‘Avery, stop. Please. I’m sorry.’ Sam tries to stroke his arm, but Avery snatches free.
He scowls.
But his breathing evens out.
‘Even if we came up with the money,’ Avery snaps, ‘I’m only seventeen. I can’t rent.’
‘It could just be something small—’
‘No, it’s impossible. Shut up about it.’ Avery’s teeth clench. ‘And stop … stop being like him.’
‘Then stop drinking,’ Sam shoots back. ‘I mean it. Don’t ever do that again.’
Avery’s lips pull back in a snarl. But he just flips Sam off and storms back to the car. He starts dropping and fumbling tools, a good way to get the boss coming over in a rage, and Avery is fresh out of second chances. It drives Sam mad, because Avery is good with engines. He can take apart anything and put it back together clean, oiled and working ten times better. You give him a problem with a mechanical solution and he’ll find it.
But he has to stay calm. Not get overwhelmed. Not let anyone see him freak out.
People understand a cute seven-year-old boy screaming on the floor because he’s autistic. They call the police when that screaming little boy becomes seventeen.
The police must not find the Lou brothers. After what Sam did at school last year? He just, he … he can’t—
No, they can’t be found.
Sam wants to shout: Look, Avery! This is exactly why you can’t be alone! Who’d calm you down if I wasn’t here? But he doubts Avery even realises what Sam does for him.
Forget it. They’re brothers. This is what brothers do. Sam will hit himself before resenting Avery for needing help, OK?
He fiddles with a loose thread on his jeans. Moxie’s jeans. He can’t believe he forgot to change. He can’t believe he’s still clawing for the impossible wish of having his own home. But he needs a dream as big as the moon or else he’s just an invisible boy with empty hands.
He sighs and tucks the leftover cash he stole from the De Laineys into Avery’s back pocket. He’ll add it to their savings.
‘Can we not fight?’ Sam whispers.
Avery braces his arms against the engine and lets his head hang down, shoulder blades sticking up like achingly sharp wings. ‘S-stop hurting people. You’ll hit the wrong person someday and get yourself killed.’ He looks up, eyes like broken oceans.
‘Then stop screwing up,’ Sam says.
They let their impossible requests hang in the air, bitter as failure.
Even though they look dishevelled, all grease stains and undone shoelaces and tired eyes, the Lou brothers can sit on the edge of a water fountain on the Esplanade, unnoticed. No one looks twice. Sam swings his legs, plastic milkshake cup clasped in sweaty hands.
They’re here to work.
The sun is high and hot and the shops and restaurants and tourist traps along the beachfront are alive with the flurry of the lunch hour. Last night equalled cricked necks as they slept in the back of a stranger’s car. Sam had to vanish before the boss arrived, although he stowed his backpack in a storeroom because Avery tried to unzip it and that’s not happening. Then Avery, who’s pulling double shifts while the other apprentice is off, was given an unexpectedly long lunch break because the boss had to go out of town. He clearly doesn’t trust Avery alone in the workshop.
Fair.
Which ends up with the Lou brothers analysing tourist targets.
Their eyes are sharp and their list of needs specific: they want someone well dressed and distracted, hopefully sunburnt to proclaim tourist status. Someone happy or affectionate. Someone who’ll care.
‘I guess we’ll do the hit-and-then-run-away routine,’ Sam says at last.
Avery gives him a sour look. He still wears the grease-stained singlet from yesterday, but he has jeans on now and battered red Converse. He could use a bath.
There’s a toilet block not far from the ocean where you can get a sixty-second lukewarm shower. It’s supposed to be for sand-encrusted swimmers from the ocean, but it’s downright helpful if you’re homeless. It’s downright unhelpful if you think of the De Laineys’ warm shower and soap and comfortably softened clean clothes. Sam still has on the smiley-face shirt and Moxie’s jeans. Does she wonder about him?
Why’s he even thinking that? That’s over.
Sam rubs the back of his sweaty neck. ‘Well, we can’t do the one where you fake-vomit. We’re not set up for it.’
‘OK, we can do the Hit ’N’ Run job,’ says Avery. ‘I’m hitting, you’re running.’
Sam gives him a flat look. Obviously that’s how they divide the parts. He can’t even fake hitting Avery. ‘Stop calling them “jobs”. What do think this is? A movie?’
‘If this is a movie,’ Avery tips his milkshake cup up for the last drops, ‘then I want my money back.’
He hands his cup to Sam to throw out, because obviously that’s what little brothers are for. Sam considers throwing it back at his face, but everything about him and Avery seems unbalanced at the moment. Like it’s sliding. He wants to catch it before someone falls.
He puts it in the bin.
Avery stands, anticipation in his jittering arms. His eyes comb the crowd and he starts hopping up and down until Sam kicks his shoe to remind him to act inconspicuous.
Sam tugs at the collar of his shirt, too tired for this. His mind slips back to the butter-yellow house and the comfortable armchair in the sun and the way Moxie’s hand brushed his—
Avery shoves him.
It comes so fast that Sam doesn’t have time to brace himself. He takes a stumbling step backwards, falling against a passer-by in a tangle of limbs and hair flopping over his face.
‘I’m sorry!’ he gasps as the person shoves him off with a startled grunt.
Their handbag isn’t quite zipped.
Sam’s hand is in and out before he stands up.
Then Avery is in front of him, shoulders knotted, jabbing a finger into Sam’s chest. Right on the bruise. Sam’s wince is real.
‘You want to run that by me again?’ Avery shouts.
Sam slaps his hand away. ‘Hey, take it easy.’ He’s not faking, though. Avery’s a little too into it today.
‘Shut the hell up!’ Avery shoves him again. He puts in more force than usual, like he hasn’t left their recent list of frazzled disagreements behind and it’s playing out as his body uncoils frenzied tics. Not good. It’ll be harder to gauge when he’s about to—