pocket. Fingers moving like fire, she rings him, the call going straight to a generic voicemail. A quick inhale and she calls again, the outcome the same.
Rocco bought them both phones the day after they arrived. Blake, like every teenage girl in the world, is attached to hers. She doesn’t even pee without it. Jesse, on the other hand, is impartial. He keeps it with him at all times, a security blanket he’s never had before.
“What time did you say he left?”
“Blake, you need to calm down. Jesse’s fine, I’m sure.”
“I asked you what time he left?” She bites out unkindly. “Not for your opinion on how I should be feeling.”
I refuse to answer.
“Please, Camryn,” she pleads.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Maybe tenish.”
Her hand comes up to massage her stomach. “It’s now two. He’s been gone for four hours. That’s not right.”
Her big gray eyes have moved past her initial worry and straight into a hysteria that makes me move toward her.
“Hey,” I soothe. “You need to relax. Shoot him a text and I’m sure as soon as he gets it he’ll call you.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Text,” she stresses, calling him for the third time.
“Blake—”
“He can’t read,” she yells at me. “I can’t text him because he can’t fucking read, okay?”
I take a step back. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knows,” she cries. “He thinks he’s stupid. He goes to the library twice a week, some old lady there has taken pity on him and teaches him how to read.”
My heart breaks. “Why didn’t he say anything?”
She laughs, the sound the exact melody of a broken heart. A sonnet to the betrayal she feels she’s now painting her brother with by telling me this.
“We’re street kids, Camryn. Kids who get by through hustling. We lie, we cheat, we steal to live day-to-day. Who would want us?”
“Rocco,” I state categorically. “Rocco wants you.”
“Well we didn’t know that.” Tears have now sprung to her eyes. The gray of her irises, so wet with emotion, they’re almost transparent.
“Jesse was convinced that if Rocco found out he couldn’t read or write that he’d be embarrassed his son was such a fuck up. He begged me not to say anything.”
I grab at my chest, working to calm the pain in my chest.
“But, you—”
“Know how to read?” she guesses.
I nod.
“Jesse forced me to go to school while he stayed at home caring for our mom. Whether it was to make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit or to protect her if Marcus decided to visit. He never got an education, but made sure I did.”
I can feel my own tears now, sitting uncomfortably against my eyes, waiting for permission to fall.
She begins pacing the room, thumbnail caught between her teeth.
“Blake,” I start.
“You don’t understand,” she accentuates, stepping toward me only to step back again.
“You guys are attached, I get it,” I pacify, working my hardest to talk her down from the ledge she’s hellbent on balancing upon. “You’re worried, but he’ll be fine.”
An unamused cry falls from her lips. “Jesus. We’re not fucking useless without one another.”
Her cell sounds and she jumps at the sound, hand diving into her pocket to retrieve it.
I’ve seen a lot of people through grief. Both strangers and family. Interestingly enough, I’ve never met two people who react the same way. Tears are tears, but crying, that’s strikingly individual.
Watching a teenage girl break is high on my list of things I’d happily never experience again. To watch the moment her world falls into pieces around her has never made me feel more useless, more inept as a human being.
Her knees give out before either of us have noticed, my reflexes far too slow to even attempt to catch her. Her cry is one that strips her vocal cords so violently, in the end, no sound actually comes out. Her mouth open in a silent scream that would disturb peace on earth.
But it’s the way her body shakes that gets me the most. The way she free falls into shock so quickly, her body is a quivering mess of heart-wrenching sobs and bone crunching wails.
Body weak enough, I retrieve her cell from her hand without a fight, the small device falling into my palm in ease.
A gasp escapes my throat before I can school it, the jolt of shock hitting me like a punch to the stomach I was no way prepared for.
Jesse’s face stares up at us from the message. Eyes barely open with how heavily