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“Let me see.”
“No, you don’t need to see, it’s way up here on my—“
“Let me see,” Jude insists.
I watch his face as I slip down Dane’s pants, concerned that he might get pukey just from the sight of the stitches.
Sure enough, what little color was in his cheeks drains away. He licks his lips. “Did he do that to you?”
“The stitches? Yeah.”
Jude stares at the long gash down my inner thigh.
“I’m fine,” I say, pulling up my pants. “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”
Jude blinks. “That fucker. He was probably worried you’d sue his ass.”
“What for? I’m the one who hit myself with the hammer.”
“On his property. Working for him.”
“Is that our new plan?” I snort. “We’re gonna get rich filing worker’s compensation suits?”
“Well, you picked the right guy to stick with a lawsuit. He’s rich as hell, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Apparently his brother owns the Monarch.”
“Wish our parents were as rich as they thought they were.” Jude sulks.
“Not as much as I do.”
After my parents died, Jude and I learned that they never actually owned our lovely, bright Colonial in the Garden District of New Orleans. It had always been the property of a sweet old lady named Brenda, who gave us exactly thirty days to grieve—then informed us how much rent we owed, including arrears.
My father’s trust fund was down to its dregs. My mother never had money; she was just fucking gorgeous. She was raised to marry rich and she did—though not as rich as she thought.
By the time we paid off all the debt and set aside what we needed for Jude to stay at his private school, there was barely enough left for half the rent on a cheap walk-up. I got a job on a painting crew the very next day. I was eighteen years old. I’d never even been kissed.
“Never mind,” I say to Jude. “I charged my laptop off the battery pack—you want to watch a movie tonight?”
Jude grins. “I’ve got something way better than that.”
He takes me out to the back garden, overgrown with blackberry bushes and pumpkin vines. He’s set up a couple of rickety lawn chairs and tacked a sheet against the back of the house. A projector sits on three spindly legs, the fourth side propped up on books.
“Ernie had a generator!” Jude says gleefully. “Only took me a couple of hours to get it working again.”
He cranks it up. The generator roars to life, spitting black smoke and the stench of gasoline.
“Bit loud for a movie, isn’t it?” I yell over the noise.
“That’s why I built this.” Jude slaps a pillow-stuffed box over top.
His makeshift soundproofing works well enough that we can hear most of Han’s lines inReturn of the Jedi.Jude yells out all the best ones, anyway.
The characters make ghostly shapes on our wall, their faces distorted by wrinkles in the sheet. Moths flutter across the projector’s lens, throwing shadowy wings a thousand times larger across our movie.
My brother is surprisingly tender about the wound on my leg, insisting on propping my foot up on pillows and wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. He even builds a little fire so we can toast marshmallows.
“Jude,” I say after I’ve eaten about a hundred s’mores. “This is really nice.”
