Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

Prologue

I Can Do Anything

W hen JP Marchand had his first kiss, there was popcorn in his hair.

I shouldn’t have known that. Just like I shouldn’t have known the girl he kissed had a sunburn on her nose, even though it was winter. Or that they were missing the best scene of Jurassic Park , where they see the Brachiosaurus for the first time, but it kinda worked out because the song was playing in the background. Even though I was only eleven, I figured that had to make the whole thing pretty epic.

Everything was epic when the Jurassic Park theme song was playing.

Which I knew because I’d seen the stupid movie before, even though Mr. Marchand said Anne-Marie and I couldn’t watch the movie with the older kids.

“It’s not a movie for young ladies,” he said.

Anne-Marie, who was not used to her dad telling her no for anything, looked both insulted and devastated. “But Daddy—”

“My dad lets me watch Jurassic Park ,” I said loudly.

Mr. Marchand gave me an unimpressed look. “Does your father allow you to talk back to him?”

He didn’t, so I didn’t say anything else. Mr. Marchand turned back to Anne-Marie, who had the corners of her mouth turned down into a sad pout, and shook his head again.

“It is your brother’s birthday party, ma chouette, ” Mr. Marchand said. “We said Nellie could sleep over during JP’s party so you did not bothering them—”

“We won’t bother them!” I said. “They weren’t even paying attention. They were throwing popcorn at that one guy because he wouldn’t shut up!”

“And if you interrupt me again, you will be sent home,” Mr. Marchand snapped. My face warmed with embarrassment and anger as he turned back to Anne-Marie. “ Ma puce , all JP wanted to celebrate his birthday was an evening with his friends to watch movies. You and Nellie can watch Jurassic Park another time. Right now, your mother and I are asking you to please leave them alone.”

He left us in the living room, the TV playing some boring kids’ movie.

“This is so unfair.” Anne-Marie flopped forlornly onto the couch. “I cannot believe my parents are so mean . Do they even love me anymore?”

“I’m sure they love you,” I said.

She sniffled, though I didn’t think there were any actual tears in her eyes. “You wouldn’t understand, Nellie. Your parents would give you anything in the world.”

More anger flared up, making my shoulders tense and my jaw tighten. That time, though, I suppressed it before snapping at Anne-Marie to stop being so unbearably dramatic. Which was a big deal, honestly, because lately it seemed like words burst out of me before I even thought them.

I did think them that time, though. I thought that Anne-Marie was being ridiculous. Her dad telling her no about one stupid thing didn’t mean he didn’t love her. It wasn’t like he and her mom told her to pick a restaurant for dinner, but her dad wanted to go somewhere fancy and her mom wanted to go to Tee Dee Daisy’s so they could play air hockey, and her dad said that was immature and her mom said he was immature.

It wasn’t like she tried to tell them she didn’t want to pick a restaurant the whole time they were arguing and that she just wanted things to go back to how they were because she was so sick of them yelling all the time.

It wasn’t like the boiling anger built and built and built and finally burst out and she screamed that she was sick of them fighting and she hated them, she fucking hated both of them more than anything in the world and her mom pointed a finger at the stairs and told her to go to her goddamn room and she was grounded and there was no way in hell she was going over to the Marchands’ for a sleepover with Anne-Marie while her stupid brother had a stupid birthday party.

It wasn’t like any of that at all.

But after my mom had stormed out, my dad had come upstairs and told me I wasn’t grounded and I could go to Anne-Marie’s and that I never had to pick a restaurant again if I didn’t want to. And Anne-Marie was my best friend, and now she was sad because she couldn’t watch a movie.

And I might not have been able to stop my parents from fighting, but I could help Anne-Marie.

“I have an idea,” I said.

Anne-Marie looked up, a heavy look in her warm brown eyes. “You do?”

We snuck into the basement, silent and unnoticed as we crept into the storage room. Once we were there, I pulled the door open and revealed the place that had made me the undefeated hide-and-seek champ at the Marchands’ house since the very first time we’d played.

“This is brilliant !” Anne-Marie breathed as we crept into the hole that led to the crawl space beneath the stairs.

