Author's Note: Second half of my Cake family two-shot. Thanks to anyone who reads & reviews.

I.

Her father's place is across town, a state-of-the-art apartment complex that's almost right in the heart of the city. Everything is monochrome and modern, with hard floors and sharp edges. Certainly not kid-friendly.

Her bedroom is small, but bright. White curtains on the windows, a roll-top desk, a ceiling fan overhead. Plain cream-colored walls, complete with cream-colored carpet. It looks like the inside of a marshmallow.

Her father grins sheepishly.

"I wasn't sure what you would want," he says, "so I figured you and I could shopping one day. Help you pick out your own stuff."

His hands brush over the wood of the desk, the only bit of color in the room.

"Though I wanted you to have this," he says. "This was my desk growing up. It was my dad's, before that. And I want it to be yours. My published writer, and all."

His words are cut to ribbons. His eyes plead.

"I want you to have it, Clare-bear."

"Of course," she tells him. "I love it."

II.

The first weekend she moves in with her dad, Jake calls her to see how she's doing.

She's sitting on the back porch. Her hands are sweaty. The cell slips in her hands.

"Fine," she tells him.

The sun is setting, purple and pink waves threaded with orange. The whole city looks like a shadow, something made up in a dream.

"Good," he says. No inflection. Nothing that tells her what he's really thinking.

(Though, with Jake, it probably really does mean, "good". He doesn't exactly force her to read between the lines.)

III.

Time goes by. She goes to school, has to see Eli. That's harder than she likes. She spends time with Alli, with Adam. It still doesn't go away completely.

She'll miss too many things if she thinks too hard. She misses head phones, public embarrassment, disappearing through the bowels of the city and ending up in some vacant highway underpass bits of poetry randomly chalked into the concrete, amongst graffiti and swear words. Misses feeling confident. Misses the world where everything was brighter, even when she felt like she was lost in the dark.

She also misses knowing the absolute, the unwavering. Jake is a world where things make sense. He knows how to use his hands, be practical. Can change the oil in her mother's car with the same hands that held her, and it's always with certainty. He never second-guesses himself.

That's one thing she's always envied about him – he makes decisions, lives with them, and never looks back.

Could she ever do that?

IV.

She's alone in her father's apartment one night while he's working late, toasting a bagel for dinner since there's nothing more edible here. She's the one in charge of doing all the shopping, since her dad barely eats unless it's office takeout and she can't live on frozen dinners.

She goes to the bathroom, then sees her IM notification light up on her laptop. Distracted, she reads a post from Alli. Asking her how life is living with her dad, and if she misses Jake.

There's a winky face attached to that last part. Clare's not sure how what that means, or how to respond do that.

An alarm suddenly goes off, clanging like panic.

Clare's heart hammers. The toaster.

She runs into the kitchen, horrified to see flames in the toaster, and a pillar of black smoke pouring out of the top. The smoke dusts the cabinets and the wall around the toaster.

Hands shaking, she rips out the plug, cutting the power. She wonders for a moment if she should open the toaster to put the flames out, but almost as soon as she unplugs it, the flames start dying down, until they eventually evaporate on the inside, which is completely black from smoke.

She runs around the apartment in a frantic tailspin. Open windows. Let the smoke out. Except she can't seem to undo the latch. She tries to unlock it, but either it's stuck, or it's just not meant to be opened.

"Come on," she half-mutters, half-sobs, as she tries in vain to flip the latch open. "Come on. Open up!"

Her head is still reeling. She can still smell the smoke – in her hair, on her clothes, and probably now on her father's furniture.

It's harder to breathe. She wonders if the room is still filling with smoke.

No. Stop going crazy, Clare. There's no smoke. There's no fire.

"Come on!" she shrieks at the window.

She slams her weight against the latch and tries to flip it, but all she does is scrape the soft pink pad of her palm against it, causing her to cry out in pain. A moment later, blood trickles to the surface.

Phone in hand. Doesn't remember how it got there. She needs to call someone. Dial the number.

481-5…

That's not the number.

Why would she think of that number?

She stares at the phone, slick with her blood and sweat, and panics.

