Backstory WHO Jude and Leila WHERE Avon, Connecticut. The Blake Residence. WHEN Leila is 12. Jude is 15. SUMMARY The first discussion between Jude and Leila about why Jude does the dumb things he does and how Leila feels about being adopted. WARNINGS Discussion of adoption/parent/birth circumstance issues.
Maybe Jude had slept through most of American Government, but he still thought this list of chores constituted cruel and unusual punishment. He’d finished cleaning his mother’s gutters that morning. Instead of admiring how clean they were, she’d sent him to repaint the Blake’s fence. He was only a fourth of the way done and the boards had already started to stretch off into infinity. By his estimation, he’d be finished in approximately eighty years, but the sun would kill him first.
He heard his friend’s kid sister’s footsteps. Without turning, “You should be at the pool.”
The footsteps stopped short and the girl scrunched her nose, not understanding how he always knew it was her. She didn't stop to consider the tell-tale flip-flop of her shoes on the sidewalk or the way she sometimes hummed to herself when she was lost in thought.
"My mom's been trying to get Jer to paint the fence for two summers now. How'd you get stuck with it?" The sound of ice hitting glass clinked as Leila closed the distance. "Brought you a Coke. You looked thirsty."
Jude’s head turned then, with a tilt as he looked at the coke. “Thanks, Lady.” Most of the time, Jude called her that because she reminded him of the character from Lady and the Tramp. Sometimes he called her that because she was his knight in shining armor. He put the brush down to take the glass. She was right. He was thirsty. “Borrowed a car for a joyride. Mum caught me at it.” The car had been his mother’s boyfriend’s. “What’s your excuse?” It was like he’d said. She should be at the pool. It was a hot summer day.
She couldn't help but grin when he called her Lady, but after the initial brightening of her expression, Leila made sure to press her lips together when she smiled. She was still super self-conscious about her braces, even though they'd been on for almost six whole months already.
She sat down on the sidewalk in a spot near where Jude was standing. The concrete wasn't quite hot enough to burn the back of her legs yet. His explanation made her tilt her head, and her dark pigtails swung back and forth as she moved. "I don't know. It's not as much fun when not everyone's there." Leila shrugged. Also, she was starting to enter that phase where she was much more aware of how she looked in comparison to how other girls looked. "So why'd you do it? 'Cause this looks like it sucks." She was more curious than anything else. He might have been sentenced to hard labor, but it gave her the opportunity to spend time with one of her favorite people, so who was she to complain?
“Not everyone?” Jude arched a brow at that, but took a drink. At the question, he shrugged. “The keys were there. I don’t know. Didn’t think she’d find out about it.”
The look Leila gave him when he arched his brow - how did he even do that??? - said it was obvious what she meant. She seemed to consider his answer, though, and found it at least partially valid. "But why?"
“Thought I’d brush up on night driving before my driver’s test,” Jude grinned at his own joke. He finished the Coke and set it down, wiping the sweat from his forehead before he picked up the paintbrush again.
"You did it at night?" It was difficult to tell if she was more impressed or amazed. Leila drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms loosely around her legs. "That sounds...more dangerous. Was it for the thrill or...was it just something to do?" She tilted her head back as she looked up at Jude. She definitely didn't want anything bad to happen to him. Not because he'd done something wrong and not because he'd done something dangerous that had gone wrong. But he still hadn't given her a real answer about why he'd thought it was a good idea in the first place.
His mother had asked Jude why too. Exasperated and at the end of her rope. Why Jude? Why? Jude hadn't had a good answer for her. He didn't really have a good answer for Leila either. Or his teachers. Or anyone else who had asked him the same question. He shrugged, “I didn't really think about it while I was doing it. So I guess you're right. Just something to do.”
"I don't like it when you and Jer get in trouble." Leila didn't feel the need to include Wes in that, because Wes rarely ever got into trouble. "I'm not big enough to save you yet." She grinned again. It was a joke, mostly. Except for the part where it was true that she always wanted to help them out when the consequences caught up to their actions.
