"I know."
"You told me no. You looked right at me and you told me no and I said fine, I didn't even fight about it, I just said fine, and you—" His voice cracked, high and stupid, and he hated it. He hated all of it. He hated the punch. "You go to the orthodontist with him every week. You go to Grandpa's with him every Saturday. You go in his room every night. You don't even stop at my door. You just say night, Cal, like I'm a — like I'm a hallway you walk through."
"That's not—"
"So what do I have to do?"
She stopped.
"What do I have to do," Caleb said, and he could feel the words coming up out of some place he hadn't known was there, some cold basement place, "to be your favorite?"
The kitchen got very quiet. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere out in the dining room Grandpa coughed, a long smoker's cough even though he'd quit in 1998.
Mom's mouth opened. Nothing came out. Her hand came up toward him and stopped in the air between them and stayed there, open, like she was holding something he couldn't see.
And over her shoulder, in the kitchen doorway, Caleb saw Jordan.
Jordan was standing very still, the way he stood sometimes at the front door in the mornings — Caleb had seen it, once or twice, hadn't thought about it — with his whole body gone stiff and pale. He was holding a second package. It was small and flat and wrapped in the same blue paper with the silver stars, and Jordan was holding it against his chest with both hands, the way you'd hold something you were about to give someone.
Caleb's eyes met his.
Jordan turned around and walked away, fast, down the hall. A second later his bedroom door closed. Not a slam. Just closed. Quietly enough that you'd have to be really listening.
"Oh, God," Mom said. She said it to no one. She turned and went after Jordan, and Caleb stood alone in the kitchen with his half cup of punch, and after a while he realized that Grandpa Walt was standing in the doorway now, filling it, looking at him with no expression at all.
"Well," said Grandpa. He said it the way Mom said it about Dad's checks.