V.

She waits until she stops shaking to try calling again. This time, she uses the phone book programmed into her cell phone, and finds the name it never cross her mind to summon the first time around.

"Hello?"

Mr. Reliable. She knew he'd answer before she even hit the number.

"I almost set the kitchen on fire," she tells him. She's sitting on the floor of her bedroom, the phone charger cord wrapped around her fingers, her back to the edge of her desk. Her heart is still drumming fiercely. Her hand has been washed and bandaged, but it still aches.

She's almost positive she can hear him laughing, even though he hasn't made a sound.

"Did you call the fire department?" he says. He's got a smile in his voice. She can picture which one it is exactly.

She shakes her head, then remembers he can't hear that.

"No," she says. "I put it out myself."

"Captain Edwards," he jokes.

She cradles the phone against her ear and shoulder.

"I didn't think to call," she tells him. "It happened so fast. I didn't even think."

"Well, it's a good thing it's taken care of," he says. "And you didn't get hurt. That's important."

She sighs. She pushes sweaty tangles out of her face. He has no idea what she's just told him.

"Clare?"

Her eyes snap open. She feels like he's staring right at her, with no other sounds around her. His voice is solid. Clear. Real.

"Yeah?"

There's a pause on the other end.

"Do you want me to come over?"

She closes her eyes again and leans against the desk.

"I'm at my dad's," she tells him.

"I know," he replies. "But…if you need…"

"You could come," she says. The words make her feel small.

He sighs into the other end. The ebb of the tide, and she's sinking with the shifting sand.

"I'll be right there, okay? Twenty minutes."

She nods into the phone.

"Okay," she says faintly, but he's already hung up.

She sits on the floor, listening to the even crackle of the dial tone pour through the receivers, cradling the phone in her damaged hand.

VI.

Her father's house is huge and dark and hard, metallic and cold. It's inhospitable and unfriendly. It doesn't want her here. The entire apartment is like an austere brow, staring hard at her and furrowed in stern disapproval.

And her father wonders why she spends the majority of her time here in her bedroom. It's the only warmth in this place, and the barest bit of comfort. It's the only place in the apartment that smells like her, the only part of her that's made an imprint.

She jumps when the doorbell rings. It echoes. Everything is too cold here.

I'm entombed here. The ground is hard and the walls are closing and the windows do not open. I'm in a mausoleum.

She opens the door to his smell – cleaner and wood varnish, soap and something spicy that she can never name anything except, firmly, Jake.

He's always predictable. Twenty minutes exactly, standing in the immaculate foyer, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with some stain on the neckline. He's a clock. She can count on him.

She feels foolish, standing here in her pajamas and bare feet, hair tangled, sweaty and breathless.

"I'm sorry," she mutters, staring at her feet. "Sorry I dragged you all the way here…"

He shrugs. "No big deal."

She combs through his words, looking for something she knows isn't there.

She runs her fingers through her hair. None of this is making sense, even to her.

Jake is staring at her, half-humor and half-concern.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asks.

She shakes her head, but that's not the right answer, either. Language tastes different now, that she's living like this. Words taste wrong in her mouth. Gestures are too complicated. Everything she does feels off.

Jake takes a step closer. She takes a step back. She sees something that might be hurt on his face, but he bends to her level and looks her in the eyes.

"Clare," he repeats. Slowly, like he's speaking to a child, "are you sure you're okay?"

"No," she says. She puts a hand to her forehead. "I don't know why I asked you to come over."

She feels herself burning with foolishness, but at the same time, is shaking and glad he's there. Like, if she screamed, it wouldn't be to a cold, empty room, but to someone who would finally hear her. Jake is something solid, something that makes sense. Something that's strong enough to stand.

She's not any of that right now.

She's not anything, except tired of trying to pretend she's doing better than she actually is.

VII.

She moves back in with her mom two days later. She knows she should have given her father more time, but she could barely look him in the eyes when she told him she was leaving, and now she just wants to get out of there hella fast, before she has time to change her mind or feel any worse.

Her dad is, of course, not thrilled.

