“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said softly. Yeah. I was meeting my older brother for the first time ever, and that was the first thing I said to him: You’re not supposed to be here.
Lucas laughed bitterly.
“Yeah, well. There are lots of things I’m not supposed to be, and here is pretty much the least of our problems.” He ran is hand through his hair.
“Our problems?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, and trying to ignore how his accent sounded. “I’m pretty sure the only things we share are our genes. And I’m not even sure about that! You haven’t told me who you are yet.”
Lucas looked at me funny then.
“Don’t you know?” He asked me.
I didn’t answer. The thing was that… yeah, I did know. I knew deep down in my gut even if he didn’t tell me. This was my brother, Lucas Jones.
“You’re Lucas Jones, aren’t you? The boy who disappeared from London.”
He nodded. “Go on,”
“You’re also some how related to me, and therefore to my father, and possibly a woman named Rachel.”
He nodded again, but slower. “Don’t you know?” he asked me incredulously. His blue eyes flashed. “Rachel is our mother. I’m your brother, Stephen is our father.” He studied me. “He really didn’t tell you.” I don’t think I was supposed to hear that.
“Oh,” I said, trying to sound passive, like this wasn’t huge news. But it was. I had a brother and mother. My brother was sitting here, looking at me with those huge blue eyes, talking to me with his low-ish voice and his British accent, wearing pants that were too nice for a school day, and a shirt that looked like it might actually have real buttons on it. Yeah, it was pretty huge news.
“And you have no idea about Mum…” he said quietly.
I could feel my face draining of color. I didn’t know anything about Mom. I’d guessed about her hair and her eyes, but only guesses. I knew her name was Rachel now, and that something had made Dad leave London take me with him to America. But that was it.
I shook my head slowly. What was wrong with her? Was she a full class criminal? Did she die? What was going on? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me?
Lucas bit his lip, looking around like someone might hear him. He looked back at me and in spite of himself, smiled.
“Lucy Jones,” he said again, as if he couldn’t really believe it.
“What?!” I asked, irate and angry. “Can you please just tell me what’s going on?! They have police looking for you all over the place, Dad took off last night for London, and all you can say is my name.” I hadn’t really meant to snap, but it just seemed like a lot to take in at the time.
I had no idea what was coming next.
Lucas winced as if I’d hit him in the stomach with a bowling ball.
“Look, I’ll explain everything, just come with me,” he said, taking my book from my hands and putting it back on the shelf.
“Come with you? I have to go to school!” I said, taking my book back off the shelf. Now he’d lost my page, and that’s definitely not a way to get me on your good side. “And besides! I’ve never met you before, you don’t know anything about me, and I don’t know anything about you. For all I know you’re some weird murderer come to murder me. How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
I fingered the empty locket that I was wearing. I was always wearing it, out of habit I guess. Like I said, it didn’t have anything in it. Lucas looked at me like I’d thrown a spear down his throat and made him swallow it. He looked like he was trying not to cry.
“Your full name is Lucy Reighn Jones, because when you were born you would only sleep when Mum or Dad played the tape with the rain on it. Your favorite color is purple but the deep eggplant shade, not the girly pretty purple that every one else likes. You always wear that locket around your neck, but it’s empty so you don’t know why. You never knot your shoelaces because you’re afraid that they won’t come undone. You’re favorite movie is The Matrix, but your favorite TV show is Doctor Who on the BBC. Your favorite author is Margaret Peterson Haddix, and you favorite breakfast is eggs and bacon.”
I didn’t know what to say. I sat there and listened to his list of my favorite things, stunned. I couldn’t believe that this whole time I’d thought he didn’t know me, but somehow from across the world, he’d kept an eye on me, he knew all about me. And I knew nothing about me. It almost made me want to cry.
“And this…” he pulled something small out of his pocket. “Is how you know that it’s me.”
I looked at what was sitting in his hand, as he held it out to me. It was a small box, wrapped in purple-blue paper and tied with a write ribbon.
“Happy birthday,” he told me quietly.
I took it softly from his hand, untying the ribbon and slipping the paper off the little box. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this.
In the box were two tiny heart shaped photos: one of them was of a beautiful blonde lady who seemed to be about twenty-five. She was in the arms of a handsome dark haired man and they were both smiling. It could only have been Mom and Dad.
The second was of a small blonde boy holding a day old baby with fuzzy blonde hair. I understood immediately. I unclasped my locket from my neck; something I hadn’t done in years. Flipping over the heart shaped photos revealed that they had peel off plastic covers on the backs of them, covering sticky behinds. I opened my locket and slipped the photos in: one on each side.
“Thanks, Lucas. I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just that… I don’t know. I’d never thought that I cared about you or Mom, but when Dad went running off for you so quickly, I realized that I did care… a lot,” I said.
Lucas nodded. “I know,” He said. “it’s got to be hard. But if you think about it, I grew up without a father, just like you grew up without Mum. But we can talk about that later, right now we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
I looked at him, puzzled.
“Come on, follow me.” I could tell he wasn’t going to take no for an answer this time, because he grabbed my elbow and towed me out of the library.
“How did you even get here, anyway?” I asked him.
He stopped walking for a moment, as if he were considering something.
“I flew.”
“You… flew. Don’t you have to have some sort of adult chaperone to fly?”
“I didn’t fly on a plain exactly…”
“Okay. Was it… legal?”
Lucas didn’t answer.
“Then I don’t wanna know.”
“No problems there,” he said with a little laugh. Let out a sigh. This could be hard.
“So what did you want to tell me?” I asked him, trying to shove him right to the point. I was tired of talking about everything else except what he was really trying to say.
Lucas looked around again, trying to make sure that no one was listening. I didn’t know why, but I did the same. It was like he was going to tell me some secret that could help save the world. But that was stupid.
Those are some interesting books!
ReplyDeleteGreat writing!