“One sec,” Dad mumbled. I slid off the couch, pulled the basket closer, and snatched some of my own things before the boys could get to them. Dad sped Baby Peach over the finish line and leaned down to grab a pair of Mom’s yoga capris. Ty clicked through the menus to switch to single player. “Ty. Come on.” Dad reached for the remote, but Ty squirmed out of reach.
“It’s still waaarrrrmmm,” I cooed.
Ty looked sideways at me with a grin. My brother had a weak spot for things just out of the dryer. He dropped the control and tipped the basket over himself.
“Oh my god. So warm. This is amazing.” He pulled Mom’s lavender fleece over his face and flapped his arms in the pile like he was making snow angels.
Dad rolled his eyes at me.
“Come on, dummy.” I grabbed Mom’s sweatshirt off him. Dad and I peeled through the laundry, neatly folding and stacking everybody’s clothes. Ty could only fold rectangular things, so he focused on matching socks. “Do you wish you lived closer to Grandma?” I wondered about this a lot. Mom’s mom died when I was little, and my grandpa and his new wife lived in Madison. But my dad was a long way from where he grew up, and a long way from his parents.
“Sometimes.” It didn’t sound like a yes, but Dad has always been diplomatic. Now I understand that he loves his parents, but he might love them better from a distance.
“Whose is this?” Tyler held my bra by one strap. I had meant to grab all my underthings from the pile before he crawled in it, mostly because he is dirty and the clothes were clean, but I’d missed this one. It was one of my first—tiny, white, and useless, more like the idea of a bra than an actual bra. The cups were hardly cups at all, because they didn’t need to be. They’d poof out from my body like an unfilled balloon if they were any bigger.
“Mine.” I grabbed it from him.
“Greer has bras?!” Ty said it like it was a scandal. “Oh my god.” Ty’s mouth was open, and he looked at my dad, like was he not hearing this?! Dad shrugged his shoulders like he did not understand what Ty was getting at, but he was trying not to smile.
“Yeah, that’s what happens, Ty,” I said. “Girls wear bras.”
“And that’s your bras? It doesn’t look like Mom’s.” I swatted him with it. It took a long time for Ty to stop calling one bra “bras.” I guess because there was space for two breasts he assumed it was supposed to be plural. He might be right. We call pants pants. A pair of bras? Maybe. Now I’m sure Ty knows the terminology, but he doesn’t talk about bras in front of me.
The weird thing is that I was less self-conscious about it then, when if Ty had really been observant, he might have noted I had nothing to put in the bra, than I am now, when the need is undeniable. Or maybe that’s not weird at all. Maybe that is exactly why I’m more uncomfortable now talking about bras. Because the idea of breasts is something you hold in your mind. The reality of breasts is something that sits in the middle of your chest, right there between you and your little brother. Right there in your bras.
I buried the bra in the Greer pile and launched myself into Ty. I sat on his chest, my knees pinning his arms, until I wrestled a pair of his own underwear onto his head. “Look! Tyler wears UNDERWEARS? Dad! Can you believe this? Look at Ty’s underwears! Oh my gaw-ahd!”
That picture was Dad’s lock screen, until Mom told him to put something more appropriate on it. His current screen is a picture of me and Ty at a restaurant, leaning our heads together but not touching at all.
CHAPTER 16
The minute bell rings and Jackson still hasn’t shown up. I plod off to class, disappointed. Everyone else looks nervous. We have a test today.
Carlisle Patone has sharpened his pencil to a laser and is writing in a four-point font so he can get the most information on the page of notes we are allowed to keep.
“That’s just going to make it worse. You’re not going to be able to find anything,” I warn.
“Easy for you,” says Carlisle, and keeps transferring nonsense from his notebook to the cheat sheet. Someone should put Carlisle out of his misery and bump him back to Algebra II.
Three boys are passing a calculator back and forth and laughing. Most of us discovered the list of words you could make by flipping the calculator upside down in fifth grade, but there are a few kids who still find it amusing to come up with equations whose answers spell out funny words, even on a multifunction calculator that has an entire alphabetical keyboard mode.
