Page 27 of Study Buddies

“We’ll get there.” I looked around at the boxes, crates, piles of musty old books, old furniture covered in drop cloths—it was a lot. Apparently, Lucas and Jayden hadn’t ventured much farther than the washer and dryer. “We have to.”

After Kyle reclaimed his bedroom, Lucas had insisted on giving me his room and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I felt awful about it, but it wasn’t like I was going to be here for long. I still needed to find a permanent place for this school year. Then he could have his room back, because right now he and Jayden were sharing the living room, one on the couch and one on a sleeping bag on the floor.

So now we were trying to make enough space down here for a bed. The only problem was that Great-Aunt Mabel’s basement held about three basements’ worth of stuff. We’d been working for over an hour and had barely made a dent. It was a hell ofa way to spend a Friday night, but Jayden, at least, was in a good mood, and I enjoyed talking and joking with him while we worked. Lucas had been a bit more subdued.

A door slammed above us, and Jayden and I exchanged glances. That meant Kyle was back. He’d had a baseball game tonight. Not part of the regular season, but just a postseason exhibition game against a similarly sized university, I’d been told.

I held my breath, straining for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Every time Lucas and Kyle were in the same room together, the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. And then the kind, mild-mannered guy from my study group became someone else. Someone seething with anger—and I still didn’t know why.

I breathed a sigh of relief as it became evident that Kyle wasn’t heading down here. Good. The two stepbrothers didnotget along.

Lucas reappeared, carting some boxes out of the back storage room, which he set by the stairs. Each time he emerged from that room, he looked more and more like he’d just returned from a war zone.

“Hey, why don’t you take a break?” I picked up his water bottle and brought it over to him.

“Thanks.” He gulped it down, and I reached up and flicked my fingers against his shoulder.

He turned his tired green eyes on me, one eyebrow raised.

“There was a cobweb.”

He nodded. “That entire storage room back there is covered in them.”

That was an unpleasant thought. “Maybe we should just focus on the area by the stairs?”

Lucas shook his head. “If I can just clear a little more space, I think we can move a lot of this crap back there just to get it out of the way.”

Hmm… I didn’t know how to put this delicately. “Shouldwe move it at all, though? Isn’t most of it sort of… unsalvageable?”

His mouth twitched upward on one side, as if he knew I’d been trying to avoid calling it junk and it almost seemed like he was biting back a laugh. “Probably, but I don’t have time to sort through it all now, and I really don’t want to throw out anything my mom might want. Aunt Mabel has—had—stuff from her parents, my mom’s grandparents. I know she’d want to see that.” His eyes lost their focus as he stared past me. “I know it doesn’t look like much now, but I have good memories of playing down here with my cousins when we’d come to visit.”

I examined narrow paths that wound their way through decades of possessions. “It probably made a good obstacle course.”

This time Lucas did laugh. “It wasn’t always like this.” He nodded at the staircase. “There’s a little closet under there, and we made it into a little clubhouse. And it was so much fun playing in the woods behind the house.”

Suddenly, the basement seemed to hold more potential now that I was seeing it through his eyes. “Well, we’ll get it fixed up. It’s the least I can do since you’ve given me your bedroom. Temporarily,” I added.

He looked like he was going to argue about that last word, but then we both heard it—the door at the top of the stairs swinging open… and then footsteps on the stairs.

Lucas’s expression hardened. “Come see the progress I’ve made.”

I nodded, following him. The storage room was, if possible, more packed with clutter and boxes than the main area. Whilestepping over an old wooden chair, I knocked over a stack of records. They spilled onto the floor.

Crap. Did records break? I’d only encountered one record player in my whole life, so I didn’t know. I knelt down to gather them up, and I heard Jayden speak.

“How was the game?”

“I hit a line drive and almost kneecapped their third baseman.” Kyle’s voice sounded oddly muffled. “I’ll get him next time.”

Jayden laughed. I hadn’t been able to figure out what his relationship with Kyle was like, but he definitely didn’t seethe with anger around him the way Lucas did.

Which was what was happening right now. One glance over my shoulder showed how tense Lucas’s posture was as he angrily sorted some old books into two piles.

“Did you win?” Jayden asked.

“Hell yeah, we did.” Kyle’s voice was clearer that time, and full of pride. “Just you down here?”

“They’re working in the backroom.”

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