Everything That Makes You (13 page)

“I heard it snowed in May last year,” Jackson said. He leaned across the cafeteria table and stabbed her fruit onto his fork.

“Mom has a friend who used to live up here,” Fiona said. “She told me a Memphis winter might be gray, but at least it wouldn't kill you. I thought she was joking.”

They'd been here nearly an hour, prolonging breakfast and hiding from the weather. Ever since
the eavesdropping
, they'd done this a few times a week. Because of different class schedules, their paths didn't cross often—but when they did run into each other, they'd wind up grabbing lunch or some coffee. She'd started scanning the first floor common room, hoping to run into him accidentally-on-purpose.

They could talk for hours, about everything. Yet somehow, they'd avoided crossing that invisible border into the land of personal information. Just how she liked it.

“Man, I miss greasy southern food,” Jackson said, going
for her banana muffin. “When I get back for Christmas, I'm eating my weight in Gus's Fried Chicken.”

Dark, wavy hair dipped over one eye. Fiona wanted so, so badly to reach out and touch it.

“I know,” she said. “I'm in barbecue withdrawal. Dad's taking me to Corky's on the way from the airport.”

“Central's better.”

Then followed the “best barbecue” argument, which happened all the time in Memphis—and
never
ended in agreement. “Okay, best record store then,” Fiona said.

“That vinyl place on Madison. Shangri-La.”

Her heart might melt. She
loved
that place. “Best tourist spot,” she said.

“Best? Like as a joke?”

“No. Really the best.”

“I've got no idea. I've only been to Graceland ironically.” He frowned at his empty fork before pointing it at her. “My brother got me this horrible sequined cape there—a replica of the Vegas concert one. I think it's still in my room somewhere.”

“How do you
not
know if there's a sequined—wait, I didn't know you have a brother.”

“Had,” he said. “He died this past summer.”

And just like that, they crossed into the land of personal information. “Oh. I'm so sorry.”

“He'd been sick a long time.”

She nodded like she understood, which she didn't. The
conversation lagged, their first awkward silence.

“What about you?” Jackson leaned forward, and she let him pick through what remained of her breakfast. “Any brothers or sisters?”

“A brother. He's a freshman, too—at Clemson.” She felt guilty suddenly, like having a living brother was showing off.

“You're twins?”

She shook her head. “He's ten months older. It just worked out, how our birthdays fell. He was one of the oldest in our class. I was one of the youngest.” She pulled out her phone and held it out to him. “That's him. Ryan.”

Jackson took it, eyes squinted. “That girl he's with—she looks familiar.”

“Gwen. His girlfriend.”

His eyes widened as he studied the phone's small screen. “Otherlands, right? She works there?”

“You go there?”

He wiggled his hand back and forth. So-so. “You?”

“All the time.”

“Liar. I never saw you there.” He speared a chunk of cantaloupe, pointed it at her, and winked. “I'd have remembered.”

Oh, what her body did when Jackson flirted.

With Trent McKinnon, Fiona's fantasies were gauzy and girlish, all smiles and chaste kisses and happily ever after. Not so with Jackson. The specificity of her imagination regarding this green-eyed boy was alarming.

Which then led to guilt. Because, uh,
what about David
?

Since she couldn't handle flirting, she avoided it. Like right now, by getting them back on track with the original conversation. “They've been dating since eleventh grade.”

“She goes to Clemson?”

“No, Furman. Nearby, but I'm not sure they see each other much. He's on the soccer team and never has a free second, apparently.”

Jackson laughed. “Not that it bothers you.”

“It's that obvious?”

“You look like a tractor ran over your toe.”

“We were just—are just—really close. But I never talk to him anymore.” She looked at Jackson's drawn face and was horrified. “Oh, Jackson. I'm sorry. I shouldn't—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “You're allowed to miss your brother.”

“You miss yours.”