He laughed at that. Jude’s grin widened as he shook his head, expression wry and teasing. “You gonna save me from my bad self, Lady Leila? Keep me on the straight and narrow?”
"Mmmmmmmmmmm." Leila's face scrunched up as if she was thinking really hard. And then it cleared. "Nuh uh." A laugh followed as she shook her head, but as it passed, she rested her chin atop her knees and squinted against the glare of the sun as she looked at Jude. "That's no fun all the time! But when I'm bigger, I'll make sure you don't get in as much trouble. I'll bail you out. And you're not bad. You know that, right? You're the best cherry I know!" She continued to smile up at him, and for a second, she forgot about her braces.
There were a lot of guys at school that called Jude ‘Cherry’ too, but nobody did it with the same inflection as Leila. Even though Jude thought it was lovingly misplaced, the adoration in her voice kept him from pointing out that he was also the only Cherry she knew. All the other Maraschinos were back in England.
"I just don't always understand." There was a shift in her tone, a kind of heaviness that rarely weighed her down. "And don't say it's 'cause I'm too young. I'm not. Or 'cause I'm not a boy. 'Cause I'm not, but that's not a good reason why. It's just." She heaved a sigh too big to be contained by her small frame. "Sometimes I don't really feel like...." Leila shrugged again and focused her eyes on her painted pink toenails with the flowers on them. "Like people take me seriously. Or like...I fit."
The conversation had been casual enough up to that point, but at the shift, Leila had his attention. Jude put a hand on one of her shoulders and then the other, careful to keep the paintbrush away from her clothing, in an effort to draw her eye contact squarely to him. He leaned down, his head blocking the sun. “I take you seriously,” he said. He never would have said she couldn't understand anyway.
It wouldn't have surprised most people to find out that Leila put a lot of stock in what Jude said. She idolized the three boys who were her closest friends, whether they wanted to be or not. Jude and Wes were best friends with her brother, and Jeremiah was her bestest friend in the world. They all came together as a bundled deal. But she'd always had a soft spot for Jude. When he talked to her, really to her, she always seemed to perk up and pay attention just a little bit more.
So when he said he took her seriously, there was a warmth of gratitude that bloomed inside of her and made her smile again.
After she smiled, Jude pulled back. A moment later, he exhaled and shrugged, dropping his arms. “I don't fit either.” He turned back to the fence and his eyes stayed on the pickets as he spoke the words like they were a resigned conclusion. If she hadn’t sounded so forlorn, Jude wouldn’t have mentioned it, but in that moment, he didn’t want her to feel like she was the only one that felt that way. “Not here. Not there.”
She looked confused. "You fit everywhere." Leila really didn't understand. She wanted to, though. "What do you mean?" Jumping to her feet, she walked over to the bucket of paint and picked up one of the extra brushes. She'd never painted anything like a wall or a fence before, but she was pretty good in art class. She always stayed inside the lines.
“Lady, no.” Jude protested, shaking his head when she picked up a paint brush. Jude was being punished. She didn't need to punish herself.
“I mean, I have friends here,” he said, correcting what she'd said. “Good friends. Great friends. And I'm lucky.” He stopped a hard line of paint against the wood. “But that doesn't mean I feel like I fit at home or at school. It's just...good friends.” There was a difference between feeling wanted by your peers and feeling like you belonged where you were.
Leila skipped a few steps away, dancing out of Jude's reach just in case he tried to take the paint brush from her. He didn't want her helping, but that wasn't going to stop her. He saw this as a punishment, because that's what it was for him. She saw it as an opportunity to help out a friend. Stubbornly, she started brushing the paint on one slat, the same way she'd seen in that old Karate Kid movie.
Jude played her game for awhile. Trying to get the paintbrush from her, only to have it get snatched away. He got a paint stripe on his hand for the trouble. Eventually, he just shook his head and ceded. If Mrs. Blake came outside, he could say he’d tried to stop her.
