Rediscovering my Ghost Hunt feelings.
There is more than one way that a person can be better.
There is better in the raw power sort of way. The cold intelligence sort of way. The throwing-metal-into-walls sort of way. "That was absolutely amazing," said Gene, his hands warm and eyes bright. "I've never seen anything like you. No one has."
"Thank you," he said. Calmly, he took the applause and he took the renown and he hid when he could. (He had thrilled the world but scared himself.)
There is also better in the good person sort of way. That warmth and kindliness and that smile that he couldn't quite get onto his face the same as his brother could. The soft manner, the gentler power. Gene was comfort and he was destruction and he didn't know how not to be. And this was the better he decided was the one that mattered. More than books and brains and force.
As he sits in his room the screech of the car tears him up and the silence of the lake grips him and chills him. It passes from his sight before his mind and his body. He shakes. But at the same time there is a sick twist in him somewhere, that lingering little hint of jealous and bitter.
He loves his brother (loves him loves him loves him).
It shouldn't be hard to feel the things that he ought to - that anyone ought to - to feel all that love over that tiny bit of not good enough, but he has to fight to push it down. In him resentment was always stronger.
In Gene things were better. As they always were.