It turned into something I could hold. Something I could look at, instead of something that was looking at me.
“No more secrets,” I said.
“Never again,” he promised.
“I mean it, Nigel. Not one. Not about anything. If you’re tired, you tell me. If a trial fails, you tell me. If you’re scared, you tell me. If you burned my toast, you tell me.”
He laughed. A wet, broken laugh. The first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
His whole face changed when he laughed. Little lines crinkled up around his eyes. I hadn’t known they did that.
“Never again,” he said.
I didn’t forgive him that day. Not all the way.
That night, I slept in Rose’s room, in her bed, while she slept in mine. Nigel slept on the couch. The mushroom-colored couch.
Rose came home from school that afternoon and found me in the kitchen and screamed. She dropped her backpack and ran across the room and stopped right in front of me and just stood there, looking at me, while I looked at her.