“I found it by mistake,” I breathed. “I came in through the door in the entertainment room and then went back as far as I could and there was this gap here.”

The crawl space was just large enough to let us sit with our legs crossed and peer through the angled slats of the door. And we should have had a perfect, clear view of the giant TV on the wall, but as usual, JP ruined everything.

“What are they doing?” Anne-Marie whispered.

I shook my head, not daring to speak. In the twenty or so minutes since we’d been kicked out of the basement, JP and his friends had moved the furniture around. The coffee table was pressed up against the door, blocking part of the TV from our view. Instead of sitting on the furniture, they were in a loose circle on the floor, alternating boy-girl all the way around. In the middle, a green Perrier bottle was lying on its side. I could see JP in profile, sitting to my right with his back resting against the couch. He was taller than me, but if he turned his head and looked over at the right angle, we would’ve made eye contact.

“It doesn’t count,” said a boy with flaming red hair, his arms folded across his chest and his frown so deep that his eyebrows were curled into each other.

The boy everyone was throwing popcorn at before Anne-Marie and I got kicked out snickered and nudged the girl sitting beside him. “Tell ‘em it still counts, Courtney. That’s what the rules say.”

?The girl gave him a twisted look. “They’re twins, Logan. You sick freak.”

?“Okay, but Brooke doesn’t get to spin again just because she doesn’t wanna have her first kiss with her brother,” Logan said.

?“Then I guess we’re not playing anymore,” said the red-haired girl with glasses and a sunburn on her nose. Brooke, I guessed, and she mirrored her twin by folding her arms across her chest.

?“I said before we started we’d only play if we didn’t have to…” The red-haired boy trailed off, then gestured vaguely in the air.

“He did say that,” JP said.

?Logan rolled his eyes. ?“Well, she’s gotta kiss someone, and she doesn’t get to spin again. So are you volunteering to be stuck with Brooke for your first kiss?”

?“Kissing?” Anne-Marie breathed beside me, and I could almost hear her eyes widen. Some of the other people in the circle giggled and Brooke recoiled, a hurt expression flashing across her face and her sunburned cheeks going an even brighter shade of red. JP glanced at her, then turned back to Logan.

?“What do you mean, stuck with Brooke?” he asked. “I’d be honoured to kiss Brooke.”

?Logan snorted. “Go for it then, Birthday Boy.”

?So JP got to his knees, shuffled across the circle, and didn’t even hesitate before leaning in to plant a kiss on Brooke’s lips.

It was a brief kiss. The people around them let out soft ooo ing noises, but they’d barely started giggling when Brooke pulled back, her face and neck now red enough to match her nose. JP smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“Aw,” Anne-Marie whispered. I guess I could understand why she thought it was cute, even though I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be the one stuck kissing JP. Plus, it was kinda weird that JP hadn’t kissed anyone before. Not that I had, but I knew a couple of people in my class had and JP was a whole teenager and stuff.

?And then as the Brachiosaurus appeared on the screen, he kissed her again.

And, like. ?

? Kissed her.?

Like, really kissed her

And it made me feel sad.

Because it was so gross, obviously.

It was so gross that it made me sad because that was Brooke’s first kiss and she’d always remember that JP Marchand had popcorn in his hair and that he’d lifted his hand to her cheek to touch it gently and that she’d put her hand on his thigh, probably to steady herself because she was so grossed out.

Because why else would seeing JP kiss a girl make me sad? I didn’t like JP. Even if I did, he was sixteen. And blonde. And tall.

But my mom always called him a heartbreaker. Which had to be a bad thing, because who wanted to break hearts?

That was why I was sad, I thought. I felt bad that poor Brooke, with her pretty red hair and her sunburned nose and her cool gold-rimmed glasses, was going to have her heart broken by JP Marchand.

And then all thoughts were ripped from my head as JP put his tongue in her mouth.

His tongue, which was pink. And shiny with spit. And probably felt slimy and tasted like someone else’s chewed gum.

