Page 47 of The Secret
He arched one eyebrow.
“Okay, yes, fine,” I admitted. “Ididjudge you, before I knew you. But this teenaged stuff doesn’t shock me. I’m telling you, my brother Mason was the same.”
“Yeah, what did he do?” Con asked hopefully.
I threw a piece of muffin at him. “That wasn’t even asubtleattempt at deflection.”
Con caught the muffin in midair and popped it in his mouth. “Mmm. Why does someone else’s food always just taste better?”
I flipped him off and he laughed harder.
“Why do I put up with you?” I asked the silent morning.
“My pretty eyelashes?” Con suggested.
“Must be. So, okay, you were a teenaged rebel, playing chicken, car crashes, blah blah.”
I turned my head in time to see something flash over Con’s expression, chasing away all the good humor. Something like fear. Something likeguilt.
“Wait,wasthat what you did?”
Con sighed. “Kinda. Not exactly.”
“Okay,” I told him, no longer playing around. “For once, just tell me the truth without me having to drag it out of you.”
Con swallowed, staring at my face. Then he settled himself back against the railing and lifted his face to the sky.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Constantine.”
“The handsomest boy in all the land,” I supplied. “I get it.”
“Nah,” he glanced at me and shook his head soberly. “Short, scrawny. He hadn’t grown into his eyelashes yet. But he was maybe the angriest boy in all the land. He had a great older brother who sacrificed all kinds of shit for him. A younger brother who looked up to him. A mother who loved him. But all he could see was what hedidn’thave any more and howunfairthe world was for taking his dad away.” Con glanced at me again. “Constantine was a naïve boy.”
“Constantine was a grieving boy,” I corrected. “Keep going.”
“Hmm. Well, in his preteen brilliance, Constantine figured there was no point in playing by the rules. His father had followed rules. Ate oatmeal every day, even though he hated it, because he wanted to keep his heart healthy, and in the end it didn’t matter even a little, so why bother?”
A flock of birds took flight from the grass nearby, their wings beating in a synchronized rush loud enough to startle both of us.
Constantine grinned. “See what I mean? You can’t predict what’s going to happen, so why make a plan in the first place?”
“I get it.”
“Youdo? The man who has a plan for everything?”
Except for you, I thought, but what I said was, “I do have a plan for everything, because life’s unpredictable so I try to control as much as I can.” I shrugged. “It’s basically an equal reaction in the opposite direction.”
“We’re mirror images, then.” He turned toward me and leaned forward to lift my left hand off my lap, then shifted so we were palm to palm. “I move my right hand, you move your left hand?”
But instead of moving my hand at all, I threaded our fingers together and squeezed slightly, halting this happy little tangent.
“So rebellious Constantine wants to Hulk-smash the world,” I prompted.
He sighed and looked up at the sky. “You suck.”
“As you found out just an hour ago,” I agreed.
Con snorted.