7734 = hELL
8075 = SLOB
3722145 = ShIZZLE
312237 = LEZZIE
Here’s what I don’t understand: If they can CGI a chimpanzee so realistically that my grandpa won’t stop talking about how the movie studios could train those monkeys to fight on horseback, why can’t Texas Instruments create a graphing calculator where no one thinks 58,008 reads “BOOBS” upside down? Or more correctly, “BOO,BS” upside down?
Maybe the engineers at TI are adolescent boys. Adolescent boys who were too smart for school math, who had to go to special math college and then got jobs making calculators.
I catch Kyle Tuck motioning to me, and I assume he’s come up with some equation that equals 5319918. Breasts—especially especially big or especially small ones (55378008), and especially especially mine—are endlessly amusing to Kyle.
For a smart kid, he really is dumb.
The test is easy. I only need my half-size cheat sheet on two problems. I’m the second one done, a full forty minutes before Carlisle. I fish my phone out of my bag to play Zombie Sudoku (which is just Sudoku, but instead of numbers, you fill in the blocks with nine varieties of undead) under the table. Technically, we’re not supposed to have them in class during a test, but there is nothing else to do.
Right away I see that there is a picture from Jackson. I pretend to be adjusting my shoelaces so I can lean close enough to my phone to see it.
It’s his forehead, and there is a red line above his eyebrow about an inch and a half long, with a whole row of stitches squeezing it together. Tyler has had so many gashes on all parts of his body that I can tell Jackson’s stitches are expertly done, and I say a silent thanks to Relocation Advisor Kathryn Walsh for including Best Emergency Rooms in her list of recommendations. She may have saved Jackson’s beautiful forehead.
What happened?
Qmonster.
Quinlan did that??
Yep.
???
My mind is reeling, in part because I’m wondering what that grumpy Grumpy thief did to him, and mostly because he just texted me a picture of his stitches. Before I can respond, he writes
We’re leaving the ER now. I’ll tell you at lunch?
Lunch? He knows he’s not texting Max Cleave, right? He’s not texting the taco truck?
“Greer? Do you have a phone out?”
The whole class, the ones done with the test and the ones not done with the test, looks at me like I’ve just been caught standing over a murder victim with a bloody knife in my hand.
“Bring it here, please.”
I keep my head down so no one can see my expression as I bring my phone to Ms. Tanner at the front of the room. I have never been in trouble in math or in any other class that anyone can remember. They think my cheeks are hot because I am ashamed. They are wrong.
Ms. T puts my phone in a basket she keeps on her desk for just this purpose.
But not before I send back an emoji of a lunch box and a thumbs-up.
CHAPTER 17
“What are you doing? Come on,” demands Maggie. She’s holding a tray with school salad (one leaf of lettuce, four baby carrots, and a giant foil packet of Ranch) and a yogurt drink. Natalie and Tahlia drift up to us with their own collections of food. This is who I’ve eaten lunch with since eighth grade, and probably always will, whether or not any of us likes it. That’s just how lunch goes. I usually nab
a small circle table for us because I bring lunch and can get there first, but today I am standing on the edge of the lunchroom looking for Jackson.
“Jackson got stitches this morning and he said he’d tell me about it at lunch.” I can see Natalie raise her eyebrows at Tahlia: interesting new development.
Maggie takes it in stride. By now she’s met Jackson and she seems to be buying my story that he is more or less a client of mine. “Okay, we’ll grab a table. Bring him over when you find him.” She beelines for the last empty circle with the other girls in tow. She smacks her tray down seconds before a couple of juniors get there.
I was not picturing that I was going to sit with Jackson and Maggie and Natalie and Tahlia. I was hoping for something more like just the two of us, at a wrought-iron café table in a sun-dappled grotto in Italy. But there’s only the mayonnaise-dappled cafeteria at Kennedy, no grotto, and it’s too crowded to take up a whole table for just two people anyway.
