Every Man Was Jonah's Shadow

Landon wrecked his face saving the girl he could never have. I cried myself sick in that hospital. I kept asking the doctors whether his face could be fixed.

Everyone decided I was a lovesick fool who loved him to death.

Only Landon's little brother handed me a tissue, smiling. "Sisinlaw, my brother's face isn't getting fixed." "You should pick me instead.

My face looks more like Jonah's than his does now." Chapter 1 Landon had been in the hospital three days, and the girl he could never have hadn't come once.

I was the only one who showed up every single day, bringing food he could keep down and rubbing the ointment into his face. The car came at us too fast.

Landon threw himself over Isabel without thinking, and under him she came out of it with nothing worse than a few scrapes.

I was curled up in the back seat and got lucky, too, with a scraped arm. Landon was the only one who got hurt. When he lunged, the flying glass opened his face.

The shard tore from between his eyebrows down to the corner of his mouth. Close enough to call it disfigured. The doctors said a cut like that would scar even once it healed.

I was the only one who wouldn't believe it. I ran from hospital to hospital, and I even tracked down a private clinic that did nothing but scar revision.

Every answer came back the same. Short of plastic surgery, the scar wasn't going anywhere. I cried so hard in that hospital that people turned to look at us.

Landon finally couldn't take it, and while I was working the ointment in, he asked me. "Hazel, you love me that much?" "If your face is ruined, I don't want to live either." I was crying in hiccups, and there was nothing in the way I looked at his face but tenderness and hurt. "Stop crying.

You're ugly when you cry." Landon moved to wipe my tears and didn't, and he gave me a thin, sour smile. "Who would have guessed.

Prettiest girl on campus, and she's a lovesick fool." Landon was the one who came after me first.

I was cold to him and never gave him a decent look, and none of it made a dent in him.

Rain or shine, he walked me to the dining hall and back to my dorm like it was written into his week.

Finally, on the Fourth of July, I said yes to him, and I was officially his girlfriend. Then Isabel came back from overseas, a year in, and everything changed.

Landon started picking at me over everything, that my family had no money, that I wasn't sweet enough. He blew up at me over nothing and made fun of how I looked.

On my birthday he left me standing on the side of the road by myself. Before the crash, he had already asked to break up.

I was the one who hadn't agreed to it. "How pathetic can you get?

I already asked to break up and you still come take care of me." That was Landon, but he looked at my swollen eyes and stopped, and then he kept going. "Fine.

If you really can't handle it, we don't have to break up." I hadn't taken in a word of it.

I was staring at Landon's face, and my voice cracked when I asked him. "Landon, could you go get plastic surgery?" Landon just stared at me. The question did not compute.

That one sentence bought me the silent treatment all over again.

After my shift at the bodega I went out of my way to a butcher counter and bought a big slab of pig's face and a few pig's feet.

Fifty dollars, which was steep, half a day's pay, and I handed it over in full with my eyes stinging. That night Landon took one look at the pot and blew up.

He would not touch his fork. I talked him into it. "You want to fix a face, you eat face. The whole thing is collagen.

Don't be picky." His expression stayed dark, but with me watching him that hopefully, he forced some down.

Before I left I told him I had something on the next day and couldn't come, so he would need to find someone else to look after him. "What's that supposed to mean?

You love me, right?

It's been a few days and you're already done coming?" Chapter 2 Landon's face changed, and he started in on me right away and wouldn't even let me near the ointment.

There was nothing I could do but drop my shift the next day, and it took a long time to coax him out of it.

A week later Landon was discharged, and I packed up his things. "Oh, someone gave me the name of a prominent specialist, and he's in the city for a conference.

Come with me tomorrow and let him look at you." Landon didn't want to go and called me a pain about it, but I kept at him until he gave in.

Early the next morning I was waiting outside the Ashcroft house. I stood at the edge of the driveway in full sun for an hour before Landon finally dragged himself out.