"Why not at school?" She was trying to picture Jude at school, but they hadn't gone to the same school since he and Jer had been in fifth grade, and she'd been a lowly second grader at the time. "Everyone likes you." Leila was sure of it, even if she couldn't even begin to imagine what high school would be like for her. She didn't want to think about it, because by the time she was the same age as the boys (were now), they'd be going off to college and leaving her on her own. And that was the worst thing Leila could think of.
“It’s not about whether people like me.” He painted a few strokes. Jude didn’t elaborate on that any further.
“My dad understands me better than my mum, I think,” Jude said after a moment. “But he's the one that's never around, and even with him...” he shrugged. His dad had problems. Bad ones.
She stopped painting when Jude started talking about his mom and dad. It wasn't really the first time she'd heard him say something like that, but it was the first time she nodded sort of like she understood. "I get it." That was said softly, almost as if she was afraid of talking too loudly in case anyone was listening. "Kinda. I love my mom and dad, they're great, but…." It wasn't the kind of statement that needed to be finished, because everyone who looked at her family could tell that she'd been adopted. They were a walking, talking, breathing 'which-one-of-these-things-doesn't-belong' example. But they loved her. She knew that, without question.
"I can't imagine being part of any other family. If I was, I wouldn't have my parents and Jer wouldn't be my brother. And I wouldn't know you...or Wes." Leila sounded very sad at that thought. "But sometimes I wonder who I'd be if things were different. If I knew...where I came from. And what they were like."
Jude stopped painting.
“I get that,” Jude said after she’d finished. It was a crazy thing to think about. What kind of a different person Leila would be. Their situations were really different, but Jude could relate. “Maybe it’s a good thing. That you can’t imagine that.” He ran another brush across the fence.
Leila was quiet for a while after Jude's last comment, her brows furrowed as she painted, although it wasn't the boards she was concentrating on. "Maybe," she said finally. She knew he wasn't dismissing her, even if it felt like that a little. When she glanced over at him, there was something darker about him. It was a noticeable difference, because usually when she looked at Jude, the thing that stood out about him the most was his smile.
One of the problems Jude had was that he could imagine. He looked at his mother’s life and he looked at his father’s and his mind could almost fill in that blank. What their worlds would have been like if they hadn’t made their mistake.
"What were you going to say before? About your dad? Do you…" Leila hesitated and her words became a little more uncertain. "Do you wish you could live with him all the time? Do you think things would be different then? For you?"
Jude shook his head. “I mean, things would be different. But I don't think they'd be better.” If Jude was going to wish, he might as well go all out and wish his parents lived together. Or at least on the same street. They could be neighbors with Jude in a hammock between them.
“When I'm with my stepmum, I'm missing everything here. When I'm here, I'm missing the childhood I would have had with my sisters. It's two half lives, but at this point, how could I choose a full one without losing these giant pieces of myself? Which would you choose?”
She nodded. Yeah. There was no doubt that things would be a lot different if Jude wasn't around anymore. Selfishly, Leila was glad that he didn't just say that he'd prefer to live with his dad and stepmom.
"It's gotta be hard. Feeling pulled between two places. And…." Her voice dropped and her words came slower, as if she wasn't entirely sure she'd understood him correctly, and if she had, that she wasn't entirely sure how to make it better for him. "And...to not really be...fully happy...either place."
Jude's eyebrow arched in amusement, partly at the boldness of the statement, mostly that his friend's little sister had come out here to try and analyze him. He made a big upward stroke. “Is anyone fully happy though?” What did that even mean? But his question was mostly rhetorical.
She shrugged again, not sure if he was asking what she'd do if she were in his place, or if he was asking what she'd choose to do in her own situation, if she could. "I don't know. Maybe it is easier for me, in some ways. 'Cause I don't have to choose." She leaned over to dip her brush back into the paint. "If I have another family...they didn't want me. So I just have the one."