I spot him across the lunchroom. He’s got a square of gauze taped over half his forehead, which catches people’s attention. Maggie’s brother and a couple of other guys stop him and I can read his lips saying, “Eight stitches.” They all laugh and Max puts his hand on Jackson’s shoulder, like busting his head open is a great accomplishment. For a second I think he’s going to leave with them, but I see him point my way and soon he’s threading his way through the crowd.
“Hey,” he says, with a pretty bright smile for a kid who just had his head sewn shut.
“We don’t even get to see it?”
“They said to keep it covered. Plus it’s pretty gross.”
“You should tell everybody it’s a new tattoo.”
“On my forehead?”
“It’s your tattoo.”
“Greer!” Maggie calls. We look over and she’s patting one of the two empty seats at her table.
“Maggie saved us seats.”
“Cool,” he says, unfazed, and leads the way to the circle of girls. Turns out he’s got chem with Tahlia and English and math with Natalie, so everyone knows everyone else.
Jackson doesn’t have a lunch. He says he’s on “like twelve thousand milligrams of Tylenol” and he’s pretty sure he’ll throw up if he eats anything.
“Tylenol? There’s not something more hard-core if you crack your head open?” I watched a video of a girl talking about her breast surgery where she said they gave her pain medication that made her feel like she was eating her way through a cloud of flavorless cotton candy, but at least her chest didn’t hurt as bad while she was on it. I am hoping someone will invent a drug that takes away all the pain and tastes like regular cotton candy before I ever need it.
Jackson reaches over and takes a piece of Pirate’s Booty from my bag. “As long as you haven’t had your eye gouged out with a grapefruit spoon or something, they try not to give out anything you might try to sell.”
“That was weirdly specific,” I say. I pick up a piece of Pirate’s Booty; Jackson plucks it right out of my fingers and grins at me.
Natalie says, “That happened to my cousin!”
We all turn to her in shock. Maggie says, “Your cousin’s eye was gouged out with a grapefruit spoon?”
“No, he had his wisdom teeth out, and he sold all the pills they gave him.”
Maggie rolls her eyes.
“Did he get caught?” Tahlia asks.
“No, but it hurt really, really bad and then he couldn’t take anything except, oh, well, Tylenol.”
Everybody looks at Jackson again. “It’s not that bad. And they did give me the really serious Neosporin.” He pulls a white tube with a pharmacy sticker out of his bag and holds it up. “This stuff is hospital-grade. Not that punk-ass CVS Neosporin. Mine kills Ebola!” Natalie laughs loosely, her suffering cousin forgotten, and Tahlia giggles to catch up to her. I feel a little pinch in my stomach, because I can see how much they are drawn to him and how good he is at making that happen. I knew it wouldn’t just be me, but I didn’t want it to be them.
Jackson lowers his voice. “But seriously, do you think I can sell this? It’s pure, man. A hundred percent . . .” He turns the tube over in his hands. “Actually, I have no idea what it’s made of. Uranium? Vibranium?” He looks completely confused, and now even Maggie is laughing, but I can tell hers is genuine because she’s dribbling yogurt smoothie down her chin. “Greer, could you take this to your private lab and analyze the chemical components for me?”
I throw a puff at him, which he tries to catch in his mouth and misses. He makes a shame face at me like it’s my fault he can’t catch, and the pinching feeling turns into a warm spot, like a tiny butterfly has just peed on my liver.
“But what happened to your head, though?” Natalie spills out. If the tube of prescription antibiotic ointment leaked enriched plutonium that turned Maggie and me into radioactive pudding right now, Natalie and Tahlia wouldn’t notice. Tahlia is literally holding her breath until Jackson speaks again.
“He got a tattoo. It says ‘New Kid.’”
Jackson makes a show of rolling his eyes at me, but he knocks his knee into mine under the table.
“My sister hit me.” By now he is seriously inhaling my Pirate’s Booty. “Maybe I am hungry.”
I twist the bag toward him. “Did you deserve it?”