“He's why I deferred, at first,” he said, while idly picking through her fruit. “I didn't want to leave, you know, with him still around. Even after he died I waffled about it, but Mom got sick of me moping. She said stalling didn't change anything. He died and
not moving
wouldn't keep it from being true.”

“How did he die?” she asked quietly.

“Heart failure.”

“Oh my God. That's terrible.”

He nodded. “Four years ago, he got food poisoning, which gave him this fluke infection. Everything just went perfectly
wrong after that. By the time the doctors figured it out, his heart was shot.”

“It sounds awful.”

“Since his immune system was messed up, my parents pulled him out of regular school, to teach him at home. He was so pissed. He wanted a normal life.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Selfish bastard that I am, I pushed him to stay home, too. I did it with him.”

“You were homeschooled?” Fiona imagined sitting with Ryan in those little kindergarten desks that used to be in their playroom, while her mom wrote lessons on an old-fashioned chalkboard. The brief daydream was very unappealing.

“In theory,” Jackson said, with a little laugh. “Teaching is not my mother's calling. We pretty much just followed the city school curriculum. I took some classes at U of M,” he said. “Marcus kept telling me to go back to school. He said I was missing everything.”

“Like what?”

“Football games, clubs, prom. Stuff I didn't care about—but he did,” he said. “He always said that even if his life was screwed up, mine didn't have to be. Which is ridiculous. I mean, just because it's not
happening
to me doesn't mean it's not happening to me.”

“And you aren't sad?” she asked. “That you missed high school?”

He shook his head. “I got my brother. I was kind of a
jealous girlfriend about it, too. Trying to get all the time with him I could.”

Fiona felt that way about Ryan—though she wasn't a jealous girlfriend so much as
jealous of his girlfriend
. “Sounds nice. I mean, not
nice.
But—”

“Don't worry,” he said with a cute smile. “I know what you mean. And yeah, it was great actually, having him to myself like that. Although it's come around to bite me, since I really know what I'm missing.”

Fiona wanted to know more but felt like she'd been nosy enough already. However, after a few sips of coffee, Jackson offered more up on his own. “This past year, he couldn't even walk up the stairs without getting out of breath. Still, every day he wanted something new.”

“Like what?”

“Like, well, like food. But he couldn't stomach much, so
I
had to eat everything and then describe it. And books. He sent me to the library so often, the librarian, Linda, and I were on a first name basis.” He shook his head. “We didn't let him out much, but whenever his blood work came back strong—or if he'd had some good days—he'd get a reprieve. And man, he grabbed it.”

“What would he do?”

“Anything, really. Sometimes just regular stuff, like bowling. Fishing. Sometimes he got a little goofy. Like—have you ever been to that open mic night at Otherlands?”

Fiona's heart practically stopped beating. She nodded.

Jackson wagged his eyebrows. “All the ways our paths have crossed.” For a moment, he just looked at her, all smirky and adorable, before continuing. “He even did that once. Read
Sartre,
of all things. He got booed off the stage, which was probably a first for that place. Still, he was so pumped. Alive.” He stared at the table. Suddenly, it looked like all happiness and sarcasm left him. “God, it sucks.”

The lump in her throat made her forget her stalled heart. “How did he handle it? Knowing he was dying?”

“He never admitted he was dying.” He shook his head, like this still baffled him. “He was the world's biggest optimist. The doctors told him a new heart was a long shot. Like,
long.
Still he thought he'd pull through it.”

“You didn't?”

He shook his head. “No. Which felt like crap.”

Fiona watched him, this lovely, heartbroken boy. The wavy hair and olive skin and lopsided smile and broad shoulders just the package for all the invisible, real stuff hidden inside.

Gradually, a crooked smile appeared on Jackson's face. “Your turn.”

“My turn to what?”

“Share.”

Fiona narrowed her eyes at this suspicious question. Just because they were in Jackson's land of personal information didn't mean they had to cross into hers. “I've got nothing.”

He pointed to her cheek. “What's the story with that scar?”

