“I’ll try it.”
He smiles at me and pours some white frothy stuff in a glass. It tastes like a banana smoothie.
“None for you?” Ty shakes his head. He can’t even muster a “No, thank you.” This is Ty’s worst nightmare. So much food and none of it Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“I almost went to India once,” Mom says, and I realize this is kind of her nightmare, too. We’ve been here ten minutes and someone else has been talking the whole time.
“You should! Everyone should—”
“DAD!” Quinlan appears out of nowhere. She fidgets, pulling at the ends of her sleeves, which keep riding back up above her wrists.
“Don’t interrupt, sweetie.” He introduces Quinlan, who declares she already knows us.
“Is there anything else to eat? Crackers or something?”
Mr. Oates breathes loudly out of his nose. “I don’t know where your mother keeps that stuff.”
Quinlan makes a show of getting a box of Triscuits. She stands next to the magazine display of appetizers and eats them straight out of the box. She’s shuffling those long legs together like a grasshopper, and I think I know the feeling. It’s what happens when your body doesn’t feel quite like it belongs to you anymore. Tyler is drooling, but she doesn’t offer any crackers.
Every time a car makes a noise outside or Quinlan kicks her foot into a cabinet door, the butterfly stands up, thinking Jackson is about to walk in. I tell her to stop acting like an idiot, but then Tyler drops his phone going for a Triscuit Quin dropped, and she pops up again. The butterfly and Tyler are both idiots.
Mr. Oates and my dad start talking about the wine, which is another stroke of bad luck for Mom, because even though she drinks it, she leaves the fancy wine talk to my dad. She is smiling and nodding along with them, but there isn’t much for her to say since by now they are deep in conversation about varietals and soil pH.
I wander back out to the living room with my banana lassi and Tyler follows. I look at the books—a lot of Reese Witherspoon’s book club picks, a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell. Ty’s found the shelf of Xbox games and is grunting in a way that makes me think he’s unimpressed.
“Wanna see my room?” Even eating a box of crackers, Quinlan can sneak up like Spider-Man.
Tyler and I follow her upstairs to a palace of fluff. She’s past that little girl pink princess phase and has moved into the jewel-colored fake fur and disco-ball phase. Her comforter looks like the skin of an aquamarine Muppet, and there are a dozen pillows shaped like lips, hearts, high-heeled shoes, birds, and the letters O, M, and G. She’s got shelves with full collections of Japanese vinyl figurines, pop culture bobbleheads, some kind of fruit characters, and one of every tiny stuffed animal that was ever sewed together. There is something on every surface.
It’s impressive that she has managed to acquire this much junk in only nine years, but also disappointing, because somewhere in this chaos of tweendom is Grumpy Dwarf. Scared and alone, probably getting grumpier by the minute. If I could find him, she’d never notice that he was missing, but I’d need a week to look for him in here.
“Let’s go to Jackson’s room,” she says.
I’m about to say “I think we should wait for Jackson,” but it doesn’t matter what I think, because she’s pushing me through the door. We hear Jackson bound up the stairs, and Quin blurts, “Greer wanted to go in your room!” The butterfly, who has been pacing back and forth since we got here, panics and points her wing at Quin.
“Yeah, I’m sure Greer really cares what’s in my room.” Jackson gives his sister a look that says he understands exactly who’s idea this was. He says, “It’s not that interesting, but come in.” His dad smelled delicious like dinner, but Jackson smells delicious like shampoo and apples and leaves.
Jackson’s room is like a tastefully decorated monastery. There’s a bed, dresser, desk, and bookcase that look like they were made from the kind of trees money grows on. The bed is covered in a gray-and-blue-striped wool blanket. There are two big photographs hanging, one of a colorful market and the other of a misty lake. The scrawled pencil signatures on the mats say they were taken by Jackson’s father. There are a lot more of these kind of photos around the house. I wonder if Jackson’s family ever thinks his dad spends a lot of time finding things to take pictures of when he’s supposed to be traveling for work.
Jackson’s laptop and some school books are on the desk, but there’s not much that seems personal, except a single row of things on the top of the bookshelf, which don’t fit the generic feel of the rest of the room.
I step closer to look up at them. There’s a Lego boat made from different color bricks with a Batman driving; a Beanie Baby iguana, fairly dirty; a cup that says Monterey Bay Aquarium; one of those paper frames with a blurry picture of kids on a roller coaster; and a few other things. It’s a weird collection, but it is most definitely a collection, because everything else looks like it was put here by an unimaginative interior designer. I stand on my tiptoes and read the plate on a small tennis trophy: AUSTIN FALL CLASSIC, 2ND PLACE BOYS 12U DBLS.
“Jackson has a lot more trophies but he doesn’t put them out,” says Quinlan, who has climbed on top of the desk and is reaching out toward the bookcase to grab the iguana. She has to lean on the bookcase with one hand to reach far enough and everything rocks a little. Jackson reaches up without effort, shoves it an inch out of her grasp, then lifts her down. I wonder if the iguana was what she wanted on the morning she hit him with the can opener. I wonder why he won’t just let her have a Beanie Baby iguana.
“Go ask Dad when dinner’s going to be,” he says.
“DAD, WHEN’S DINNER?” she screams from the doorway.
“Just go, Quin.” She puts one hand on her hip and stares at him. He says, “Mom brought you an Izze.”
“What kind?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Quin stands there, biting her lip. It must be hard to choose between torturing us and a soda.
“If it’s blackberry, save me some,” I whisper. Her eyes get big and she nods. “Blackberry is the best one.” We’re in this thing together now. She skitters off to investigate.
For a brief second I wonder what’s happened to Ty, but I don’t want to wreck this moment worrying about my brother. He has probably gone back downstairs to see if Quinlan dropped any more Triscuits.
Now it’s just me and Jackson. No hallway full of people rushing to class or table of flirty friends or moms comparing birth stories. I notice how horizontal that bed looks. I notice how big his hands look. I notice how lovely his mouth looks and how his lips aren’t even a little chapped. They’re probably so smooth. The butterfly starts to do a pole dance, and I tell her to calm herself down. This is an obligatory family dinner.