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"He, uh, rear-ended me," Eureka mumbled, as mortified in front of Ander as if Brooks were Rhoda or Dad, not her oldest friend She was getting claustrophobic with hiave her a lift back to school," Ander said to Brooks "But I don’t see what it has to do with you Unless you’d rather she’d walked?"

Brooks was caught off guard An exasperated laugh escaped his lips

Then Ander lurched forward, his arrabbed Brooks by the neck of his T-shirt "How long have you been with her? How long?"

Eureka shrank between the about? She should do so to defuse the situation But what? She didn’t realize she was leaning instinctively backward against the safe familiarity of Brooks’s chest until she felt his hand on her elbow

He did not flinch when Ander cah to know that assholes aren’t her type"

The three of them were practically stacked on top of each other Eureka could feel both of the Brooks smelled like rain and Eureka’s entire childhood; Ander smelled like an ocean she’d never seen Both of them were too close She needed air

She looked up at the strange, pale boy Their eyes connected She shook her head at Ander slightly, asking why

She heard the rustle of his fingers loosening from Brooks’s shirt Ander took a few stiff steps backward until he was at the edge of the porch Eureka took her first breath in what seemed like an hour

"I’ht I just wanted to give you back your things and to tell you how to reach ray drizzle When his truck door slained herself inside it She could almost feel the warend Bunk Johnson’s truh the windshield as Ander drove under Lafayette’s canopy of oak trees toherever was home She wanted to knohat it looked like, what color the sheets on his bed were, whether hisdinner Even after the way he’d just acted toward Brooks, Eureka longed to be back in that truck

"Exit psychopath," Brooks hts disappear into the world beyond her street

Brooks ain?"

Eureka weighed the overstuffed wallet in her hands She i at her library card, her horrifying student ID picture, receipts frohtchick flicks Cat dragged her to see at the dollar theater, endless pennies in the change pouch, a few bucks if she was lucky, the quartet of black-and-white photo booth pictures of her and her mother taken at a street fair in New Orleans the year before Diana died

"Eureka?" Brooks said

"What?"

He blinked, surprised by the sharpness in her voice "Are you okay?"

Eureka walked to the edge of the porch and leaned on the white wooden balustrade She breathed in the high rose the raindrops that clung to them Brooks closed the screen door behind him He walked over to her and the two of the was falling over Lafayette A golden half-hborhood ran along a single road--Shady Circle--which for the way Everybody recognized everybody else, everybody waved, but they weren’t up in each other’s business as hborhood in New Iberia would be Her house was on the west side of Shady Circle, backing up against a narrow slip of bayou Her front yard faced another front yard across the street, and through her neighbors’ kitchenEureka could see Mrs LeBlanc, wearing lipstick and a tight floral apron, stirring soht a catechishter a few years older than the twins, whom she dressed in chic outfits thatlike Eureka and Diana used to be--aside, maybe, from their clear adoration of each other--and yet, since the accident, Eureka found herShe’d stare out her bedrooh blond ponytails shone in precisely the saed her knee with his

Eureka pivoted to look him in the eye "Why were you so hostile to hiainst his chest "Are you serious? He--I--"

"You were standing over me like some possessive older brother You could have introduced yourself"

"Are we in the sarabbed ainst the wall For no reason!" He shook his head "What’s with you? Are you into hi

"Good, because he could be spending ho in solitary confineht shove

Brooks feigned stu of violent cri her off the ground He hauled her over his shoulder the way he’d been doing since his fifth-grade growth spurt gave him a half a foot on the rest of their class He spun Eureka on the porch until she yelped for hi "He wasn’t that bad"

Brooks slid her to the ground and stepped away His s nut"

"I do not" She stuffed the wallet in the pocket of her cardigan She was dying to look at the phone nuht I don’t knohat his probleainst the balustrade, tapping the heel of one foot against the toes of the other He brushed his wet hair froe, yellow, and red, like a fire They were quiet until Eureka heardHank Williams’s "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry"?