"I thought you wanted to live here because you were having problems with your mother," he says. "You told me that you needed a break from it. I thought this was what you wanted, Clare-Bear."

I thought this was what you wanted.

What you wanted.

Want.

"I don't know what I want," she tells him.

She turns. She flees.

VIII.

Her mother hugs her. Glen doesn't. She's okay with that; she doesn't hug him, either. Too awkward.

Jake helps her carry everything back to her bedroom. There's not much. It's like she always knew she'd be back.

IX.

There's a bottle of something that Glen keeps under the sink – unlocked, unguarded, because he trusts Clare and Jake not to do anything. She tiptoes through the hallway, past the closed door of their parents'

(their?)

bedroom, is extra careful around Jake's. He's a light sleeper.

What would he do about it, anyway, she tells herself, as she slips open the cabinet and lifts the bottle out. It's not his style to tattle on her.

Still, she doesn't want him to see her like this, sipping – what is this, vodka – straight from the bottle, sneaking sips like the cliché rebel teenage misfit. She doesn't want to see the look on his face. Not disapproval, but more like humoring. Like when he pulled her away from Eli that night –

Did you ever love me at all?

Her most graceless moment ever.

She tiptoes, bottle in hand, sure that every swish of the liquid is an alarm going off, alerting everyone in this house to her deviancy. She pushes open the door to the backyard holding her breath, waiting for footsteps, but when no one comes after her, she creeps outside and shuts the door behind her, sitting on the edge of the water and dangling her toes in the glowing too-blueness.

The stuff tastes terrible, and it burns going all the way down. She sputters, coughs, and chokes, and for a while, worries that someone might hear, but that goes away with each passing sip.

Footsteps. Door opens. Door shuts. More footsteps. Louder, heavy, even in bare feet.

"Hello there," Jake says, peering at her upturned face. He's bare-chested and sleepy-eyed. "Having a late night snack, are we?"

She rocks herself against the poolside, the bottle to her chest. "Don't say anything," she mumbles.

"Wasn't gonna," Jake replies, lowering himself down beside her.

"But you're thinking it," Clare says.

Gently, he takes the bottle out of her sweaty, shaking fingers. "Why don't you let me have that."

He takes a sniff from the top of the bottle.

"Wow," he says. "This is gnarly. And you're drinking this straight? You know, drinking and swimming, two things that really don't mix. You might want to reconsider this."

She just stares out at the humid, humming night in front of them. There's a mockingbird singing somewhere.

"I hate this pool," she says suddenly. She turns to Jake. "Admit it. You hate it, too."

He sighs. "You need to go back to bed. Come on."

She peers at him through the slats in her fingers, the loops of her curls.

"Do you remember meeting me?" she asks. She sounds tiny. Her voice sways like the breeze.

Jake smiles. It looks sad to her."Which time?"

She shakes her head. Her hair is sticking up everywhere. She's covered in a filmy layer of sweat. She smells like vodka and raspberries, like something sweet rotted inside.

She looks up at him, blinking and trying to hold his face in her eyes.

"I wanna go home," she half-cries.

Out of everything she could have said, that might have been the worst.

"Clare?"

Another voice. This time, there's lights being turned on. Too many lights. It hurts her head.

"Mom," she manages.

"Clare," her mother says. She steps out onto the pool patio in her bare feet. "Jake? What are you two doing out here? It's the middle of the night."

"Sorry, Mom," Clare mumbles.

"We couldn't sleep," Jake says. "Sorry we woke you."

"Come back inside," her mother tells them. "And lock the door behind you."

Her mother disappears again, and so do the lights, and for the first time, Clare wonders why she didn't say anything about the vodka.

Come to think of it, she can't find it anywhere. The bottle has vanished, like it was just a dream.

Not a dream. She can smell it on herself. Her tongue is too heavy, her head unable to stop spinning.

"Come on," Jake grunts. Gripping her under her arms, he half-lifts, half-drags her away from the poolside, one arm supporting her. "Come on. Back to bed."

She follows calmly enough, but still crying under her breath.

"I wanna go home."

X.

