Odin's Murder

“I’d testify.” But they wouldn’t believe me, either. They’d say I brought it on myself. They’d be right, too. I look behind me, at my closet. If anything in there goes past my knees, it’s so skin-tight I need body lotion to get it on. The other kids call Faye ‘the hobo girl’. I don’t want to know what they say about me.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” he jokes, but it falls flat in the room, and something, his tone, the way his eyes evade mine says he means it. “You weren’t shocked when Jeremy told you I’ve done time.”

“The way you eat,” I shrug. “And how you look at open doors, like they make you nervous.” I lean into him, kiss his cheek on the one spot that isn’t damaged. “Jeremy doesn’t know me at all, if he thinks that makes a difference to me.”

“It should.”

“I’ve dated boys that didn’t have a criminal record and should have.” He touches his cheek, where I’ve kissed him. I wish I had something for his restless hands, a teddy bear. Or his camera. “What did you do to get sent there in the first place? Get caught stealing?”

“Assault. My temper gets me in trouble.”

“Sometimes you have a reason, though,” I say. “Like tonight.”

“Oh, I always have a reason. They just don’t usually see eye to eye with it.” He kicks off his shoes and falls back on my bed. The fight has ebbed from his body and the bruises are starting to bloom under his skin. He squirms, and digs at the covers beneath him, pulls out a bottle of nail polish. It’s the most demure color I have, a light cerulean appropriately called A Little Blue.

“Swiping my make-up, now, are you?” I ask him, taking it from his fingers. “I have shinier shades.” I shake it until the BBs in the bottom rattle loose. Julian would like the color. I resist checking my phone for messages. He’ll be asleep by now anyway; the antihistamine drugs they always give for allergies knock him right out.

The cot groans under my weight as I stretch out alongside Ethan. His skin is warm.

“When was the last time you slept?” I ask.

“I fell aslee

p before dinner.” His voice breaks, rough. “Not much before that. Sunday night, maybe.”

“That was the last time I saw my brother.”

He turns to face me, raising a hand to push my hair out of my face. “We’ll figure this out. Faye will help us. Maybe someone used another pen-thing on him and he got confused. There’s one in the first-aid kits, right?” He gestures, some vague hand wave that ends aimed at my torso. My shirt is rumpled sideways, exposing skin and curves. My bra is showing, I know, but I make no move to cover it. He drags his eyes up to my face.

I nod, take a deep breath, force the worry off my skin, and manage a smile. He grins back, and it pulls at his mouth and the adhesive, and his eyes drift down again, to the black lace.

“I just wish I hadn’t fought with Jules,” I tell him, inching closer. “We almost never do. I mean, we tease each other all the time, but we don’t—”

“Shhh.” He touches my lower lip with his thumb. “He wasn’t mad that night. He wanted to apologize. I’m the one who stopped him, told him to give you some time. You said you wanted to be alone.”

“You guys talked about me?”

“Yeah, I caught him out front with Faye. They were cool, too." His eyelashes are darker than his eyebrows, smudged under exhausted lids.

“What do you mean?”

He shakes his head. “Do you really not see it? You share dreams and half a brain but you can’t see past yourself to figure out what was going on with your brother.”

I lean up on one arm. My hair falls over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“Julian and Faye. It’s torture, watching them. She’s tying him in knots.”

I laugh. It comes out hard and silly, and I swallow it with a hiccup, glancing at the door. “No way. Julian isn’t like that about girls. Women are abstract to him. Like a mystic symbol or something. I thought he might be gay for a while.”

“Nah,” he says. “Though I’ve never seen a straight guy use so much hair gel. It makes sense, though. Have you ever met a chick more abstract than Faye?”

His smiling mouth—so close to my own—makes me restless, like caffeine on an all-nighter. The suture bandage tugs at his skin, and I smooth it back down with a finger. “So you think all those trips to the library—”

“Yeah. You’re just too freaking self-absorbed to notice.”

“I’m not self-absorbed. I’m not mannaz, or whatever Faye says the stupid rune means.”

He tucks his hands behind his neck, propping himself up. “Yeah, right.”