Automatically, Fiona dragged her bangs forward. “Nothing.”

She hadn't told anyone here about Old Fiona and her life-changing surgery. She hadn't planned it that way, but whenever anyone asked, she remembered her mother's comment in the hotel elevator.
No one would ever know
. And she just kept vaguely deflecting the questions.

“You don't have to do that.” Jackson leaned across the table and tucked her bangs behind her ear. His fingertips glanced the skin on her neck, and all the original bits of her erupted in goose bumps. “It's not bad—cool, really. Like there's a little badass lurking under all that cute.”

Oh my.
“Next question.”

Jackson smirked. “You realize I just want to know more now.”

Jackson had told her about his dead brother, who'd gotten
booed off a stage.
Who'd fit all the living he could into the life he got handed.

Jackson had told her something true.

“I had some scars growing up,” she said. “But surgery this summer fixed them.”

“Fixed them?” he asked, eyes widening.

She shrugged. “It's not a big deal.”

“What happened?”

She wanted a sip of coffee, but her hands shook in her lap. Acting as relaxed as she could, Fiona gave a two-minute recap
of the day when she was five that, theoretically, no longer mattered.

“How big were they?”

She gestured vaguely to the right side of her face.

Jackson whistled. “So you had the scars from five until—”

“Eighteen.”

“Wow,” he said. “That sounds pretty bad.”

Not knowing what to say, Fiona did what she did best—just like with covering other people's songs, she substituted someone else's idea for her own. “What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Or so they say.”

“Spare me the throw pillow mentality,” he said, suddenly annoyed. “You're just as likely to end up dead.”

Horrified at her gaffe, Fiona said, “Jackson—”

Jackson held up his hand, cutting her off. “All that bumper sticker philosophy. You can't imagine how many old ladies have told me, ‘God doesn't give you what you can't handle.'”

“I didn't mean—”

“Sometimes life just sucks,” he said, riled up now. “And maybe I
want
to wallow! Maybe I don't want to look for the silver lining!”

She knew it was dumb to argue with him, but he was just so wrong. “Nothing's worse than feeling sorry for yourself. Trust me.”

Jackson looked at her a long moment, straight in the eyes. Then his eyes tracked the path of her new scar, from the inside
edge of her right eyebrow straight up to where it tucked into her hairline. Like he'd lost the track and couldn't find his way back, his eyes trailed vaguely around her forehead before finding the last leg of the scar's route, below the ear right up to the outside corner of her right eye. Fiona's heart pounded during the slow inspection.

Eventually he winked. “You should tell everybody you used to be a pirate.”

Oh, this boy and his weird coincidences. “That's what my best friend told me to say, if anyone asked about the scar. I even did it once—during orientation.”

Jackson laughed. “What happened?”

A drunk guy had barely managed to slur, “How'd you get that scar?” When she'd answered, “I'm really a pirate,” he'd wobbled forward, said
Aargh,
and planted a sloppy kiss right on her mouth. Before she could get over the shock, he'd hobbled away like he had a peg leg.

Rather than tell Jackson this bizarre story, she dug out a Moleskine. She figured by now, the word had earned space there—plus, she needed something to do with her hands. She wrote
piracy
in a free place.

Jackson nodded his head toward the book. “What's the story with those? You've always got one.”

“Just a mess of stuff, really. Song ideas. Notes that wouldn't make sense to anyone but me.”

“When do I get to hear one of these songs?”

“I can play you Flem's latest project—‘Pour Some Sugar on Me' by Def Leppard. It's horrendous—and a little bit genius, if I do say so myself.”

“Sounds like an intriguing combination,” he said. “But I'd rather have an original.”

“Oh. Um, I've never really played my stuff for anyone.”

“Isn't that kind of required? If you're a songwriter?”

“I'm still looking for the loophole.”

Jackson tipped his chair backward. “You are an enigma, Miss Fiona.”

Fiona gestured to herself as if she were a prize on a game show. “What you see is what you get.”