Before

Ellison was particular about schedules. Timing. I’d left him at the library, and he’d instructed me to pick him up at a quarter to seven. So I shifted my schedule around, made sure Russ—my manager at the laundromat—knew I’d be leaving exactly at 7:30, and arrived like clockwork.

That was nearly an hour ago. Night filtered in through the broad library windows, and much of the overhead lighting around the outer edges of the library had already shut off, giving the main section of broad tables a spotlight feeling. Ellison was bent over a younger girl’s textbook, pointing at a section of text, his expression strained. He’d say something, and the girl would shake her head, and Ellison would cross his arms, lost in thought, before he spoke again. I recognized his body language similar to instances where he was trying to figure out how to explain something to Iris.

Finally, the girl nodded, and I felt an internal sigh of relief.

She was the last of three similarly confounded middle-schoolers, all of whom I’d watched Ellison help since arriving on schedule. Like the rest, she shut her book, shoved it in her backpack, gave Ellison a weapons-grade nuclear smile, and left with a hop in her step, passing by me on her way to the exit without so much as a glance or a look back.

Ellison, alternatively, looked rumpled and fatigued. He gathered his things in an uncharacteristically unhurried fashion and nearly ran into me.

“Study group?” I asked.

Ellison blinked several times before his bleary eyes fully focused on me. “Oh, hey. What time is it?”

“Nearly nine.”

From his aghast expression, I might as well have told him the sky was yellow.

“Well… shit,” Ellison finally said. Then, after he had a second to think about it. “Didn’t mess anything up for you, did I?”

“No,” I lied. I had a helpline gig lined up for after I took him home, but it paid little and wasn’t time-sensitive.

“How long were you waiting?”

I shrugged. “Not too long. Got caught up at Maple’s.”

Ellison half-nodded, hooded eyes squinting at the clock on the wall as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it was really that late. “Sorry.”

“No worries.”

We started toward the exit, earning several irritated looks from the few remaining evening staff who were probably hoping to leave early. I passed him a bottle of water and pulled a tiny container of Tylenol from my bag, shook it at him. Ellison took it quickly, unscrewed the cap and poured two into his hand, then downed them, draining almost half the bottle. Afterward, he shot me a suspicious look.

“How the hell do you always know?” he asked.

“I’m your brother. It’s my job to know things.”

“Pretty sure most brothers aren’t psychic,” Ellison grumbled.

I shrugged. “The good ones are.”

We walked in silence for a while. From the number of screwed-up expressions Ellison was cycling through, I could tell he needed to talk about something. But trying to pry it out of him never worked. So I let him stew as we traveled through the library double doors and approached the bike rack. I pulled my keyring from my jean pocket and undid the chain lock, grabbing the handlebars and hefting the front wheel of my bike free from the rack.

I raised a questioning eyebrow. “Ride? Or hoof it?”

“Let’s walk for now,” Ellison said, “at least until the Tylenol kicks in.”

It’d take us longer to get home on foot, but that was fine. I wheeled my bike alongside us and pulled my burner from my pocket, flipping it open and shooting a quick text to my helpline client, letting them know there was a blip and I needed to reschedule. A response came almost immediately, but I didn’t look at it. The library was on the edge of a decent area of town, but the closer we grew to home, the more alert we needed to be.

We passed a small group of homeless men lounging at the mouth of an alley, one of whom was familiar.

“Hey, Greg,” I waved.

“Hi, Greg,” Ellison parroted.

“Lo, boys.” Greg grinned a wide and gap-toothed smile. He was looking better now that summer was over and we’d moved more deeply into the autumn months, and his tomato-red complexion had faded to a warm scarlet. “How’s the static this evening?”

Translation: any cops around?

“Pretty clear,” I said. Then peered deeper into the alley and frowned. They’d done a good job obscuring their various hodgepodge sleeping accommodations, but Greg’s eternally overfull cart was sticking out a little, along with a sleeping bag housed within a cardboard box. “May want to drag that dumpster over a bit.”

Greg turned to study the alley, immediately saw the issue. “Golden, golden. Good lookin’ out. ‘Preciate you both.”

“Have a good night.”

Once we were out of earshot, Ellison finally boiled over.

“I know it’s stupid,” he said.

I played dumb. “What’s stupid?”

My brother sighed. “The study group. You’ve told me at least half a dozen times that the best way to study is by yourself.”

I made a show of considering that and tried to come up with the best way to respond. Things were so much easier between us when I could be direct with him, but those days were long since over. “How many times a week are you meeting?”

“Once.”

“And how many people?” I asked, though I didn’t need to. Unless a large contingent had left before I arrived, there were five other kids.

“Six in total,” Ellison confirmed.

“And they spent most of the time studying? Not chatting or goofing around?”

“We didn’t even have time to chat,” Ellison’s voice rose, and he ranted. “They’re all so fucking behind. All the teachers care about is getting us ready for the standardized shit, so that gets all the attention in class, and they expect us to study for the other tests entirely on our own.”

I resisted the urge to get into a drawn-out venting session about the public school system, because while he wasn’t wrong, that also wasn’t the core of his problem.

“Ah,” I said.

“‘Ah’ what, head ass?” Ellison gave me a small shove. “Come on. I know you have an opinion, you always do. Why can’t you just give it to me straight like you did to Greg?”

Because Greg’s happy to take all the help he can get.

I blew out air. “Do I believe the best way to study is on your own? Yes. Do I also understand that solo-study can get monotonous as hell and an occasional change of format can help you refresh, and that infrequently teaching someone else the material grants a differing insight that helps you understand it better? Also yes.”

“Oh,” Ellison said.

I swatted him lightly across the top of his head, mussing his hair. My brother recoiled and toyed with his bangs, scowling until they fell back into their usual place.

“Obviously, I get it. So curb the attitude and stop acting like I’m out to get you.” I nearly said more but didn’t want to push my luck. Instead, I took the indirect route. “My opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is that despite going to the efforts of organizing this on the down-low and having a seemingly successful session, you seem less than happy with the results.”

“Because it sucked!” Ellison shouted. He quickly brought his volume under control, but the irritation remained. “I didn’t mind teaching at first. Like you said, it reinforced things, helped me internalize them. But then I had to do it again, and again. And now my head hurts and I just feel… drained.”

“How many kids in the group are further ahead in their studies than you?” I asked, careful to circumvent the word “smart.”

Ellison stared down at the sidewalk as we walked, lost in thought. “None of them, I guess. Dia’s pretty quick, but she’s ‘gifted’ and doesn’t really spend that much time studying—come to think of it, most of the smart kids wouldn’t be the first to sign up for a study group.”

There you go.

“Mmm,” I answered noncommittally.

“And it’s not like I know everything. It’d be a pain to get them there, but even if I only snagged one or two, I wouldn’t constantly be playing unpaid substitute and there’d be someone to teach me for a change—” Ellison’s eyes narrowed and he glared at me suspiciously. “That was some Socratic, bamboozling bullshit.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”