“All good things, I hope,” Everett said.
“Sometimes!” Rob said brightly.
Everett frowned. “Uh, do you know where my family is?”
“Miranda’s around here somewhere. Dave’s in the kitchen—it’s pancake night! And the little one . . .” He trailed off.
Everett stifled a smile.
“She’s sort of terrifying, you know?” Rob said, sitting back down. “I think she went to her room. I tried to ask her a question about Frozen and she . . .”
“Did she fix you with a withering glare?” Everett supplied.
Rob pointed at him. “Yes. That is exactly how I would describe it.”
“Sounds like Gretel. Nice to meet you,” Everett said as he headed up the wooden stairs, lined with a faded now-beige runner.
“See you at dinner!” Rob called.
Everett hadn’t been in Gretel’s room in ages (it was the kind of place you needed an invitation to get in, and he wasn’t on the list), but he climbed the second (dark, foreboding, creaky) set of stairs up to the turret.
He knocked on the door three times, then waited for a response.
Eventually, he heard Gretel’s voice. “Yes?” she asked skeptically. How a child could sound skeptical in one word and through a door, Everett didn’t know, but Gretel managed it.
“It’s me.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
He sighed. “It’s Everett. Your brother. You know, tall, good-looking, beautiful hair—”
The door swung open and Everett looked down to see Gretel’s bored expression. “Ugh. Stop.”
“So, uh, what’s going on?” Everett asked.
“Why are you in my room?” Gretel asked, eyes narrowed.
Everett tilted his head. “Technically I’m not in your room, because you haven’t invited me in yet. Kinda rude, frankly. Maybe Mom and Dad should send you to charm school.”
Gretel rolled her eyes and stepped back, allowing Everett to walk in. He let out a childlike “Whoa” as he took in his surroundings.
It was a small room and shaped like, well, a turret, but Gretel had packed it to the gills. Bookshelves took up half the wall under the windows, and they appeared to be stacked two books deep. Twinkle lights hung from the ceiling, shining in the dusk. Glow-in-the-dark stars were stuck on the ceiling, a detail so mundane that Everett could almost pretend his sister was any other twelve-year-old. Her bed, of course, was neatly made, and he could see the indent of where she’d been sitting, right next to a stack of books.
“Wow,” he said, turning around to take everything in. “It looks . . . different than it did the last time I was in here.”
“You mean when I was a toddler?” Gretel asked dryly, sitting back down on the bed. “Yes, there’s no longer a changing table.”
Everett shook his head while looking at her. “They grow up and learn how to control their own bladders so fast.”
Gretel wrinkled her nose. “Did you come up here to talk to me about childhood incontinence?”
“No, actually,” Everett said, bending down to look at the bookshelf. Classics. Essay collections. Poetry. He could feel Gretel cringe as he pulled out a book. “I’m putting it back carefully.” He looked at her as he slid the book back onto the shelf.
“Ev!” she shrieked, jumping off the bed. “You’re not even looking at what you’re doing. These are alphabetized.”
She grabbed the book, and he put his hands in the air. “Sorry. Wow. Didn’t realize you had a system.”
“Everybody has a system,” she huffed, her arms crossed.
“Okay, well . . . have you heard of the Alice series? By, um . . .”
Everett started to pull his phone out of his pocket to look at Theodora’s email, but Gretel asked, “Phyllis Reynolds Naylor? Yes, I know it.”
Everett paused. “Really?”
“Mom gave me the whole series when I turned eight.”
Right. Of course their parents were behind Gretel reading young adult literature from the eighties and nineties.
“Why?” Gretel asked, confusion splashed across her small face. “Do you . . . want to read them?”
“Yes.” Everett nodded.
“Really?” Gretel asked, staring at him.
“Yes. An, uh . . . a friend of mine recommended them.”
Gretel narrowed her eyes. “Oooookay,” she said slowly. “The entirety of the series would be way too much for you to carry out of here, but”—she leaned over her bookshelf and pulled out a few—“here are the first six books.”
“Thanks!” Everett said, easily holding three slim, tattered paperbacks in each hand. With his head, he gestured toward the stack of books on her bed. “What are you reading?”
“Gene Luen Yang, Lynda Barry, and Jerry Craft. Graphic novel research,” she said, sitting back down on her creaky bed. At the first squeak, a black shape squeezed out from under the bed and rubbed against Everett’s leg.
“Sassafras!” Everett said, bending down to greet the cat with a pet. Sassafras purred in response, so he picked her up. Sassafras loved attention from Everett, a fact that annoyed Gretel to no end.
“You don’t even live here,” she said, pouting. “Why does she like you so much?”
Everett put Sassafras down, at which point she jumped on the bed. Gretel pet her possessively.
“Just the effect I have on the ladies, I guess.”
Gretel groaned.
“And on that note, I’m out of here.” Everett held up the books. “Thanks for these.”
“Hey!” Gretel called when he was halfway down the stairs. He turned to see her silhouetted in the doorway, still holding Sassafras.
“Yeah?” Everett asked.
“What girl are you trying to impress?”
Everett scoffed. “Who says I’m trying to impress a girl? Maybe I’m broadening my horizons.”
“Well, whoever she is,” Gretel called after him as he kept walking, “she has good taste.”
Everett smiled without looking back. As he started down the second staircase, he heard, “Not staying for dinner, man?”
He startled but thankfully stopped himself from tripping down the stairs. “Rob. Wow. I, uh . . . wasn’t expecting you to still be there.”