The sight of it made me want to throw up everything in my stomach, including my stomach itself since my parents never did pick a restaurant and I’d only eaten a few crackers off the snack table before Anne-Marie and I got kicked out of the entertainment room. And I tried to stop it, but my whole body lurched and I gagged.

“Nellie!” Anne-Marie hissed from beside me, like that would stop anyone from hearing the retching sound I let out. It didn’t, of course; Brooke had already yanked her face away from JP’s, and the head of every teenager in that room swivelled towards the crawl space door.

Including JP, who was staring into the slats in the door as I stared out of them, his eyes as dark as blackberries and his face as red as Brooke’s hair. Climbing to his feet, he took two steps across the room before shoving the coffee table out of the way and wrenching the crawl space door open.

“What. The. Fuck?” he growled.

It was a question, but apparently not one that JP wanted an answer to, because when I blurted out that I thought it was very nice of him to have his first kiss with Brooke so she didn’t have to kiss her brother, his face went even redder and he turned around and stormed out of the entertainment room.

“How did you think you were going to get out of this without getting into trouble?” Mr. Marchand demanded after coming downstairs to escort me and Anne-Marie out of the crawl space while JP stood behind him, arms folded across his chest.

“We wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if JP wasn’t a bastard who told on us,” I grumbled.

“You know, when I was your age, my parents would have put soap in my mouth for using that kind of language,” Mr. Marchand said.

“Sounds fucking delicious,” I said, and two minutes later I was trudging home through the rain because Mr. Marchand told me I wouldn’t be welcome back at his house until I could behave myself.

It shouldn’t have been raining. I don’t know why it was. It was February, after all. Late February, since JP’s school did spring break in February and it was the same week as his birthday so he’d done his party after.

But it was warmer than usual that winter. Even though it wasn’t exactly warm .

I wasn’t supposed to be home, so my parents hadn’t bothered to keep their voices down. They were fighting loud enough that they didn’t hear the door open, either, loud enough that the shouts echoed through the hallway.

“—undermine what I fucking told her—” my mom yelled.

“You think it was best for her to sit upstairs by herself?” my dad snapped. “You punished her for—”

“For fucking swearing! She can’t use language like that—”

“Can you blame her when you can’t get a sentence out without throwing at least one curse in it, Victoria?”

“Oh, sure, this is all my fault—”

“Yes, it is!” my dad roared. “I let her go to the Marchands so she could get a goddamn break from all of this! You punished her for not wanting to go to a childish restaurant with you, swore up a storm as you fought with me yet again, and left her here for me to deal with all night. So yes, Victoria, this is your fault.”

Silence followed. Loud silence. Louder than the screaming, the fighting, the swearing.

“That’s it,” my mom said.

“What is?” my dad asked.

“I want a divorce.”

No one spoke. The silence thundered in my ears like heartbeats.

“No,” my dad said.

“Can you honestly say you’re happy, Max?”

He said nothing.

“Can you honestly say this is working?”

Still, he stayed quiet.

“Can you honestly say you love me?”

“Yes,” he said immediately.

“You don’t.”

“I do. Victoria, I do. I love you.”

Her voice wavered. “Well, it’s not enough to keep me anymore.”

“It’s enough—”

“It’s never been enough. We tried, okay? We gave it twelve years. We’re both miserable. We’re so miserable that we’re making Nellie miserable. You know she got another detention last week? Her teacher told me my daughter is misbehaving so much that she thinks Nellie might have a learning disability. She’s going stupid with how much we’re fucking her up, Max.”

“Do not call my daughter stupid ,” he said.

“I’m leaving,” my mom said. “And I’m taking her with me.”

“ No .” There was heat in my dad’s voice that time. “No, you cannot—”

“It’s over, Max.”

“You cannot do this.”

“I can do anything.”

They were quiet for a bit before my mom spoke again.

“I’ll stay in one of the guest rooms tonight,” she said. “I’ll talk to a lawyer tomorrow. Not Jean-Luc Marchand, obviously. I’m assuming you’re using him.”

“I have never given it any thought,” my dad said, his voice quiet.

“You should’ve,” my mom said. “And we’ll have to think of how to tell Nellie. I won’t say anything until we decide. I expect you to do the same.”

