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: : : —LOOK, SAYS FREYA, —I KNOWthat he's kind of a fuck-up—
—I'm not— Jakob says, —I'm not saying that he's a fuck-up.
—Well he kind of is.
—Well I don't know that. I've only met him a couple of times but he didn't particularly come off to me as a fuck-up—I mean, no worse than any other teenager.
—But you don't want him to come stay here with us.
—Look, I—you always do this—I don't know whether I want him to come stay with us or not. I'm just trying to think it through and that means talking about some of the aspects of the plan that I feel uncomfortable with.
—OK, Freya says. —Like what?
—Like where would he sleep? I mean, there's barely enough room for the two of us in this place.
—He said he could crash out on the couch—
—You want him to stay in the living room? That seems—I don't know, I mean, there's no doors or anything—you think he'd be happy in there, with no privacy, where people can just walk through all the time?
—Or we could put him up in the office room.
—Yeah, but we use that space.
—Yeah, but—I mean, we use it for what? Paying the bills? Like we can't spend a month or two paying the bills at the kitchen counter?
Back when they were getting ready to move in to this place, they spent some time planning out what they would use the different rooms for, and when they decided that they'd set up Jakob's files and computer stuff in a room that he could call his office, Jakob began to fantasize that he'd finally begin writing the novel that he's been wanting to write for so long. The vision of himself in that room writing seemed so clear—it seemed like being in a new place, with a space set aside specifically for work, would enable him to choose a whole new set of habits, enable him to become the person who he hopes to become. They've been in the apartment for eight months now and most of what he's written in that room has been e-mail—even so, the prospect of losing that space pangs him. He wants to say but I use that room to write in but he knows Freya will call bullshit. Instead he just frowns.
—Listen, Freya says. —I know it'll be inconvenient to have him here. I know that. Believe me, I don't really want him here. But he's my brother (half-brother, Jakob thinks, and then feels petty) and he's in a bad situation right now and I can't, you know, turn my back on him—
—But it's not like he's homeless, Jakob says. —I mean, he has a place to live—with your mom and Paul. And it just seems that he wants to move in here as a way to like avoid having to deal with his problems with them.
—They're not always that easy to deal with, Freya says.
—Yeah, but, I mean—nobody's parents are easy to deal with when you're eighteen. But that doesn't mean that you just bail. I mean, I've met them—they're not monsters—
—They're on their good behavior when you're around, says Freya. —Trust me when I tell you that they can be pretty awful.
—Yeah, OK, Jakob says, —so he's got awful parents. So do a lot of people. The point is you manage. You don't just—run away from home when things start getting fucked up. And as his sister you shouldn't help him to run away from home. You're just asking to get dragged into this whole drama. I mean, what's your mom going to say when she finds out that you agreed to let Tim stay here?
—I haven't agreed to anything yet, Freya says.
—OK, but if you do. What do you think your mom would say?
—I think she'd say you can have him.
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