Right before we left, Landon took a call, and when he hung up he looked at me flatly. "I'm not going. Izzy can't get a car, she wants me to come get her.

Find your own way home." I blanked, and it came out before I could stop it. "But that doctor only has today. He flies back tomorrow." "Then he doesn't see me.

Why do you always have something to say? Izzy calls me, what am I supposed to do, not go?" Landon's voice had run out of patience.

I went quiet, and then I said it, low. "Can't Isabel take the subway? She hasn't come to see you once this whole time, and the second she needs something she calls you." "Enough.

Why are you so petty? Izzy's delicate, she can't handle the subway." "And quit bringing up the crash. You didn't get hurt, did you?

I already agreed not to break up, what else do you want from me?" The way Landon told it, I was some shrew making noise for the fun of it.

He put me out of the car, said a bye he didn't mean, and drove off. I was standing in the full sun again, watching his car get smaller, and I stood there a long time.

Then I heard something behind me, and when I turned there was a man coming out of the house who looked like Landon, eighty percent of the way there. "Let me introduce myself.

I'm Landon's brother.

Grayson." Grayson didn't look a day past his early twenties, and he smiled wide and tipped his head at me. "I hear the crash wrecked my brother's face." "Sisinlaw, you'd be better off picking me than him." "This face of mine looks more like Jonah's than his does now." Grayson drove me back to school, and when I got out I thanked him and meant it.

It was the first time I'd met him, but my impression was all right, if only because he had just saved me the two seventyfive for the subway. "Come on, sis, think about it.

I'm not one bit worse than my brother." Grayson blinked at me, eyes wide and wet, like some puppy. I asked him, "How far did you go in school?" "Undergrad.

Yale." I put it delicately. "Your education's too high. It doesn't really fit." Grayson stalled out. "What about Jonah?

Ivy, or state school?" I pressed my lips together, embarrassed for him. "Trade school.

The kind where there's no college after." I worked at school harder than anyone, and for years I never left the top three in my grade.

When I finished middle school I tested into the honors track at Brayton High, the best public school we had, and you had to test in to get there. Jonah wasn't like me.

His grades sat at the bottom year after year, and he went to Northside VoTech, the town's famous nest of delinquents, where every kid the honors track passed on ended up.

First week of school he got into a fight and went straight to suspension, and the whole school knew about it. Bleached blond hair. Anyone could see he was a street thug in training.

After the silence got awkward, Grayson said, "It's fine. I don't graduate until next year, so right now my education's the same as his.

High school." Before Grayson left he followed me on Instagram. His profile picture was a curly little dog.

I opened his page, and it was all everyday shots, hiking and skiing and pickup basketball. Grayson took a good picture. He got every good angle that face had.

Chapter 3 I couldn't help liking one of the photos, and then I saved a few while I was at it. In the long break after my major class, I called Landon again.

He had been ignoring me for days, not picking up, not answering messages.

The weather had turned hot, and I kept worrying that he wasn't putting the ointment on and the cut would get infected, so I called him every time I had a free minute.

This time he picked up fast. The first thing I did was ask about his face, anxious, wanting to know how the cut was healing.

Landon started snapping at me, then stopped himself, and after a moment he texted me an address. "Today's our anniversary. Fix yourself up and come out.

We're going on a date." Back at the dorm I went through my whole closet and turned up almost nothing that would work.

My roommates saw me deflate and volunteered, lending me clothes and doing my makeup. "Hazel, you're gorgeous, you're unreal, you don't even look like a real person." When someone who has never dressed up finally does, the effect is startling.

My roommates had stars in their eyes, and they shoved in around me and grabbed me for pictures. "Girl, you are going to wreck your boyfriend.

If he doesn't just stand there stupid, I lose." With all of them cheering me on, I took a breath and went out the door.

