My Cousin's Keeper by Simon French

book of maps and inventions
, I thought.
Waste of paper.
    But I knew Bon was trying to hide something the moment I walked back into our room. He hunched over his bedspread, scrunching the covers into an awkward handful.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” I demanded. “What have you got?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œLiar,” I replied, and pulled the bedspread from his grasp. I was stronger than he was, and the covers came half off the bed, spilling the hidden contents onto the floor. Just as before, they were figures from my medieval castle. “You thief!” I shouted.
    Mom was in the doorway. “What’s going on?” she asked.
    â€œHim,” I said, scowling at Bon. “He’s been sneaking around my room at home again. He’s taken things without asking.”
    â€œThose?” Mom asked, pointing at the figures — the same white horse and the same knight with the blue crested flag that Bon had taken two years ago. There was another knight as well this time — and the princess with her conical hat and long red gown. “Did you take those without asking, Bon?”
    â€œYes,” I answered, because Bon, looking guiltily at Mom, said nothing.
    Mom glared at me a moment and then looked back at Bon. “I’m asking you a question, Bon. What’s the answer?”
    â€œIf I’d asked,” Bon replied, “Kieran would have said no.”
    Mom sighed, and then lectured Bon about not helping himself to things that weren’t his. “And now that you’ve got them, I’d like you to say something to Kieran.”
    Bon looked up quickly. “I’m sorry,” he said to me.
    I scowled back at him.
    After a pause, he asked, “But can I borrow them? Just till we go home?”
    In the dark after bedtime, I hissed, “You take my things without asking, and you barge in on our family vacation. I wish you weren’t my cousin and I wish I didn’t know you.” I heaved a long, angry breath, and then waited in silence, wondering if Bon would reply or not. Keeping still, I realized I could hear him whispering to himself, the way I’d heard him do at home. It went on for a long time, until I interrupted. “Say it out loud to me. I dare you.”
    The whispering stopped, and for a moment there was silence.
    Then Bon said in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry about being here. But my mom can’t look after me. It’s too hard for her.”
    I wasn’t sure how to reply to that. His answer unsettled me in a way I couldn’t quite explain, so instead I listened as his breathing slowed into the steady softness that told me he was sleeping.
    For the rest of that week, I did my best to avoid wherever Bon would be, which was easy at least some of the time. He didn’t come fishing with me and Dad anymore, preferring to stay with Mom and the girls, exploring the rock pools or walking around the beachside shops. Once or twice, I walked into our bedroom to find Bon kneeling with his drawing book at the foot of his bed. He had the bedspread bunched up and my medieval figures arranged across the folds. I pretended not to be interested, but I realized what he was seeing and drawing when I stopped in the doorway to look more carefully. The folds of the bedspread were a landscape of hills and valleys that the knights on horseback were traveling across. On a distant hilltop, the princess in her gown and cape waited and watched.
    I waited until Bon was outside in the motel swimming pool before quickly searching his overnight bag and pulling out his maps and inventions book. Soon enough, I found the page he’d been working on, and there was the bedspread landscape as a story picture, together with a paragraph scrawled underneath in Bon’s messy handwriting.
    Bon the Crusader and Kieran the Brave have journeyed to the ocean’s edge. Back at the village, Julia the Fair is preparing for her own journey.
    I read it twice,