Be the Girl(84)

I hesitate. “You mean by sharing pictures of her?” I haven’t brought it up, though it’s been on my mind.

“Yeah,” he admits, reluctance in his voice. “She sent me a few a long time ago. You know the kind I mean. Anyway, I don’t have them anymore and I’d never do it. Just like I would never have hit that little shithead ninth grader, even though he was being a dick. But sometimes it feels like the only way to make it stop is to play their game.”

“I get it.” You have no idea how much I get it.

Another heavy silence settles over Emmett’s bedroom, his gaze lost beyond the ceiling, deep within his thoughts. “I worry about what’s going to happen to Cassie next year, when I’m gone. And Zach is gone.”

That hollow feeling in my chest swells with the reminder. I don’t want to imagine the halls without Emmett in them.

I push aside the laptop and curl up against the bed’s frame, resting my chin on the mattress as I stroke his forearm with my fingertips. “I’ll still be there next year,” I assure him.

He smiles, but it’s sad. “And what about the four years after that? You know, when she’s the twenty-year-old and there’s a bunch of fourteen-year-olds in the hall, and no one to defend her because she doesn’t know what’s going on. Or she does, and it makes her cry. I see those news stories all the time, about bad things happening to kids like her, kids who have no one strong enough to defend them, no one brave enough to speak up. Every time I picture someone doing that to her and …” His jaw clenches.

“She won’t be in high school forever, though.”

“Yeah, but then what? She’ll be an adult with autism. I don’t know if that’s easier or harder. I mean, there are plenty of adults out there with ASD who have jobs and houses and kids. But I don’t think that’s going to be the case with Cassie. I could be wrong, she’s still only fifteen, but … to us, she’s always going to be the way she is right now.” He shakes his head. “She’s probably gonna live with my parents forever.”

“You never know.”

He chuckles darkly. “Can you imagine Cassie living on her own? In her own apartment? Have you seen her room?”

“There was underwear dangling from her chandelier the other day when I walked in.” She broke out in hysterical laughter, wondering how it got there.

He shakes his head. “She’ll never be able to focus for long enough to drive a car. I can’t even imagine her taking the subway or a bus on her own. She can barely make herself toast. She’d live off Nutella sandwiches and microwaveable TV dinners. And junk. Cheetos and candy. She’ll end up with type 2 diabetes because of all the crap she’d eat, because no one’s there to stop her.”

“She has no self-control, does she,” I ask.

“None.” He chuckles again, but then his smile fades. “I never used to think about this kind of stuff. She was just my sister with autism. I knew she was different and she needed a lot of extra help. But now I hear my parents talking about her every once in a while. About what she’s going to be like in fifteen years, about saving money so she’s set up to survive after they’re gone, about how she’s going to survive, who’s going to help take care of her. My mom worries constantly about money.” He sighs again, and in that sound, I feel the weight of the unspoken words—will responsibility for Cassie fall on his shoulders eventually?

“Well … hopefully you’ll end up making gazillions of dollars in the NFL and it won’t be a big deal for you. Wait—did I get that right?”

“Close enough.” He chuckles. “How did we get on this topic?”

“I can’t remember.” But my heart is swelling with adoration at the fact that he feels comfortable enough to open up to me.

And maybe he feels the same, now that I’ve opened up to him.

The nausea that threatened with divulging parts of my past has begun to subside.

Maybe, just maybe, it was the right move.

“Oh, yeah.” His hand settles on my shoulder, rubbing it affectionately. “All I’m saying is, if Holly does something again, tell me. She shouldn’t get away with it and you don’t have to deal with it alone. Okay?”

I nod. “You know, you’re a really good guy.”

His eyes flitter over my mouth. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

I abandon the laptop and climb onto the bed, crawling toward him.

He watches me approach with a curious smile. “What happened to finishing the—”

I cut off his words with a hard kiss, followed by the slowest, deepest one I’ve ever given anyone, dragging it out as long as possible, hoping he somehow feels how hard I’ve fallen for him.

When I finally break away to see the tender look in his eyes, I think I must have succeeded. His fingertips brush my hair off my face and then he pulls me down into a kiss with as much intensity. It escalates quickly, until we become a mess of frantic mouths and wandering fingers, the worry of Cassie coming home or Mark checking on us the farthest thing from my mind.





23





Dear Julia,

I’m in love. I know I said I was before, but now I know for certain. I’ve waited the obligatory amount of time (it’s been a month since the fair, and though we didn’t get together that night, we got together that night). This is not teenaged infatuation. This is not raging hormones—well, there’s definitely that, too. I finally got the nerve to put my hand down Emmett’s pants and I nearly got caught by Mark. He moves a lot faster up the stairs than Cassie …