I nod at the phone. “Max?”
He shakes his head, but not before a smile crosses his face, the same one he gets whenever anyone mentions his boyfriend. They’d only been together about six months when Max left for college in Michigan at the end of last summer, but they’d moved swiftly fromI kind of like youtoI think this might be somethingtoI’m completely in love with you.And along the way I’d fallen for Max too, the way you do when you witness someone discovering all the amazing things about a person who means a lot to you.
“No,” Leo says, looking up at me. “Just Mom.”
“Let me guess. She’s panicking about the snow?”
My aunt Sofia has never exactly adjusted to Chicago winters. She spent her childhood in Buenos Aires before her family moved to Florida when she was eight, and this type of weather is pretty much the only thing that ever slows her down, sending her straight into hibernation mode.
“She’s worried about the roads,” he says. “She thinks we should stay over.”
It’s been a while since we’ve slept here. We used to do it all the time, the three of us. When we were younger and Teddy still needed someone to watch him while his mom worked nights, we’d convince Mrs. Donohue, the old woman from next door, to let us stay too. While she snored on the couch, we’d line up the two sleeping bags on the floor, and then Teddy would hang over the edge of the bed, his face looming above ours, and we’d talk until our eyelids grew heavy and our words started to taper off.
“I can’t exactly tell her everyone else is leaving,” Leo says with a sheepish grin, “because she thinks we’re the only ones here. So…”
“So,” I say, looking around the room at the piles of discarded clothes, the books stacked on the dresser, and the lone sock sticking out from under the twin bed.
Teddy’s bed. The place where he sleeps every night.
I swallow hard. “I guess we’re staying, then.”
Which is how—a few hours later—we end up traveling back in time.
Teddy offered me the bed, but I refused, so we are—once again, after all these years—arranged in our old familiar formation: Teddy lying with his chin propped on his hands, peering over the edge at me and Leo, who are curled up on the floor beneath a random collection of blankets.
“You guys,” Teddy says, a hint of laughter in his voice. “You guys, you guys, you guys.”
This was twelve-year-old Teddy’s never-ending chorus, and hearing it again now gives me a jolt of nostalgia so strong that I feel a little light-headed.
Leo chimes in with his typical, slightly weary response. “Yes, Theodore?”
“Remember when we convinced you to draw us a mural?” Teddy thumps a fist against the wall beside his bed, which was once white—a perfect canvas, it seemed to us when we were eleven—but is now painted a dark blue. “I paid you in lollipops.”
“Best commission I ever got,” Leo says. “Even if we did have to paint over it the next day.”
“You can still see the outline of the penguins in the corner,” I say with a smile. “And that fish you drew on the back of the door.”
Teddy is quiet for a moment, then his voice—uncharacteristically tentative—breaks through the dark again. “So do you think it went okay tonight?”
“It was great,” Leo says, the last word swallowed by a yawn. “I think you might’ve set a world record for most people per square inch of space.”
“It was a little crowded,” Teddy admits. “Do you think people noticed there’s only one bedroom?”
“No,” I say firmly. “They were much too busy having fun.”
“Someone broke my mom’s vase,” he says. “I’m hoping she won’t notice, since there’s no way I’ll be able to afford a new one till I start working again this summer.”
“We’ll chip in so you can get one now,” I say. Then before he can argue, which I know he will, I add, “You can pay us back later.”
“I take Visa, MasterCard, and lollipops,” Leo says.
This makes Teddy laugh. “Thanks. You guys are the best.”
Leo yawns again, louder this time, and we slip into silence. I stare up at the plastic stars on the ceiling, the familiar constellations they make. The faint light from the windows is bluish, the snow still falling outside. After a few minutes I hear the soft whistle of Leo’s breathing, and I reach out in the dark and gently remove his glasses, setting them on the floor between us. From above, Teddy watchesme.
“Hey,” he says. “Remember when—”
But I put a finger to my lips. “Don’t wake him.”