Jackson smiles at me. “She thinks so. I was trying to finish my Heart of Darkness essay before school—”
“I haven’t even started mine!” squeals Natalie. Jackson pauses to give her a sympathetic cringe, and she is sucked right in.
“And Quin brings over Operation—you know that game? It’s not even worth it to say no to her, because she’ll keep at you until she wears you out. Greer’s met her. She knows.” The other girls shoot me a slightly curious, slightly jealous look, and the pinchy/piddling butterfly stands up and sticks her tongue out at them. “She goes first and the thing buzzes immediately. I get my piece out, and it’s her turn again.”
“I can only get the little basket out!” shares Tahlia.
“I can’t even get that!” says Natalie.
If Jackson was a cute girl telling this story, and Natalie and Tahlia were boys, they’d be bragging about how good they were at Operation (or soccer or Call of Duty or parkour or whatever) instead of how bad they were. Maggie rolls her eyes. She’s thinking the same thing.
“It’s actually not a basket. It’s a bucket,” says Maggie, annoyed.
“She buzzes, but I let her try again. And again. And again. She’s terrible at it. I think she gets some kind of rush from making the guy’s nose light up. I’m trying to do my homework, so I let her keep going. But then she gets mad at me because she says I’m not really playing with her. ‘Watch, Jackson! You have to watch my turn!’”
Tahlia is leaning so far forward I can see down the front of her shirt. It’s a plain white fitted Henley with little black buttons, nothing fancy, but I can see the top of the lavender lace cups of her bra and the breasts that are snuggled in like twins at a Perk Up! sleepover. Cute. Perky. If anyone ever managed to sneak a peek down my sweatshirt, they’d see a bright white granny bra, completely plain except for a satin bow the size a mouse would tie onto a birthday present stuck right between the humps. Like if you planted one dandelion in front of a nuclear power plant to make it less industrial and more pretty. I cross my arms in front of my chest and lean back in my seat.
“Finally, she gets out the last piece—somehow with only one buzz—”
“Was it the basket?” asks Tahlia.
“Bucket,” corrects Maggie.
“Heart.” I can’t tell if he is a performer and this table of girls is the audience, or if he is a performer and we are all the instruments, but he is definitely a performer. Of course it would be the heart. “And then she says, ‘I win! Now I get to pick a prize from you.’ And then I see that she’s already got”—ther
e is just the tiniest pause that no one else notices—“something from my room. I take it back, and five minutes later she comes in and nails me in the face with a can opener.”
“Oh my god. She sounds exactly like my little cousin. She’s so annoying,” begins Natalie. The girl has a lot to say about her cousins today. But Maggie’s face is scrunched up like she’s thinking hard, and I’m pretty sure I know what she’s thinking. “This one time at Christmas—or wait, maybe it was Easter—”
“Jackson, that’s messed up,” interrupts Maggie.
“I know, right?” he says.
“No, really. It sounds like she’s—” And I can hear it coming and I say a silent prayer to Maggie under my breath. Don’t call Jackson’s sister a psychopath. Don’t call Jackson’s sister a psychopath. The two of us binge-watched three seasons of a series called In the Mind of a Maniac last summer and Maggie’s been on the lookout for psychopaths ever since. For the love of all that is good and pure and holy in the world, don’t call Jackson’s sister a— “Angry. Really, really angry.”
At least she didn’t say psychopath.
“Maybe.” Jackson shifts a little, lays off my lunch for a second, looks down. I remember the other things I’ve heard about Quin, and how the first day I met him she refused to leave the car because she was mad about another move. Maggie might be right. Even though I don’t think she should take that out on Jackson’s beautiful forehead, part of me gets why she would be angry. At everybody.
And I think this is maybe what he’s thinking, too, and I think this is why he doesn’t seem especially mad at her. If Tyler even accidentally hit me like that, I’d be demanding that my parents take him to the vet and put him down, but Jackson is just staring at the tube of nitroglycerin or whatever it is, and folding one lip over the other, while everybody else waits for him to make this moment fun again. Charm us, Jackson! That’s what we want from you!
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