To keep from ruining a hairstyle that had taken that much work, I gave up on riding a Citi Bike. I compared Uber, Lyft, and Via, and called the cheapest one with my wallet aching.

By the time I got to the address, Landon had been waiting a long while and had no patience left. He was tall and built well, and even a casual suit thrown on looked good on him.

It was only when he turned around that the bandages wrapped around his head made him look a little cyberpunk.

When I got close, Landon looked at me for a long time without saying anything, and when he came back to himself his voice was hoarse. "First time I've seen you in makeup.

You really are—" He didn't get to finish, because a sweet little voice cut him off. "Landon." We both turned, and there was Isabel in heels, head to toe in designer labels.

Isabel came up close, looked at what I was wearing, and started to frown. "Hazel, I know you're poor, but you can't go around in a knockoff.

That dress is a knockoff of the new Maison Reval, isn't it?" My roommate had bought that dress off some website without thinking about it, and no college student alive can tell a real one from a fake.

Now that Isabel had said it out loud, I still felt nothing. Landon was the one who couldn't hold his face together.

He shot me a hard look and went to meet her. "Izzy, you said you weren't coming. I thought you were busy." "I was busy at noon. I'm free now. We're eating, right?

Hurry up, I still want to shop." "Sure. What do you want, a necklace, clothes?

Just put it on my card." Landon went soft and sweet with Isabel, and the two of them talked like I had never existed.

It wasn't until Isabel got impatient and started rushing him that he seemed to remember me at all. He waved a hand at me without turning his head. "All right, go on home.

I won't walk you out." I held it in, and then I didn't. "Landon, are you a dumbass?" My tote had a power bank and an umbrella in it, so it had some weight to it.

I swung that tote into him half a dozen times and knocked him stupid. "Why didn't that crash just kill you?" I gave him one last hard kick, left him with that, and walked.

Walking down the street, I looked at what I had on. My roommate had lent me her best dress. The makeup was her new foundation, the one she'd been saving.

Chapter 4 All because of that dumbass Landon, the whole thing was wasted, and now I had to catch the subway back to school. The more I thought about it the more I regretted it.

The least he could have done was pay me back for the ride. Infuriating. While I was waiting at the curb, a black car pulled up and the window came down.

Grayson was in the driver's seat with his bleached blond hair, still smiling that wide smile. "Sis, why do you look this good today? Get in.

Let me buy you dinner." Grayson was nothing like his brother.

I ordered my steak well done and asked the server for ketchup, and meat cooked that far is hard to cut, so I made a mess of it.

He watched me hack away at it and never once looked at me strangely. He just cut his own neatly and traded plates with me. Not like Landon.

Landon had laughed himself sick at the sight of me. He'd gone and posted about it. [Unreal. First time I've met a live one.

Orders her steak well done and asks for ketchup.] Then he'd asked me, in that teasing voice, whether he should get me a kid's fork.

I'd wanted to bring my hand up and slap that steak into his face. But Landon's laugh was too close. Even the way his eyebrows lifted was Jonah's.

Back then Jonah and I had saved cans and scrap metal for a month and sold it for seventy dollars. Which was exactly enough for one sixtyninedollar steak.

Jonah frowned over the cutting for a while, lost patience, dropped the knife and fork, and used his hands. "This is steak?

That much money for this little meat." That's what Jonah said, and I nodded along. I ate most of that steak. Jonah finished the salad that came with it.

It had been that way our whole lives. Jonah gave me whatever he thought was good, and he did it in that gruff way of his.

So when I saw a smile that close to Jonah's, I lost my footing. I didn't care at all what Landon was making fun of.

I just looked at him gently and said, "Either way." That post went around the whole school, and my roommates all heard about it.

They came running to ask if Landon was mistreating me and told me to break up with him.

I propped my chin on my hand and sighed. "But I can't give up that face." My roommates had been cursing him out, and the noise stopped.

