“I hate high school,” Princeton Zachary Moss announces to his brother, whose jaw is dropped. Jax seems unaware that his ice cream is dripping at a furious pace down his hand, but recovers quickly.

“Uh, Prince?” he begins, delicate, “You're ten. Is there something you're not telling me?”

Yes. He shrugs. “It just seems incredibly uncool.”

“And my small brother would know this... how?”

Because fifteen minutes ago in the women's restroom Clover was minding her own business when someone poured a bucket of foul-smelling sewage water all over her head, then laughed and blocked the stall door with a chair so she couldn't get out. He frowns, and Clover tries to crawl into the next stall after she finishes crying.

Princeton tisks. “I hate girls, too.”

Jax throws back his head and chortles, little flecks of his ice cream landing on the sidewalk. “Now that's something a kid would say,” he approves, and claps Prince on the back.

“You're insufferable, Jax.”

He winks. “You love me, little bro.”

He’s his only brother, after all.

“You know,” Jax continues as they round the corner to their house, “ever since we moved you've really proven yourself. You're no longer the annoying little brat who I was sure would get his ass kicked.” He adds as an afterthought, “Even though you are a huge nerd.”

He wishes Clover had Jax. In a way she does, but not really, not the way he wants her to. They moved a few months after the funerals, and while Clover stays in the same apartment she was born from, Prince is somewhere far, far away. They didn't get the chance to meet again before he left. It's a strange sense of loss that surrounds them; Prince has his brother, but Clover has no one.

Even if they share the same mind, the same soul, and the same pain, they don't share the same people.

"I hate high school," Prince repeats.

"Come on little brother,” Jax encourages, “take it from me, it's not that bad. You'll know when you get there.”

But he does know, and that's a secret he can never tell anyone. He knows a lot of things. It's easy to feel miserable for his other self, especially as dozens of pairs of eyes watch as Clover shuffles down the hallway in her wet, pungent clothing. It's also easy to block it out, to pretend it's not happening.

He feels humiliated, but there's nothing he can do, so he reaches for the ice cream. “It's melting, dumbass. Let me have some.”