agrees, looking over at me again with concerned eyes, a special brand of softness in them that I like to tell myself is reserved for me. Freddie isn’t a gentle person on the whole. He’s a fighter, and a rule breaker, who gets into as much trouble as Maddox, even on his best day. It’s the reason they’re best friends. They’re both incapable of not setting their lives on fire at every available opportunity.

Maddox, finally seeming to have sensed that something is wrong, scowls blearily at Alex when he gets up from the sofa with a parting squeeze of my shoulder and a quiet promise to be back soon. Alex tries to take over from Freddie, but Maddox won’t let him. He pushes away from both of them, and his scowl sharpens into a glare. Alex glares back at him, not backing down by a single inch as he tries to cajole our brother into leaving the room with him.

Freddie leaves my brothers to their battle ofwho’s the more stubborn dickhead in this doorwayand takes up residence next to me on the sofa, knowing better by now than to get in the middle, or be within striking range, when those two idiots decide to get all Cain and Abel about everything.

“Hey, Ro,” Freddie says, leaning in close enough to nudge my arm with his elbow.

I nudge him back. “You smell like vodka,” I tell him, making a show out of sniffing his jacket and wrinkling my nose at it. “Did one of your girlfriend’s mates throw a cup of it at you again for being a rubbish two-timer?”

“Okay, first off”—Freddie reaches over to tug on my fringe in reprimand—“I’ve never been a rubbish two-timer.” He nods in Maddox’s direction. “That was a case of mistaken identity.” I snort, unable to hold it in at Freddie’s genuine indignation at being put on my brother’s level of general rubbishness.

“Secondly.” Freddie tugs on my fringe again, then curls it around one finger for more leverage. “How the fuck do you know what spilled vodka smells like? Have you got a problem we should talk about?” He mimes drinking with his free hand. “Because you’re a bit bloody young to be needing an AA meeting.”

Freddie doesn’t moderate his language around me. He never has. It’s because of him that one of my first words was “twatbiscuit,” much to the horror of my parents.

I huff at him, crossing my arms over my small chest and turning my nose up haughtily. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my life. I have secrets. I’m interesting.”

Freddie raises his eyebrows dubiously. “I do, in fact, know every single thing about you. I’m afraid you have no secrets from me, Ro.” He looks entirely too smug about it.

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