“She’s a character fromStar Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
Romily nods in recognition. “Levar Burton is literally the only man on Earth I respect.”
“No, he was onNext Generation.”
“You named your daughter after aStar Trekcharacter?” I ask. I hear the slight note of judgment in my tone.
“It’s a pretty name in any context. At some point we’ll watch the show together and she’ll feel proud to be named after a Bajoran freedom fighter.Deep Space Nineisn’t as popular, but after the third season, it gets so good. The character arcs are outstanding. Even characters that start off as these comical archetypes get very intense—”
“Da-ad.” I get the sense Kira has heard him wax poetic on this topic before. “I’m still hungry.”
“You still have half a pizza,” he says. “Not that you should be eating the entire thing.”
“Can I have something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’tknow!” Kira opens the fridge, looks inside forlornly, and shuts it again. Then she points at a phone number on an index card affixed to the fridge door with a magnet. The nameNorais scribbled on it. “This is my mom’s number.”
“Oh.” I scramble for the right reply to that. “Cool. It has lots of fours” is what I come up with.
“That’s me as Aragorn,” Nick says, nodding at a piece of artwork pinned to the fridge with a magnet. “FromLord of the Rings.” It’s a pretty decent marker drawing of a man with a giant head and beard and a comparatively tiny body.
“Super impressive,” I say very seriously. “With very accurate facial hair.” I turn to Kira. “You must be really proud that your dad is such a good artist and drew an amazing self-portrait.”
“I drew it,” she says indignantly. “But a long time ago when I was little. I can draw a lot better now.” She turns to Romily and issues a command: “Both of you come in my room, okay? I wanna show you my OCs.”
I’m so accustomed to passive-aggressive requests from my mother that I’m shocked into submission by Kira’s directness.
Romily and I dutifully follow her as Nick reminds her to saypleasewhen asking grown-ups to do something.
She responds by telling him he’s not allowed to comein.
Kira swings her bedroom door open, and it hits me that she lives in this apartment’s version of my room. It’s the office—with its identical beige carpeting and mirrored-door closet, but the walls have already been reskinned with posters and framed pictures. Nick must have unpacked her room first. She’s going through a transitional phase—the hallmarks of tween interests fighting with childhood toys for real estate. Every surface is covered by a stuffed animal, naked Barbie, discarded piece of jewelry, oversized hoodie. I see a few tubes of tinted lip balm that I assume is her first entrée into makeup.
Kira directs us to sit on the floor across from her.
“I’m gonna show you my characters.” She has her dad’s dark, expressive eyes but with light auburn hair and a heart-shaped face. I wonder if her mom is a redhead.
She produces a thick drawing pad from under one of the floor piles. Flipping to the first page, she starts talking at us: “This is Lucas. He has purple in his hair and his power is reading minds. He’s kind of quiet, but he’s also nice. He’s Lana’s boyfriend, but when he tells her bad stuff about his life, she doesn’t listen to him or give him back anything positive, so he’s sad about that.”
I blink at a page almost soaked through with marker ink, featuring a very large head on top of a pair of tiny shoulders. “Lucas” has anime-style eyes and does indeed look like a sad boi with purple in his hair. Fourteen-year-old me would’ve gotten along well with nine-year-old Kira.
“Who’s Lana?” Romily asks.
Kira stares at us like it’s utterly ridiculous that we don’t know who Lanais.
She lets out a huge sigh and flips a few more pages so she can explain the backstory of why Lana doesn’t give Lucas the attention he craves. I notice that all her characters have various combinations of fluffy fox tails or horns or wolfy ears.
“Oh,” I say. “Are they furries?”
Kira glances up at me. “What are furries?”
Romily and I look at each other, silently asking,Do you want to field this one?
“Well,” I say, being careful with my words. “Some people are…really,reallyinterested in animal characters. Some of them dress up in animal costumes.”
“Whoa, really?” Kira says, sitting up straighter. “They dress up?”