“Vicki, please—”

But her light footsteps faded towards the back of the house. A moment later, my dad’s heavier ones started towards the front and without thinking, I opened the front door and slipped out into the rain.

I went to the Marchands’ because I didn’t know where else to go. I knew Mr. Marchand wouldn’t let me back in the house, but that was probably a good thing if my dad used him as a lawyer like my mom said he should. JP had told me once that you weren’t allowed to lie to lawyers and I didn’t want anyone to know what I’d heard, so I just sat on the front step with my backpack of sleepover stuff at my feet, shielded from the rain but letting it numb everything around me.

And I sat.

And sat.

After a while the front door opened and I nearly jumped out of my skin, only to realize JP’s friends were leaving. I shrank against the wall as best I could, but as invisible as I felt, I wasn’t. After a few of them walked by and some hushed whispers, the door opened again. I winced, preparing myself for Mr. Marchand to yell at me, but he wasn’t the person who spoke.

“Nellie, what are you doing?” JP asked.

Great. Just great .

“Sitting,” I said.

“I can see that.” He sounded as annoyed as he was annoying. “But my dad told you to leave.”

“I know.”

“Then you know you can’t be sitting here.”

“I can do anything,” I said.

“So you can go home.”

My chin trembled. “I… can’t.”

“You can’t walk across the lawn because of a bit of rain?”

“That’s not why.”

“So you can ruin my birthday party, but not walk back to your own house. Is there any particular reason you can’t do that?”

And just like so many words that had fallen out lately, I barely thought before I responded. “My mom said she’s leaving and she’s taking me.”

Then, like a big stupid baby, I started crying.

“Shit,” JP said, then took a couple of steps outside and closed the door. A moment later, he settled on the stairs next to me. “Nellie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” I sobbed.

“Can I… um. Do you, uh… do you want a hug?” he asked.

“Ew.” I sniffled. “No. Gross.”

Then I twisted, my head bowed so it bumped his arm, and a second later he hugged me, and kept hugging me even when the front door opened again and I heard a couple of JP’s friends talking.

“Ohhh,” said the annoying one, Logan. “JP, be careful. Brooke’s gonna get all jealous of your new little girlfriend.”

“Fuck off,” JP said, looking over his shoulder. “Can you go get my dad, please?”

“Wait.” I sat up, pushing him away. “No. He can’t know .”

“What? Why—”

“He’s a lawyer , you bastard!”

That seemed like enough of an explanation to me, but JP blinked at me like he was confused. But for better or for worse, he accepted the explanation, because after Logan shouted across the house that JP was cuddling with the bratty kid from next door—which got not only Mr. Marchand’s attention, but Anne-Marie’s, too—JP said I’d been sitting out here for hours because my parents weren’t home and I couldn’t get inside.

And that I hadn’t wanted to knock on the door because Mr. Marchand had kicked me out and I didn’t want to upset him.

And that I’d said I was sorry for bothering them during his party, and that he knew Anne-Marie was in trouble too but could we all just forget about it so I could come inside because I was just a kid and I was freezing cold.

It was raining, after all.

And Mr. Marchand might’ve been super mean sometimes, but he wasn’t evil, so he said of course I could come in and told me that if this happened again, he didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to ask for help if there was an emergency or something.

And since Anne-Marie didn’t know the truth either, when we got up to her bedroom and crawled into bed and turned out the lights, she teased me about sitting on the doorstep with her brother, and asked if he’d really been hugging me, and said that maybe I was secretly falling in love with him.

“Of course not!” I snapped, my face burning red in the darkness. “Ew, Annie.”

“Is that why you were so sad when he kissed Brooke?”

“I literally do not care about that,” I said.

“Sure you don’t, chérie .” She giggled again. “I think you have a crush on my big brother, Nellie.”

And I insisted I did not, and I told her it was gross because he was a teenager and I was a kid, and that her brother was ugly and I’d never liked him, not even a bit.

But even though I secretly might’ve thought he was kinda okay sometimes, I knew there was no way I would ever fall in love with a bastard like JP Marchand.

Because I was never gonna let myself fall in love with anyone .