“Hey, Ms. Lin. I heard you needed some muscle in here.” Jackson walked into the room.

Ms. Lin smiled like he was the cutest thing in the world. I curled my lip but then smoothed my hair, all too aware that I had just gotten out of the pool. Not that I cared what he thought of me, but still.

Jackson noticed me, and his mouth twisted into a sly smile. “Oh, I see you already have plenty of muscle. Never mind.” He started to back out of the room.

“No, Jackson,” Ms. Lin said. “Hadley was just here turning in her schedule. I still need your help.”

“Moore. We keep running into each other. It’s almost like you’re following me.”

He wanted me to point out that I was in here first. I wasn’t going to do that.

“I didn’t know you liked art,” I said to Jackson.

“There’s an artist inside each of us,” he said with a wink in Ms. Lin’s direction.

“So which painting is yours?” I asked.

“My artist just moves around other people’s paintings.”

Ms. Lin began pointing to some easels that Jackson immediately folded and moved to the far end of the room. “I asked for a student council member to help me stack paintings once a week and Jackson answered the call.”

“I am a call answerer. People call, I answer.”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Do you really get it? How about one more iteration? If I answer, it means someone has called.”

Yes, he was still the most annoying person on the planet.

“Maybe you’ll have the desire to paint by being around the paintings,” Ms. Lin said to him like she’d had this conversation with him before. So he obviously wasn’t the artist responsible for the piece in the corner.

As I moved to leave, my dad’s words about my brother being like Jackson came back to me. Dad could’ve compared Eric to almost anyone else and I would’ve been fine. But Jackson? Maybe I just didn’t know him well enough. Maybe he had another side. But that wouldn’t matter. My dad had met only this side. And this was the side that reminded him of my brother. If I hung out with Jackson more, would I get used to him? Would this over-the-top personality become endearing?

Jackson lifted an easel over his head. “You need a body model for class, Ms. Lin? I’ve been told my physique is nearly perfect.”

Nope. That would never become endearing. This sucked because before, being around Jackson was only an irritation, but now it was depressing. My stomach hurt, my chest hurt, my head hurt. Why had my dad said that? It tainted all the things I had learned about Eric over the years.