They scrolled through his page for a while, then scratched their heads. "Okay, he is hot. But Hazel, we can't be recycling somebody with garbage character.

No lovesick fool business." Now, watching Grayson bend his head and cut my steak for me so gently, I drifted off somewhere.

Landon's temper was like Jonah's, unbroken and full of himself, ready to swing at the first wrong word. But what his brother was showing me now, this softness, this care.

That felt closer to how the Jonah I knew had actually treated me.

Grayson caught me looking and made a point of showing me his freshly bleached hair, like it was nothing. "I did it on purpose. So?

Do I look more like him than my brother does?" Grayson leaned in close, and there was something in his eyes that didn't match the puppy face at all.

His voice dropped, coaxing. "Pick me, sisinlaw.

I promise I'll love you more than he does." Those eyes had me under some kind of spell, and I let him come closer without deciding to.

One second before Grayson's lips reached mine, my phone went off. The ring cut through everything and brought me back.

I turned my face away from him, and something disappointed went through his eyes. The screen said Landon.

I answered, and his voice came at me, furious. "Hazel, where the fuck are you right now?" I looked up, straight into Landon's furious eyes from across the restaurant. Well.

Say what you want, those two were brothers, all right. They took girls to dinner and managed to book the same restaurant.

Chapter 5 Landon came at us in long strides and shoved Grayson aside with one hand.

His eyes went over the two of us, and the question came out of him fast. "Why are you two together?" Grayson took a small step back from the shove and smiled like it didn't matter. "Bro, I just ran into Miss Merrick and we had dinner.

What's the rush?" Landon's voice jumped. "Dinner? You were about to kiss her over fucking dinner?" Isabel had fallen behind, and now she caught up.

She saw the two brothers squared off and gave me a hard look, then turned on Landon, irritated. "What is all this yelling?

Are we eating or not?" Landon stalled, but he had never been anything but small in front of Isabel, and his whole manner softened. "Izzy, don't be upset.

Go order, sweetheart, I'll come as soon as I handle this." It took work to get Isabel to leave, and once she was gone his face closed on me again and he let out a cold laugh. "Hazel, I'm giving you a chance to explain.

What was that? Who said you could go on dates with other men behind my back?" "Bro, I'm the one who invited Miss Merrick.

Just now I saw a piece of paper in her hair, so I—" Grayson didn't want me in a hard spot, so he glanced at me, gave ground first, and explained it to his brother himself.

Landon kept laughing that cold laugh. "Even so, Hazel, you shouldn't have said yes. Are you that desperate?

I don't take you to dinner and you're on another man in five minutes—" The rest of what Landon was saying disappeared into my hand.

I hadn't been able to bring myself to hit him before. Unfortunately, that gauzewrapped face couldn't pull one ounce of pity out of me anymore.

I hadn't held anything back in that slap, and my own palm hurt. I winced and turned to Grayson. "Hey.

Hit your brother for me and I'll say yes." The cut on Landon's face hadn't healed to begin with, and now the pain set the room spinning around him.

Even so, what I'd said only got contempt out of him. "He's my brother. You think he's going to listen to a slut like—" He was still talking when a fist landed hard on his face.

Grayson's voice came from behind it, with some apology in it. "I didn't want to do this. But I can live without a brother. I can't live without a wife.

So I'm going to have to offend you." And with that, the second punch came down. Two weeks after the last time, Landon was back in the hospital. I went once.

The doctor said the cut on his face was infected again and a scar was now basically certain.

When he saw me his eyes lit up, and then his chin went right back up. "This time you could get on your knees and beg me and I'd still break up with you…" "Sure." I hadn't listened to a word after that.

The one gift he had ever given me, a Lotso strawberry bear keychain he won at a carnival throwing darts at balloons, I threw at him. I was smiling. "Landon, remember this.

Whoever crawls back first is the dog." His face went ugly all at once, and he squeezed that strawberry bear until his palm bled. But I was already gone. The