Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [99]
“He does that,” Hugo said.
“What?”
“Pushes people away when he needs them the most,” he said. “It’s why we barely spoke to each other for about five years.”
“When was that?”
“When he was younger. When he was using.” He searched for my eyes, then smiled warmly. “Before you.”
I must confess: I flushed under the attention of his gaze. Riding beside your brother in his truck reminded me so much of those first out-of-control moments between you and me, when sitting inches away from you in the Caddie on the way to Helga’s Diner made me dizzy with the push-pull-push-pull between blood-thumping attraction and heart-stopping terror.
I averted his familiar eyes by turning around to note the Princeton University sticker stuck to the rear window.
“Your parents must be beyond proud about Princeton.”
“Beyond,” Hugo said simply. “Talk about your lost causes. This was a kid who was left back in kindergarten!” He laughed bitterly at the memory. “Marcus was diagnosed with every letter in the alphabet. ADD. ADHD. OCD. And my favorite, ODD…”
“ODD?”
“Oppositional Defiance Disorder,” Hugo explained. “It basically means that Marcus wouldn’t take shit from authority figures. That’s the only label he agreed with. He’d just shrug and say, ‘That’s right. I’m odd.’”
I can totally hear you saying that.
“I was never into books,” Hugo continued, “I was always better with my hands.” He held up a dirty palm to prove his point. “But Marcus was always a thinker. He needed to know how everything worked and would drive us all crazy with questions.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like about anything,” he said. The truck came to a red light, and he pointed to a gas station. “Why can’t cars run on water?” He pointed to a flock of birds flying overhead. “How do birds know what way is south?” He pointed to a man rolling through the crosswalk in his wheel-chair. “How did he lose his legs?” The light turned green. “Just on and on and onnnnnnnnnnn.” He groaned with the memory. “I was constantly telling him to shut up. But my parents, especially my mom, deserve a lot of credit for answering his questions as patiently as they could.”
I thought about how tiresome Marin’s questions could be for two hours at a stretch. I could hardly imagine fielding them all day long.
“My parents saw potential, but the schools saw trouble. Marcus would interrupt the teachers to ask his questions, and they’d get on his ass for disobedience and all this bullshit when really he was just a kid who wasn’t getting satisfying answers to his questions. He’d go to the library and look things up on the Internet, then get books to back up what he had read. He never relied on just one source. Does a dumb kid do that? I don’t think so.”
I didn’t share a classroom with you until our junior year, but I can imagine what you must have been like in elementary school. I also asked my teachers a million questions, and when I got unsatisfactory answers, I took it upon myself to grill inanimate objects, clutching a pencil as a microphone to interview the American flag (“Are red, white, and blue your favorite colors?”) or a block tower (“Are you worried about being knocked down?”) or whatever. But for some reason—perhaps my passive, nonthreatening gender—my curiosity wasn’t interpreted as a sign of insubordination.
“For this troublemaker to get into Princeton is a pretty big deal for my parents,” he said. “The ultimate ‘I told you so.’”
He’s right. Has there ever been anyone more unlikely to attend Princeton than you?
I’m embarrassed to say this, but until that moment with your brother, I selfishly viewed your decision to attend Princeton as a twenty-three-year-old freshman as nothing more than an inconvenience to me and our relationship. Why Princeton when you could have just as easily chosen Columbia or NYU or any other school in New York City? So what if you hated the city? Couldn’t your love for me transcend that discomfort? It’s no wonder that you didn’t tell me that you had applied but only that you had gotten in.
Of course,