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  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Brandy Colbert

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Stephanie Snow. Cover design by Marcie Lawrence. Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Edition: August 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Colbert, Brandy, author.

  Title: Little & Lion / by Brandy Colbert.

  Other titles: Little and Lion

  Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2017. | Summary: “Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her brother Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel’s bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.” —Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016019838 | ISBN 9780316349000 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316348980 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316318976 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Family life—California—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Bisexuality—Fiction. | Manic-depressive illness—Fiction. | Mental illness—Fiction. | California—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.C66998 Lit 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019838

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-34900-0 (hardcover), 978-0-316-34898-0 (ebook)

  978-0-316-34898-0

  E3-20170621-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One.

  Two.

  Then.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Then.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Eleven.

  Then.

  Twelve.

  Then.

  Thirteen.

  Then.

  Fourteen.

  Fifteen.

  Then.

  Sixteen.

  Seventeen.

  Eighteen.

  Nineteen.

  Twenty.

  Twenty-One.

  Twenty-Two.

  Twenty-Three.

  Twenty-Four.

  Twenty-Five.

  Twenty-Six.

  Acknowledgments

  For Lena,

  the best person and friend

  one.

  It’s bizarre to be so nervous about seeing the person who knows me best, but the past year hasn’t been so kind to Lionel and me.

  I’m standing outside LAX on a sun-soaked afternoon in early June when my brother’s navy-blue sedan screeches to a halt a few feet away. Part of me doesn’t mind that he’s thirty minutes late, because I needed time to get used to the idea of being back home. But now he’s here and my heart is thumping like it’s going to jump out of my mouth and there’s nowhere to go.

  Lionel bolts from the car and barely looks at me before he starts rummaging around in the trunk, shoving aside a plastic crate filled with used books to make room for my luggage. “I am so sorry,” he mutters. “The freeway was a nightmare.”

  There really is no such thing as traffic back in Avalon, Massachusetts. People don’t honk their horns. They put up with totally inconsiderate shit, like neighbors stopping their Volvos and Saabs in the middle of tree-lined streets to chat with friends, clogging up the road so no one else can pass. L.A. drivers would honk until their horns went dead while flipping them off and threatening murder—and I have missed that.

  Lionel hoists my bags into the trunk, slams it closed, and turns to give me a quick hug. But it feels perfunctory and that makes me stiffen in his arms and I wonder why we’re acting like strangers. I relax a bit when I notice he smells so much like he is supposed to smell, like the coziness of our house and the mustiness of his car, which is always filled with hiking shoes and old books. I’m almost overwhelmed with the reality of actually being home and standing next to Lionel. For a while now—not just a weekend or a few days clustered around a hectic holiday. I’m home for the summer.

  “Good to see you, Little,” he says, pulling away as he tugs one of the black dreadlocks that hang to the middle of my back.

  That name never sounded so good. My brother calls me Suzette only when he’s feeling anxious, and I’m relieved that he seems so calm right now.

  I smile and pretend like I’m not examining every single inch of him for changes. “Yeah? I don’t look too East Coast–y?” I glance down at his thumbs. Before, they were shredded, the sides of them forever bitten and spotted with red. Now they are smooth and the skin is clean, and I think that’s a good thing, too.

  He squints at me, blinks, shakes his head. “Nah. They haven’t broken you yet. You—when the hell did you get that?”

  My fingers automatically go up to the tiny gold hoop on my face. It’s a septum piercing, “badass but still classy” according to the girl who put the needle through my nose at the only tattoo parlor in Avalon.

  “Do you like it?”

  He leans closer, his eyes glued to the jewelry. “Yeah. Never pictured it on you, but I dig it. Does Nadine know?”

  Nadine doesn’t know. She’s my mother and she’s been with Lionel’s father, Saul, since I was six and Lion was seven; we merged households two years later. Lionel and I have called each other brother and sister since then, and that surprises some people at first, because he’s white and I’m black. But we’ve been built-in best friends for practically our entire lives, until last fall—when boarding school separated the inseparable.

  “Let’s move it along, people!” a sturdy man wearing a fluorescent vest booms, gesturing toward the cars backed up in the lanes surrounding us.

  We hustle to our respective sides of the car, and a few seconds later, Lionel successfully steers us out of the throng of airport traffic amid a cacophony of honking horns and hissing shuttle brakes.

  “The parents are waiting for us,” he says. “But I’m starving. Are you starving? Want to sneak off and grab a bite first?”

  What I want is to go straight to my bed and collapse into a deep sleep for about twelve hours. But all I’ve had today is a pack of peanuts and two cans of cherry cola, and as soon as he mentions my favorite taco truck, I forget about my jet lag.

