Right when I think the call drops, the screen switches to an image of a packed freezer.
My brows bunch. “What am I looking at?” I ask, not needing to say a greeting to Xander. If my siblings don’t call me, I call them every day. Even if it’s just for two or three minutes.
“I’m trying to find my breakfast; I just woke up.”
I dump chips in a bowl. “It’s two p.m.”
“It’s Saturday. I would’ve slept till four if Kinney didn’t blast her screamo music in my bedroom.” In the video chat, his hand shifts the frozen chicken. I can’t lie—I miss being at home whenever I hear these small stories. Miss seeing them firsthand.
But that’s the thing about growing up, getting older—for whatever and however much I lose, I gain something new with someone new.
“What are you looking for?” I ask while skateboarding to my refrigerator.
“Mom just bought more Toaster Strudles, and Luna keeps hiding them.”
Toaster Strudle War is a real Hale thing. Luna thinks that Xander purposefully chomps down all of them, but he usually saves her two that just get eaten by Kinney.
Xander asks, “What are you eating?”
I flip my camera as I grab a bag of shredded cheese and skateboard to my bowl of chips. “Nachos.”
All of a sudden, twenty frozen items cascade out of his freezer and thud to the floorboards. I hear our family dog scamper off in the background.
“Fuuuuck,” Xander curses. The camera is pointed at the mess for literally a full minute while he contemplates putting it all back. “Ughhhh.”
I’d clean it for him if I were there. “Just make your breakfast. Pick it up after, Summers.”
My nickname for my brother is a play on his X-Men namesake: Alexander Summers. Likewise, my namesake is also X-Men related.
Pietro Maximoff.
As in Quicksilver.
Xander has the Strudle box in hand and heads to the toaster.
I rotate my camera back to my face and sprinkle cheese on my chips. “So I heard you haven’t been outside in weeks.”
“Do you blame me? No one will tell me how Mom and Dad ended up being photographed from the backyard, Moffy. The backyard, in a gated neighborhood. I’m not going out there.”
I know how they were photographed.
Farrow shared the security info with me. I get why my parents would want to keep this secret from Xander. They’re worried the truth will ramp up his anxiety.
I have the fucking power to unveil the curtains. And I have the power to hurt my brother. One choice. I could say, hey, Summers, paparazzi’s remote-controlled drones flew over the house. There may be more flying overhead if security doesn’t catch them in enough time. There’s no guarantee.
So I set the whole truth aside and say, “I don’t blame you. But you have to face the fucking world. Even if it sucks sometimes.”
“All the time,” he corrects and rips the plastic off his frozen pastry and puts it in the toaster. I slide my bowl of chips in my microwave.
“Flip your camera,” I say.
With a sigh, Xander rotates his camera, the screen showing his face for the first time. Sharp jaw structure, messy brown hair, expressive amber eyes, and a Hobbit T-shirt over checkered boxers. As a child, he was lauded as a “classic beauty” and that hasn’t changed.
You know Xander Hale as the most beautiful fourteen-year-old boy in the entire world. As said by you. You swoon over him like he’s the lead singer in a boy band or a famous social media star. You covet any photos you find online and cause his name to trend weekly. You’ve made his money-shots worth quadruple what mine sell for—and in effect, paparazzi stalk him like he’s the rarest, most hidden antelope of the pack. When in reality, he’s an endangered, timid bird.
I know him as my little brother. An amazing human being who speaks Elfish if you hang around him long enough. Who’s just trying to live in a world that’s a little too big for him. Who I’ll never give up on.
I just want him to be able to feel the light now and then. If I have to wrangle the sun out of the fucking sky with my bare hands, then I’ll withstand the burn. I’d give it all to him if I could.
Fair warning: imagine your toes being sawed off, and that’s what’ll happen if you fuck with my brother.
“You look like shit,” I say honestly. “You know what would help that?”
“Two more hours of sleep.”
“Swimming in the backyard pool with your big brother.”
Xander sighs into a glare. “Just come here and play video games with me. Stop trying to make me so…”
“Healthy, thriving, a human who goes outside—”
“Alright, alright,” he says. “Jesus, you’re relentless.”
My microwave beeps. I pull out the bowl of chips, and when I return to my phone, I notice Xander squinting at the screen.
I give him a look. “You picking your nose?” I eat a chip.
He scratches his cellphone like he’s trying to wipe a smudge off the screen. “What…what is that on your neck? Is that a hickey?”
I cough on my chip. Fuck. I drop my phone on the counter and fill a cup of water under the faucet. I down the water while Xander yells, “What, where’d you go—I need details!”
What’s the chance that Farrow would be that careless and give me a grade-school hickey? Slim. Maybe it’s not that bad.
I return to my phone and examine my neck in the screen. A dime-sized spot is faintly red. Probably because it happened recently. I doubt it’ll last. “What kind of details do you want?” I ask my brother.
He contemplates my question for a long moment and he settles on this: “Is the other person alive?”
I smile. I love my family.
Xander explains, “Luna says that whoever you hook up with instantly disintegrates into astral particles. Never to be seen or heard from again.”
“That’s a fucking terrible superpower.”
“No kidding.” Xander hot-potatoes his toasted pastry. “P.S. Dad is throwing a party in honor of your license suspension today. Everyone is pretty happy.”
“I saw the group-text.” The party is parents only which is kind of bullshit since it’s about me. I eat another chip. “Are you happy about it too?” I ask.
He shrugs and then looks at his pastry. Xander reaches some pretty low lows, and our parents hawk-eye him a lot. They’re even more aware of his health than I can be.
Xander barely lifts his gaze to the camera. “I overheard Thatcher saying the Camp-Away’s new format is ‘life-threateningly’ dangerous.” Thatcher Moretti is his 24/7 bodyguard, but young girls bombard Xander so often that Banks Moretti, Thatcher’s identical twin, is also on my brother’s detail.
“Thatcher is one of the stricter guys,” I remind Xander. “He’s probably overreacting.”
“Yeah but…” A tense beat passes before he tells me, “I need you to live long, Moffy.” He pauses, his eyes glassing a little bit. He scratches his nose and then rotates the camera to face his paper plate.
I stare hard at the phone.
My whole life, I’ve seen the media and nameless, faceless human beings shit on the people I love. Over and over. Clawing with no end in sight. Trying desperately to tear them apart. Ripping at the jugular. I walked on a sidewalk at ten-years-old and heard the word rape thrown at my mom in threat.