She dunks a stick into the sauce. “I dunno. I still like some vegan stuff.”
“Right, but . . . your beliefs?”
She shrugs. “I still eat vegan sometimes. It didn’t feel like something I had to keep doing constantly. OK, let’s get this thing started.”
“Do you think we should start this on the micro level and zoom out, or macro and zoom in?” I ask Kat as I set up the PowerPoint.
“Either or, they both sound good. Let’s just do it one way and we can always switch it later,” she says. “Start micro. We can use a cool photo from a march downtown and be like, This Is What It Means to Be Los Angeles!”
“That’s a terrible title, but it’s overall not a bad idea,” I say.
I open a new tab on Kat’s computer to pull up Wikipedia, and a screen full of otter GIFs appears. “Whoa. What’s up with this?”
“OMG.” Kat seems to let each letter linger on her tongue, like melting chocolate. “It’s literally, like, the cutest, right? If you reload it, you get all new otters. Quinn did it when I was away from my computer, because she found out otters are my favorite animal. She’s like this coding genius, did you know?”
“I didn’t know.” I hope Quinn’s coding skills extend further than bursts of otters. “I mean, she’s pretty bad at math.”
Kat grimaces. “Don’t mention that in front of her. She’s so freaking stressed about it, but, like, you don’t have to be a math genius to create amazing websites.”
“You don’t?”
“Totally not,” Kat says, as if she’s now an expert on coding and websites. “She’s fine. More than fine.”
Kat’s phone buzzes, and she makes a groaning sound that sounds like blargh.
“Quinn?” I ask.
“My dad. He’s going out straight from work and wanted to make sure I could handle feeding myself.”
“So, it’s . . .” I try to choose the right word so as not to make things sound scarier than they probably already are to her. “Serious?”
That was probably not the right word.
“I think it is.” Kat makes a face. “He’s so happy. And I want to be, like, super happy about that and for him, but I hate how it makes me feel and then I hate that I’m a person who hates how it makes me feel. And I just . . .”
Kat bursts into tears and I might just be the worst friend in the world.
“I’m sorry I brought it up.” I abandon my research and turn toward her. “We can talk about anything else.”
“It’s not you.” She throws her arms around me and sniffles onto my shoulder. Kat crying is always a full production. “Oh my god, James, it’s never you. I just miss my mom so much.”
“I do, too,” I say. Shit. “I mean—”
“Duh, you dork, you’re allowed to miss my mom,” Kat says, and I breathe a sigh of relief I was so generously misinterpreted. “My mom was freaking awesome.”
“I always remember how she’d give you those little fancy boxes of chocolate, and one time she brought one for me since I was staying with you guys for the weekend.”
“Do you know that she told me she did that because she knew you’d actually appreciate it?” Kat laughs while wiping her eyes. “She said Luke wasn’t allowed to have fancy chocolate because he didn’t savor it enough. He ate it just like a Hershey bar.”
“It sucks that she’s gone,” I say, and immediately shake my head. “God, I’m sorry. I feel like I’m saying the dumbest, most insensitive things right now.”
“Why are you so hard on yourself?” Kat asks. “You’re, like, the best friend in the world to me and I know you’re always thinking the right thing so why would I ever worry?”
“Not always.” I come up with beginnings of sentences, I know this is a little shocking or I hate to tell you this or even Everything’s gone so wrong and maybe there’s no way out of it but it’s so much. I can’t imagine telling Kat just about Mom, or just about having to say good-bye to Logan, without all of it spilling out. And it’s so much, maybe too much to throw at someone, even your best friend. It’ll come up over time, I’m sure, when it’s right, when I’m ready, when I’m not feeling so barely together.
“I’ll take over on this stupid project,” Kat says. “Even though this is all so you don’t have to give more false awkward hope to Gabriel Quiroga.”
“His face when you said he should work with Quinn.”
We burst into laughter and imitate his disappointment.
“He’s honestly lucky,” Kat says with a smirk. “Quinn’s way better at designing presentations than you are. She’ll do all the work.”
“Sorry you’re stuck with me.” I try to say it like a joke, but it would be a lie to say I’m not hoping for some assurance. Kat and Quinn have only been dating for a month, and it’s already assumed Kat will do everything with her and not me? But Kat just starts reformatting our slide-show, after reloading swimming otters a few times.
Mom opens the door to her new house and sighs when she sees me.
“You could look slightly less disappointed,” I say.
“James, what are you talking about?” She hugs me tightly, and I picture a giant snake slowly constricting an innocent animal in its path. Just like the last few times I’ve seen her, she’s wearing a dress and stylish boots, as if this is her new uniform. It’s bad enough that I have to stand in an unfamiliar doorway and act like it’s normal, but it’s worse that my mom looks like a stranger.
“I gave you a key, didn’t I?” she asks. “You really don’t have to knock. This is your home, too.”
“Um.” I shake my head. “It’s not. But I’m here.”
“I’m so glad,” she says in a voice that sounds sincere. When I was younger, everyone thought I was brave because I could run as fast as any boy and was constantly covered in scrapes and bruises from what I called my adventures. I liked how adults spoke of my strength, so I kept it secret that, on most days, all I wanted to do was get back home and hug my mom. Now that that’s never going to be possible again, I might as well be five years old with scraped-up knees right now.
The house is not like mine. It’s newer, and I think Mom and Todd paid someone to decorate it. Everything, from the furniture to the wall hangings to the little bowls and vases on nearly every flat surface, complements each other, and I can imagine it being the backdrop for a home catalog or something else generic.
Mom and Dad had explained to me, years ago, that when they bought their house, it was just about literally all they could afford. There was the house, and then there was food, and there was me. So we lived with furniture hand-me-downs that I know now clashed in color, style, and material. But at the time, it was all just our stuff, so I loved it. I actually remember crying when they were able to afford to switch out our overstuffed sofa for something sleek and modern. There’d been something so comforting about the mauve and sage stripes, even if now I can see through almost-adult eyes how ugly that thing must have been. One step at a time, my parents built their home into something they were proud of. And now Mom and Todd think they can fake it all at once.