  People back East would ask what I missed the most about California, and I never quite knew where to start. Of course I missed my family. It’s never cool to say so, but even the little things I used to hate, like the way Saul hums Barry Manilow songs while he makes breakf
ast—I would’ve killed for that on the really bad days. I missed the towering palm trees that look a little ratty during the day and majestic against the inky skyline after the sun drops. I missed the blistering sunshine and the horrific traffic and the way nobody here gives a shit about what anyone else is up to because there are too many better things to be doing with your time.

  “How are you?” I ask, looking over at Lion.

  His dark red hair is in need of a cut, but he looks good. Healthy. His blue eyes are focused, and I feel like I am looking at the version of Lionel I truly know. The Lionel I’ve missed.

  “Good,” he says, shrugging as if the question isn’t loaded. “Just finished this incredible article in the New Yorker. You read this week’s issue?”

  As if I am him, who has subscribed to the New Yorker since he was thirteen and saves the old issues in neat stacks at the back of his closet.

  I shake my head. “It’s no fun reading them if I’m not stealing yours.”

  He takes his hand off the steering wheel to flick my shoulder, and I grin. I needed that almost more than his hug.

  “Besides, I don’t really have time to read for fun anymore.” A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to fathom making such a statement.

  Lionel turns left onto La Cienega and clutches at the front of his T-shirt. “Surely you jest.”

  Living in the same house, it was hard not to be a big reader, with Lionel’s overflowing bookshelves and frequent trips to libraries and bookstores. But reading didn’t relax me when I was at Dinsmore Hall. It mostly reminded me that my brother was no longer a few hundred feet away if I wanted to discuss the story I was into. I tried texting but it wasn’t the same, with the three-hour time difference.

  He sent me off with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest last fall and… well, I put it on the top shelf of my closet after the first night, away from my other books. Lion meant it as a joke, as a way to let me know he still had a sense of humor about what was happening to him, but I didn’t find it very funny or comforting.

  “You really haven’t been reading?”

  “I know.” I sigh. “I fully expect to be disowned.”

  He looks over and smirks. “Heavily judged but not disowned. Classes still tough?”

  “Kind of. They were time-consuming, mostly.”

  And I did miss the unofficial book club I had with my brother, but I stopped having time for it less because of the studying and more because of a girl named Iris.

  “Well, it’s good you’re here. Now things can go back to normal,” he says.

  Normal. But which is the normal Lionel, the old or the new? I wouldn’t know anymore, considering how little I’ve been able to see him over the past year. It wasn’t my choice to go away, and the guilt of not being here for him is almost debilitating. I want to remind him of that every second, even though I know he’s aware I didn’t want to leave him.

  He pauses, not looking at me. “Are you glad to be back?”

  “Yeah, I guess.…” I stick my arm out the window to feel the California sun on my skin. “I mean, yes, but you know how you can get used to something, even if you don’t like it all that much?”

  “Yeah, Little,” he says in a voice that holds too much weight. “I know.”

  The car is silent, save for the softest notes of indie rock playing in the background. I turn to my window and zone out as we make our way from the west side of the city to the east, thinking about what I have to do now that I’m home. Hug DeeDee. Find out how Lionel has really been doing, because as much as I want to believe he’s as well as he seems, deep down I don’t think he is. Figure out if I want to go back to Massachusetts and face the mess I left or fight to stay here, where things are another kind of difficult.

  My mouth starts watering the closer we get to the taco truck, and I’m prepared to ride around for a while, looking for parking, but then the most magical thing that can happen in L.A. occurs—we find an empty spot just two parking meters down. Lionel whips into the space and we bolt from the car to follow the intoxicating fragrance of marinated meat, fresh tortillas, and spices down the sidewalk. The ever-present line that curls around the front of the truck is discouraging but only reinforces how delicious the food is—definitely worth the wait.

  Lionel orders our usual, and we barely make it back to his car before I’m digging into the bag, pulling out a foil-wrapped chorizo taco from the quartet squeezed inside. Lionel divvies up the wedges of limes and sliced radishes between us, and we lean against the back bumper to eat. Or, more accurately, I moan with appreciation as Lionel inhales carne asada and rolls his eyes.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” I lick spicy-sweet salsa from the corner of my mouth because wiping it with a napkin is a waste. “I’ve been deprived of good Mexican food for months.”

  “Yeah, but you get all that cool New England shit.” Lion tips back his bottle of pineapple soda, identical to the one resting by my feet. He swallows. “Chowder and lobster rolls and—”

  “And it’s no comparison. Give me this over lobster any day.”

