“Sometimes.” John turns on the radio.
“I have a little sister,” I say, and feel stupid immediately after saying it. I sound like I’m at show-and-tell, desperate for the class to find me interesting.
“Nice.” John smirks. “Is she cute?”
My eagerness evaporates in a grimace. “She’s ten.” John looks slightly embarrassed, but not enough to wipe the smirk away entirely.
Why does half of what comes out of his mouth make me not want to talk to him? Why do I keep talking to him anyway? I turn to look out the window. John fiddles with the radio station until louder guitar chords fill up the empty space between us.
He stops the car at the corner of my block.
“It’s the yellow one,” I say, pointing, “with the azaleas.”
John laughs. “I know, doofus.” He puts the car in park.
“Hey,” I say, but then John reaches to push strands of hair behind my ear. His fingers trail down my neck. Oh.
“Sorry,” he says. He doesn’t say what for.
The sun hovers below the tree line, but the sky is light and the streetlights haven’t even come on yet. The difference between making out in a car in the dark and making out in a car where any random neighbor could see me feels stark and expansive, but John doesn’t seem to recognize the distinction. He leans over the cup holders.
“I have to go,” I say. John leans in to kiss me anyway, which I don’t like on principle. I’ve been kind of wanting to try kissing him again, but now I pull away (though not quite fast enough to avoid a peck). “I—really, I do have to go. Um, thanks.”
I mean for the ride, but John beams like I meant something else. “My pleasure, Lopez-Rourke,” he says. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”
“Uh, yeah. Bye.” I unhook my seat belt, open the door, stand on the sidewalk.
“Hey,” John says. “You’re going to the Austin tournament, right?”
“Uh, I guess?”
“Perfect,” he says. “Don’t forget your sleeping bag.”
He has a little smirk that makes me very aware that in less than two weeks we’ll both be spending the night in a random dorm room in a random city. I guess that’s one way to get more privacy for kissing.
I duck my head to avoid his smirk. “See you later.”
I have to walk for eight hundred years before I get to my front door, and then I have to wait seven hundred more years for Connie to let me in. Every time I look back, John is smirking. It makes my stomach lurch and the muscles above my knees ache. It makes me feel stupid.
18
What the hell? Melissa’s text demands. It’s followed two seconds later by a second message: What the actual hell, Ellen?
I shove the phone back into my pocket. Normally Connie will at least pretend to be annoyed by phones at the dinner table, but tonight she has her own phone on the table. She texts with slow, clumsy fury, fingers flexed to keep her nails from hitting the screen.
The salad wilts in the middle of the table while Yasmín taps her fingers against her empty plate.
“Your father,” Connie says, scowling at her phone, “is on his way.”
Dad’s been promising to make it home for dinner all week, so I understand Connie’s frustration. It’s 7:13. Dinner was supposed to be at seven, already later than usual to give me time to get back from quidditch.
Yasmín drums her plate. Connie jumps out of her seat and starts wiping the already clean countertop. I tap my pocket, wriggle my phone free, twirl it in my hands, and finally open Melissa’s messages.
What? I type. I hesitate before hitting send, but Melissa probably already saw me typing anyway. Past the point of no return.
Even that Phantom of the Opera reference can’t calm me down, though, especially when the three dots appear to show Melissa typing. They go on . . . and on . . . and on . . .
“Mom,” Yasmín says. Connie drops her rag. “Um, we could just start eating the salad. Dad will be here in a minute, right?”
My little sister is too cute for her own good. Connie glances at her phone, but she doesn’t hesitate to load Yasmín’s plate with greens. She even remembered to keep the ranch dressing on the side today. I fill my own plate.
Family dinner isn’t as consistent for us as it is for the Larsens. I’m just as likely to eat peanut butter in my room as at the table, and Connie will usually give Yasmín food whenever she asks, totally wrecking any normal eating schedule. But some days, maybe a few times a week, we’ll all sit down and eat whatever we were going to eat at the same time. Nothing scheduled. Not officially planned. Not a big deal.
Until Dad started missing it.
My phone buzzes.
You know perfectly well what, Melissa’s text reads. Are you dating John now? Were you going to say anything? Are you trying to prove a point?
I’m trying to decide how to respond when the front door slams open. Dad drops his briefcase in the doorway and walks into the kitchen, phone in hand.
“Okay,” he snaps, “I’m here.”
Even though it’s an I statement, he sounds like he’s looking for a fight.
Connie sniffs. She sits down and gestures for Dad to take his seat. The chair scrapes horribly against the kitchen tile.
“Bless us, oh Lord,” Yasmín says while Dad adds a tiny helping of salad to his plate. We all bow our heads while she finishes the prayer.
“Amen,” Connie and Dad say. I let go of my phone to twitch my fingers toward my forehead, chest, and shoulders.
Sometimes I can’t wait for Yasmín to get a little older, just so I can ask her if she does this kind of thing on purpose. I can see Dad’s shoulders relax and a smile creep into Connie’s eyes as Yasmín raises her head and unfolds her hands. Is she so clever that she knows exactly how to dispel the tension in the room? Or is she just being herself?
“Well,” Dad says. “Family dinner. This is nice.” He takes a bite of salad. “And this,” he says between bites, “is delicious.”
Connie doesn’t smile or anything, but she doesn’t sniff.
My phone buzzes again.
???
Damn. I try to remember Melissa’s questions, try to think of some answer to give her.
“Ellen . . .” I drag my eyes away from the screen at the sound of a sniff. Connie looks down her nose at my phone.
“But . . .”
“Ellen,” Dad says, “let’s put the phone down for a few minutes. Not at dinner; you know that.”