He's awake the next morning when she stumbles in for coffee. She scurries past him, trying not to make eye contact, and the bathroom door slams behind her before he can acknowledge her.

When she steps out, Jake is still sitting at the table. When he sees her, he hands her an aspirin and a bottle of water, which she accepts sheepishly. She wasn't wasted enough to not remember last night, but wishes she had been, because she remembers every word with excruciating embarrassment. Still has the headache, though.

"What did my mom say about the bottle?" she asks suddenly. "I'm surprised she hasn't grounded me until I'm married."

Jake bits his lip, grinning slyly.

"I hid it in the pool filter," he confesses.

Her eyes widen. "Seriously?"

He nods.

"It'll probably clog up the pool," she tells him, feeling a smile coming on.

He nods.

"I know," he says sagely. "I hate that fucking pool."

Her jaw drops, and she's giggling, a foreign sound to her dry throat. Jake is laughing, too, and the two of them are giggling hopelessly over the breakfast table, a couple of conspirators.

"I knew it," Clare laughs between her fingers. "I knew you hated it."

XI.

"It's the honeymoon stage of the relationship!" Clare cries. "That's all."

She and Jake are alone in the house. His father is with his old friends from university, celebrating Glen's last night as a bachelor. Her mother is staying with Clare's aunt, where the bridesmaids will all get ready in the morning.

Clare isn't the maid of honor. She's been replaced by her mother's cousin, Margaret. She's not a bridesmaid, either. She's not going to be anything, except there.

Jake is an usher. He offered to escort Clare down the aisle, but she declined, horrified at the thought.

Now they're sitting here alone on the front porch swing, drinking too-sweet tea and eating ham sandwiches by porch light.

"They're going completely crazy on hormones," Clare continues. "They're clearly not thinking rationally."

"Or maybe they are," Jake argues. "Maybe this is the best time to marry someone. Or else, you'd never do it."

She snorts. "Come on. You can't seriously think this is a good idea."

He shrugs. "If it's what makes them happy."

"That doesn't mean it's right!" she snaps.

She wonders why the hell she even bothers; this whole conversation has been said a dozen times before, and it's a refrain she knows so well she could recite it in her sleep.

Isn't that the definition of insanity, she thinks. Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.

It wouldn't surprise her. She already feels like she's lost it.

"Why don't you want your mom to marry my dad?" Jake asks. "Other than it's too early. Give me another reason."

"Okay," Clare says. "Us. You and me."

"There is no 'us'," Jake points out.

"Exactly!" Clare shouts. "They never even considered how we feel about making us siblings. And speaking of siblings, you haven't seen Darcy – you know, your other sister – since you were, like, seven. You have this whole other family you've basically never met, and my mom is acting like it's no big deal! I mean, if she's going to be a part of your new family, shouldn't you at least meet her?"

"So that's it," Jake says. "You don't want a new family."

"Maybe I don't," she agrees. "Maybe I hate the idea that my mom just decides it's okay to pick up and replace everyone in my life with new people that suit hers!"

She runs her fingers through her hair, frazzled and frantic.

"You replace your friends," she mutters. "Not your family."

Unless your family are the ones that want to replace you, a nasty voice in her head says.

"I mean," she shouts, "what's the point of family if it can all be replaced? Is that all we do? Replace people?"

"Looks that way," Jake says, when her outburst has wound down. "Just some do it more often than others."

He takes a sip of his drink and stares out at the road, shimmering with the afterglow of a summer rainstorm.

"Nobody's permanent," he says.

"How can you believe that?" she cries.

How do I know you won't just take off?

"Because he loves you, Clare."

Jake looks at her, and she can tell he's holding back an explanation that's only going to make her hurt worse. She drops her head in her hands, like it's too heavy to hold up any longer.

You don't replace your family.

"He loves you, Clare."

I think I'd make a good brother.

"I don't," she whispers. "I can't."

The two of them are silent for a long time. The cicadas are roaring, and there's heat lightning in the sky, flashing them the clouds that are invisible behind the pitch blackness of the night. A whole other world Clare is unaware of, like the world ceases to exist unless she can grab it with two hands and look it right in the eye. It's a feeling she thinks she should have grown accustomed to, by now.