As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how bad they could sound. "Not that I don't love them!" Leila was quick to clarify. "I mean, Jer's the best brother I could ever want and my Mom and Dad...I love them so much. They're the best Mom and Dad I have. I just…. I don't— I don't always feel like—" Her words came in stops and starts as she tried to figure out the best way to say what she felt, without sounding like she didn't care about her family's feelings. "It's just that...there's something...missing. I don't feel that way everyday, but it's like… Sometimes I look at them and...and it's not even that I wish I was with my real family. Just that I wish they were my real family. I mean, they are. But...they're also...not."
Jude shook his head. “It's okay, Lady. I know you love them and you have every right to feel the way that you feel. Even though you were a lucky one, it still sucks that you weren't to begin with.” Babies didn't need to be adopted by nice families like the Blakes unless something had sucked for them right out of the gate. Leila had started life with a tragedy, or some kind of trashy situation that she probably hadn't anticipated before she arrived and definitely hadn’t deserved.
She was quiet still, even as he reassured her. "Please don't tell them what I said. Especially Jer. I think he'd be so hurt if he thought I didn't feel like...you know." She wasn't crying, but she did sniffle. The idea of hurting Jeremiah's feelings made her want to die.
Jude shook his head, “It's not my place. Don't worry.” He pantomimed zipping his lips. Jude could meddle in Jeremiah's life from time to time, Wes's too, any of his friends really, but it was always to bring them more joy. Help them enjoy life more. He'd never stick his nose into any of their family business. Some stuff was private. To Jude, a person's family issues was the line.
He was quiet. “You ever looked for them?”
Leila looked up at Jude again when he asked if she'd looked for her other family. After a second, she shook her head. "No. I wouldn't even know where to start. Mom and Dad, well, when they explained to me about adoption and what it is, they offered to help me when I got older, if I wanted to look. But that was years ago and I just don't even know how to talk to them about it now. They said it was a closed adoption anyway, which I guess means they don't really have any information to give me. And that whoever my birth family is doesn't want me to find them." Her mouth twist into a half-smile, but it was more bitter than sweet. "It kinda sucks to be shut out by your own family. Like...you were a mistake they wish they'd never made. And they don't even want to face you. They just want you to be gone. Forgotten. Like you never happened."
To Jude, Leila was this person who just deserved to be happy and have good things. She was this witty and smart girl who really cared about people and had this really maternal side to her that made Jude picture the adult her with a perfectly organized house full of chaotic kids. She was just the kind of good that should only get good. So good, she wouldn't be spoiled by it if she did.
Listening to that, Jude's strokes slowed as if weighed down by some invisible source. He looked at her, feeling sadder than when this conversation started. It was all stuff Jude could have expected. He couldn't say it surprised him that Leila felt that way. Jude wasn’t adopted but he was a Wes and Leila more than he was a Jeremiah. That didn't detract from how depressing it was to hear though.
“That sucks.” Jude said. It didn't just kinda. “You deserve better.” His head turned back to the fence but he kept talking. “And maybe that's why they did it. Maybe it wasn't that they wanted to forget you as much as it was that they wanted you to forget them. They knew they weren't going to be great parents so they wanted to try and get you something better. If you're never going to know, you might as well choose the best thing to assume, right? It still sucks though. There's no way around that. They should have at least left a note or something talking about their intentions.” That they hadn't gave a certain weight to Jude's Knew They Were Bad Parents theory.
It was weird and wrong and uncomfortable to say the things she'd been saying, but at the same time, it felt like a huge weight was being lifted off of her. Not completely, but enough that she could breathe easier for the first time since...maybe since her parents had sat her down to talk to her about where she'd come from.
Leila knew that Jude was being kind to her. He didn't have to listen to her. He could have rolled his eyes and told her to go back inside, and he could have treated her like she was too young and immature to know what he was talking about, but he didn't. She was grateful for that, and it would be a lie if she said that she didn't feel just a little bit special that Jude Maraschino was willing to talk to her like she was his equal.