  My mother texts as we’re finishing up our first tacos, asking if we’re on our way back. Part of me wants to run right home and fold myself into her arms and never let go. But the part of me that remembers how helpless and angry and sad I felt when she told me last summer that I had to go away resurfaces in that moment.

  Lionel watches as I balance the phone on my knees and clumsily text with my left hand, trying not to smear food on the screen. “This about her?” When I look up, he’s pointing at my nose ring.

  “Why does it have to be about anything? Why can’t I just like jewelry?”

  “I don’t know… I never thought you were into piercings or whatever.” Lionel starts in on his shrimp taco. “It’s kind of front and center.”

  “People were getting things pierced.” I shrug. “I guess I gave in to peer pressure. Do you hate it or something?”

  By people I mean my roommate, Iris, and she didn’t pressure me. We got tired of studying one day and took a walk in downtown Avalon and then we were upstairs in the piercing loft, watching the blue-haired girl snap on a pair of rubber gloves. Iris held my hand so I’d have something to grab on to when it hurt. It was the perfect distraction, because at first I couldn’t stop thinking about how soft her palm felt against mine—until the needle pierced through the middle of my nose with a sharp prick and I felt like I was going to sneeze my face off.

  “I don’t hate it, Little. It’s just different.”

  I don’t like the way he doesn’t look at me as he says the word different.

  “Yeah, well. So am I.”

  My eyes sting as Lionel swings the car onto our street, and I tell myself I’m just tired, but fuck, I missed this place. I blink almost violently as our olive-green Victorian comes into view, with its fish-scale shingles and maroon trim and the turret at the top that houses my bedroom. We live in a historic district of L.A., the streets of our neighborhood lined with all types of gorgeous Victorian and Craftsman houses, but I swear, ours gets the most lingering looks when people drive or walk by. It’s been six months since I was home, and now I’m the one who can’t tear her eyes away.

  Our parents are sitting close together on the wooden swing that hangs from the porch, but they pop right up when we pull into the drive. Saul comes bounding down first, his big arms engulfing me before I’ve even emerged from the car. “We missed you so much, kiddo.”

  “Missed you, too.” I kind of can’t wait to hear him humming “Copacabana” over fried eggs.

  He gives me one last squeeze and pulls back, and I smile as I take in his strawberry-blond hair that’s silvered at the temples, and the creases of laugh lines around his mouth. He has Lionel’s same oceanic blue eyes, the ones that convey every ounce of emotion.

  Father and son scoop up my bags and take them inside, leaving me alone with my mother. She looks pretty in wide-legged linen pants and a white top that contrasts perfectly with her warm brown skin and s
hort Afro dyed the color of dark cherries. She notices my new piece of jewelry—her eyebrows rise slightly as her gaze sweeps over me—but she doesn’t say anything about it.

  Her eyes are wet as she blinks at me, as she smooths a palm softly over the side of my face. “Oh, sweet pea, I really missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” I say, folding myself into her hug.

  I spent the first few weeks at school seething through the phone calls from her and Saul, but the longer I was there, the more my anger faded, until it mostly manifested on the days I particularly missed home and my brother.

  I know she really thought she did what was best for all of us by sending me away.

  I know how easy it is to believe you’re doing the right thing if you say it to yourself often enough.

  two.

  I wake at six thirty the morning after I return. Every part of me is exhausted and I still can’t escape the East Coast.

  I blink at the rounded, soft gray wall of my bedroom, confused for a moment. I’ve always loved it up here, with the gauzy white curtains fluttering in front of big windows and the twinkle lights woven along the tops of them. And I missed the worn purple armchair, the one my mother has had since college and passed on to me years ago. My room is cozy, but today—well, I feel strange waking up in a turret. I used to think it was cool to sleep in a tower, but now it seems a little childish, like I never stopped playing princess.

  Not to mention it felt even stranger falling asleep in a room by myself after so many months. It took me weeks to get used to sleeping across the room from Iris first semester… which is funny, considering everything that’s happened.

  I stretch from my toes to my fingertips, yawn until I see stars, then lie back and listen. The house is quiet. I curl my phone into my palm and walk down the short staircase that descends from my room, stopping at the middle-level bathroom. I peek into the shower to find my shampoo and conditioner sitting in the same spot where I left them at the end of winter break, back when Lionel seemed better—no frenzied footsteps heard through his door at two in the morning when I got up to use the bathroom, no trays of untouched food sitting outside his room at all hours of the day—but still not quite himself.