"Do you want me to be a part of your family?" she asks him, her voice very quiet. She's crying, but trying to pretend she's not. So is Jake.

"I guess," he says. "Yeah."

She rolls her eyes. "Which one is it?"

"I already told you I'd be good at being a brother," he says. "But you didn't seem to take it very well."

"Yeah," she sniffs, "well, we were practically still dating then."

"Yeah," Jake says. He looks at her, and a small grin appears. "Weird."

She gives him a blurry smile back, and wipes her eyes on the back of her hand.

"Do you really think we could be a family?" she asks after a moment.

Jake shrugs.

"Depends on what you think a family is," he says. "My dad's taken care of me my whole life, ever since my mom ran off. Doesn't mean he's perfect, but I know he loves me, you know? He does his own thing to show it, and I do mine. That's family."

"I don't even know what my mom feels about me anymore," Clare confesses. She tangles her sweaty curls around her finger. "It's like she barely even thinks about me at all."

"She still loves you," Jake tells her. "She just needs this right now."

"Like she doesn't need me," Clare retorts.

"She wants you to be happy for her."

"Well, I'm not," she snaps.

Another silence. From the backyard, they can hear the frogs and the crickets calling, like alternating harmony and melody. Clare wishes there were lightning bugs in the air.

"Why do you want to be my brother, anyway?" she asks. "A few months ago, you wanted to be my boyfriend."

Jake shrugs.

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe because that's the way my life is right now."

"So you just adapt?" she says. "Just…that's it?"

He nods. "Or try to. Best I can. It's the only way to get through anything."

"You make it sound so easy," she snorts.

"I didn't say it was easy," Jake says. "I just said it's the only way to get by."

She has sarcasm biting on her lips, but then it dies down.

They've been equalized, at least a little bit. Both broken bits of other people's failures. Both missing the knowledge of how to be a complete family. Both abandoned by someone who was never supposed to abandon them, ever.

Her father left, his mother left. They're both gone, and left their children to be raised by another.

The both of them know that it's totally possible to be someone's blood, and not know them at all.

Clare's father may still be here, technically, but after finding out about why he left her mother, she figures that the dad she thought she knew might as well be dead to her. The man she calls her father is nothing like the Daddy she knew.

She wonders if Jake ever thinks about his mother. If he knows what she looks like, where she is, what she's doing. The sound of her voice, the color of her eyes. Why she left.

She could ask her dad those questions, but what good would it do? She isn't sure it would make her feel any better about everything. Certainly not about how he cheated and lied and then took off like their family wasn't his problem anymore.

Maybe that's why Jake never talks about her, she wonders. Or acts like he talks about her. Or acts like he cares.

"Besides," Jake adds, cutting across her thoughts like the lightning, "maybe I like the idea of supposed to be taking care of someone else."

Clare snorts. "I don't need you to take care of me."

"Oh, that's right," Jake says. His eyebrows wag playfully. "You Clare. You carry big stick."

She shoves him in the arm. "Shut up. That's not what I meant."

She's grinning, though.

XII.

For her mother's birthday, Glen buys her a baby grand piano.

They had one at their old house, but her mother sold it in the divorce. And even before that, Clare hadn't heard her mother play in years. Not since she was little. She used to play for the women's church group, but never just for herself.

Her mother almost cries when she sees it. She smoothes the wood with the flat of her palm, strokes the keys. It's reverent and tender, like she's exploring the body of an old lover, after years have passed and changed them.

Clare watches her mother from the kitchen picking out something. She forgot that her mother played the piano. One day, they just didn't anymore. When did that happen? Why? She doesn't remember giving the piano away.

Maybe her mother just gave up playing.

Maybe her father wanted her to give it away.

XIII.

Her first Christmas as an officially divorced child is like being rolled in cellophane wrap. Everything Clare sees is slightly warped and blurry. She can see colors and shapes and lights, hear noises, but can't process what any of it is behind her eyes, which feel coated with Vaseline. She can't even reach out and touch it, because there's an invisible barrier separating her from everyone else, incapable of celebrating in their cheer or even understanding what it's all about.