Jude was quiet for a moment. “My mum thought about it.” Leila was telling him all these secrets, so he decided to tell her one too. If she could trust him, he could trust her. “I found the letter she wrote to my dad where she was discussing all the options she was considering.” Giving him up to a family who'd appreciate and want him had been one of them. To be fair to Leila's birth parents, he wasn't always sure she'd made the better choice. Was it better to keep a thing you didn’t really want, or give it to someone who actually wanted it?
At the end of the day, in his own way, Jude was one of the misfit toys too. Jeremiah was the Christopher Robin and Jude was the Tigger that bounced in and out and had to re-explain to everyone that he wasn't a heffalump yet.
Sometimes she liked to pretend that one day she'd have all of the answers to all of the questions she had about who she was, who her people were, and why they hadn't wanted her. It wasn't often she let herself think about the positives...or the less negatives, she guessed. Things like maybe her bio family had cared, and that was why they'd given her up. Because she would have had less opportunity to be happy and healthy if they'd kept her. Hearing someone else say it made it seem a little more possible, if only for the moment. The tension in her small, thin shoulders eased and she exhaled a small huff of air that was more of a release than a laugh, but at least it wasn't filled with misery.
With her next breath, however, her heart grew heavy again. There was almost a physical pain to it, something deep inside her chest that cracked when she heard Jude's quiet confession. She knew. She knew what it was like to live with the idea that the people who'd made you had given you away. Jude's mom had decided to keep him, but Leila understood that seed of doubt and how it could burrow so deep that you just couldn't dig it out. Jude knew that his mother had considered giving him up. Jude didn't feel like he fit in either half of his family. She was starting to understand more.
Without thinking, Leila swung her arms out and wrapped them around Jude in the biggest hug she could manage. Her cheek pressed against his shirt and her eyes squeezed shut and she held on tight.
Physical contact generally wasn’t a big deal to Jude, but the hug surprised him and he froze when her arms tightened around him. When someone wanted to hug, generally sweat and wet paint were a big enough deterrent. Once Jude got over the initial shock, the tension in his muscles eased, and his shoulders relaxed into it.
His arms rose to reciprocate, but then, over Leila’s shoulder, Jude saw how painted they were. He paused, but then wrapped..Eh. Her shirt was probably ruined already anyway.
"I'm glad you're here," she whispered — and then she let go. Her cheeks were bright red as she took a few steps back and scuffed the toe of her flip-flop against the sidewalk.
"I mean, if you weren't, our fence would never get painted." Still blushing, Leila laughed, her pigtails swinging as she looked away and eyed the length of the fence he'd already completed before dipping her brush back into the paint.
Jude kept eye contact when she said she was glad he was there, but there was some hesitance until the fence comment. He grinned, sharp and toothy, in response. Jude might have had a quip, but he could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t done. He could see the words building up inside her, even if Jude didn’t know what they were going to be or how he would take them.
It was a few moments more before she piped up again. "I don't think my life would be as good without you in it," she said. "Jer and Wes, too. We wouldn't be the same people if we didn't know you. And you...wouldn't be the same you if you didn't know us. I like the you that you are, Cherry." Leila cast him a sidelong glance from the corner of her eye, and her grin returned with a small, playful curve. "Even when you do things that get you in trouble."
After what Jude had said, it was natural for a sweet creature like Jer’s baby sister to want to say something reassuring. The gesture started with the shirt-sacrificing hug and this was a continuation of that. She was trying to make Jude feel better about the things Jude didn’t like to talk about before Jude stopped talking about them again. But Jude wasn’t expecting Leila to say he mattered that much, personally, to her. If you asked Jude how much a brother’s friend mattered to a kid sister, Jude would have guessed not much.
It touched him. Even if the part of Jude that told him he was easily replaced or omitted wouldn’t let Jude believe it.
His grin curved, sly. “I do make things more fun,” he said. He waggled his eyebrows at her, before putting the brush to the fence again. Jude, at least, believed that.