I turned to face him. Did he really not think people liked him? Everyone liked him. I was the one that everyone thought was a closed-off jerk.

“Hello?” Marvin called again.

“Just me!” I yelled to Marvin, still looking at Jackson. “Hadley Moore.”

Jackson smiled his sly smile at me. “So much more,” he whispered.

Thirty

Back in the truck, Jackson was messing with the radio again when suddenly music blasted through the cab so loud that I almost swerved off the road.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, quickly adjusting the volume.

“How did you get it to work?” I asked.

“I don’t know. This button here.”

“Cool.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel to an old classic rock song.

“What’s this?” Jackson tapped the top of the cardboard box on the seat between us.

“My brother.”

“Whoa.” He held up his hands. “Your brother’s ashes are in this truck?”

“No. It’s this thing we do every year for him. A mini memorial service. My mom and sometimes my dad pick out a few things that remind them of Eric. Then we wake up on his death day and talk about him and put the box in the truck. Then we go eat his favorite food.”

“Wow, that’s more than my parents do on my birthday.”

“It’s pretty elaborate.”

He pulled the box onto his lap, then paused with his hands on either side of the lid. “May I?”

“Sure. It’s nothing earth-shattering.”

He opened it and looked inside. First he pulled out the picture of my brother and his prom date. “Check out that hair.”

I laughed.

“So this is him?”

“That’s him.”

“The golden child.”

“Yep. You should hear the stories. He did no wrong.”

“You grew up on those stories?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder you feel the need to be perfect. You thought he was. You have to live up to that.”

I didn’t say anything. The truck rumbled in the silence, headlights cutting through the blackness beyond the windshield.

“You know he wasn’t perfect, right? You know he had faults and made mistakes and probably made your parents mad a lot, but they don’t remember all that anymore.”

“I don’t know that. I never knew him.”

“I didn’t either and I know it’s true. Even if they did remember those things, they wouldn’t talk about them now. He’s dead.”

“I know.”

“I’m being insensitive. I just find myself getting defensive on your behalf. I’m sorry.”

“Most of the time, when I think about my brother, I feel nothing. Sometimes I feel jealousy and sometimes I wish him out of existence, which makes no sense because he doesn’t exist.”

“It makes sense.”

“Thank you.”

He put the picture down and picked up the movie. “How does this represent your brother?”