She tries to pretend like the holidays mean something, for everyone else's sake. She celebrates with her father on Christmas Eve, and pretends to be infatuated with the pink Macbook he gives her, an apology for not being around on their weekends together and a bribe for her to love and forgive him all at once. She hugs him, kisses his cheek, and goes to bed early after skipping out on watching old Christmas movies on TV with her dad, who looked so desperate that it only made her want to sleep more.

Christmas Day, she and her dad exchange holiday greetings over his omelets – having exchanged everything else the night before – and around eleven, her mother stops by to pick her up. They go back to the house

(not her house, not their house, not home – it's Jake's dad's house, and her mom and Clare and Jake just happen to live there. Even Jake, Clare can tell, doesn't really live in his own home. He lives there, but he's not living)

where Jake is planted in front of the television, watching football, and his father is unloading the dishwasher.

Clare sits beside Jake on the couch. She doesn't notice the game, and wonders how she woke up and forgot it was Christmas. She didn't even remember it was today until two days ago. All the holly and red and cheer passed right over her.

Jake peers at her in between plays.

"You want to watch something else?" he ask when the game cuts to commercial.

She shrugs. She doesn't know if she can focus on anything.

He changes the channel. Some sitcom.

They watch, two hours straight, without remembering what they saw the minute before each time a new minute passes.

XIV.

"Sleep all right?"

Glen – her stepfather, she has to remind herself – is fully dressed and clean-shaven, but Clare still feels weird being in the kitchen with him all alone. Even though Clare is fully dresses as well, she still feels exposed, like a microscope slide. Like she's being studied.

Despite the fact that they've been living together since July, the disconnect between them is too raw and new. They're mincing around each other like they're afraid to be in the same room together.

"I had a dream about a burning room," she says, taking a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter.

"Sounds…fun?" Glen jokes. "Coffee? I don't know how you like it…"

"I'll take it," she says, rescuing him from floundering in half-and-half and artificial sweetener. He rubs the back of his head and gives her an apologetic look. Clare opens the fridge, and sees that they have two kinds of milk. 2% and skim. She watches Glen zero in on her as she takes the quart of skim. He'll always know what kind of milk to buy for her, from now on.

"It was hot," she supplies, trying to find an escape hatch from the awkward.

"The coffee?"

"No. The dream."

"Oh," he says. "I can imagine. Burning and all. Tends to mean fire. What were you doing?"

She shrugs, stirring the liquid in her cup until the pitch blackness turns to brown, and then a very light tan.

"I don't remember," she says. "I don't really remember anything, except the room."

Glen smiles. "Well, maybe you can write a story about it for another magazine. Miss Published Author."

She smiles back, not showing her teeth. They stand on opposite sides of the kitchen, three feet and two broken families away.

"Clare," Glen says.

She can't keep her eyes on his.

"You're not a guest here," he tells her. "You live here, too. And we – Jake and I – we want you to know that. You're one of us."

He pauses. "You're family now."

"I know that," she whispers.

He scratches the back of his head again, staring at the scuffed toes of his boots.

"I know how strange this all must feel to you," he says, holding up his arms in surrender. "I get it, okay? I really do. I know this was all fast, and really crazy, and it probably doesn't make a lot of sense. And maybe the last thing you ever wanted was a stepdad standing in your space, instead of your real dad. But I promise you, your mother and I are trying as hard as possible to make it as easy on you and Jake as we possibly can. Because we love you both. We want what's best for you."

Why does everyone else know what's best for me? Clare wonders.

"I know," she swallows. "I do. Thank you."

Glen nods stiffly.

"Well," he says, clearing his throat.

She stares back into her coffee.

Glen lets out a little cough.

"There's more coffee," he says, almost gruff. "And cereal. Do you want anything else? I think your mom got some peaches at the store the other day…"

"No," she says. "This is fine. I don't eat breakfast, mostly."

She watches him take that fact and file it away. One more thing he didn't know about this girl, this child he's now legally, technically, incomprehensibly, supposed to raise.

XV.

The craziest thing about Jake is that he doesn't do anything to change things, but he somehow manages to fix the collapse between them.

They do all the grocery shopping for their family, because the other parent doesn't know what the other kid would like. Glen keeps buying the wrong brand of peanut butter for Clare. Her mom didn't even know that Jake was deathly allergic to shell fish until after she married his dad.

So Jake and Clare handle the shopping together, and it's this little domestic chore that somehow closes the gap between them, guiding them farther away from lover to something more familiar, more mundane. More worn and welcome. Much more necessary in each of their lives.

They're not exactly family, but they're starting to patch together something like it.

They're the only ones that get how it feels to wander the bread aisle and not know which brand their whole family could agree on. Or to stare at the color wheel of the juice aisle and not be able to find just plain OJ, and since when did there got to be so many different types of OJ, and since when is there such a thing as raspberry orange juice, anyway?

They get what it's like to fight over buying boxed ham versus deli meat, each clearly reminded by the other that they know nothing about each other's families, living together separately.

They know how it feels to get lost in the overpowering smell of produce, gingerly feeling the cantaloupes and peaches and kiwi for freshness like the two of them have any idea what they're actually doing, like they know how to take care of a family, or even themselves, at all.

What a weird little something they make. There's no secrecy, but too many secrets.

XVI.

They're sitting in the kitchen while their parents are out together. It's hot and pouring rain outside, and they're laughing about some stupid joke she can't remember the punchline to the next morning, eating some freakishly unhealthy chicken, and she can't remember feeling this easy.

Not good.

Just easy.

XVII.

He likes to put a little garlic powder in his macaroni. She hates anything strawberry-flavored. He gets colds like people get junk mail, and she knows every word to "Bohemian Rhapsody".

He always leaves his wet towels in a lump on the bathroom floor, and she puts her pink Gillette on the shelf of the tub next to his shampoo. He uses her shaving cream, and she likes using his deodorant because she likes the smell. She yells at him when she discovers he used the last of her Barbasol, and he hides his Speed Stick from her.

He'll always let her have the last of the watermelon. She takes his socks to sleep in at night. He leaves his dirty dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher. She's always asking him for rides.

They share apricot-scented hand soap in their bathroom and wake up to each other's alarm clocks, beating through the thin panels of their bedroom walls.

He sneaks into her room and takes her pencils whenever they have a test. She takes paper out of his printer and never just buys her own.

Her mother squawks at both of them.

Glen buys Clare a new bike for her birthday. When he sees her drinking coffee with lots of half-and-half, he buys Clare her own carton, and even writes her name on the side of it and puts it in the corner of the fridge. She and Jake end up accidentally drinking out of each other's coffee mugs half the time, so he makes a face over her too-sweet, syrupy blend and she gags over his black roast.

She can tell the difference between wrenches and leaves her CDs in his truck. He pushes her into the pool and hauls enormous bags of potting soil on his shoulders for her mother, so she can go back to gardening. Clare learns how to drive Glen's stick shift and Jake laughs when her mother buys a linen-scented air freshener for the truck.

He gets mad when she eats the last of the pizza pockets, and she takes to buying her own box of waffles each time they go shopping.

He's the only person she knows who can down his body weight in sour cream and onion potato chips, and he's grossed out that she drinks milk with pizza.

He likes the air turned off when he sleeps, and she needs the A/C blasting.

She snores. He constantly loses his car keys.

The days go by like a running list of new things they learn about each other.

XVIII.

More so now than before, she feels together.

She may not be home, but it's not so hard here. At least, less hard than it was before.

They have a ton of wide, open space. They have the water at their backs. There are wildflowers everywhere, and when the sun sets, it makes the entire world look like a kaleidoscope. She has her own room, bigger than any one she's ever had before, too much space than she knows what to do with. She doesn't need to do anything except go to school and do chores and go grocery shopping with her brother.

Brother.

She finds a pair of Jake's uniform pants tossed in a load that belongs to her. Then a shirt, and a few stray men's socks.

Their laundry is beginning to blend, and so are their families, apparently.