“Hi,” I said.
He squinted up at me, half-blind without his glasses, which were folded on the end table near his head. “Hi,” he croaked.
“How were your finals?”
“Literally the worst.”
I grinned. “You’re the one who chose such a heavy course load.”
“Mhm,” he murmured, exhaustion dragging his eyelids back down. “No regrets. Just…so…tired.”
“You want to go upstairs and sleep in your bed? It’ll be quieter.”
Willow, now free from time-out, raced past us, squealing in delight. Michael was hot on her heels, firing a nerf gun at her back. Sofia and both grandmas had music going in the kitchen as they worked. Dad and Jacob sat nearby, watching the news and arguing about foreign policy. It was borderline raucous in here.
Charlie shook his head, mussing his hair even more on the couch cushion, and snuggled back down. “No. This is nice.”
I looked around us, at our loud, boisterous family. At our usual semi-organized chaos. “Yeah, it really is.”
I left him to his nap and went in search of our missing family members. I found Anabel in her room. It had been painted lilac this time last year. Now it was a deep, charcoal gray, with posters of her favorite rock bands plastered on the walls. She was dressed in all black, sprawled out on her bed with her face in her phone. By looking at her, you’d think she was deep into her rebellious teenage phase, that her moods were as dark and broody as her choices in clothing and decor. You’d be dead wrong.
“Psst,” I said from the doorway.
She saw me and leapt from her bed. “Oh, thank God you’re here.” She gave me a quick hug and then shoved her phone in my face. Much like myself at sixteen, she spoke at Mach-speed. “What do you think this text message means? It’s from Tucker. That boy I told you about? The senior? On the soccer team? With the eyes? And the hair?” She grabbed my arm. “Thehair, Ella.”
I did my best to remain serious. “Oh, yes. The hair. I remember the picture. Let’s see the text.” Not that I was the authority on text messages. Clearly, I needed as much help with them as she did. But she still saw me as her cooler older sister, and I’d be damned if I did anything to spoil that prematurely.
She plopped the phone in my palm, and I dutifully looked at the screen. The text read:We should hang out during break,with a smiley face emoji after it.
Oh, I so had this.
“I think he likes you,” I told her.
“Really?” She made a high-pitched noise that nearly popped my eardrums.
I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yell something stupid like, “Of course he does! What’s not to like?”
She was easily our most attractive family member, and this was a family filled with good-looking people. She was several inches shorter than me, thin, but athletic, with a curtain of dark hair that fell nearly to her waist, the kind of flawless skin I would have killed for at her age, a heart-shaped face with a pert nose, a cupid’s bow mouth, and deep brown, hooded eyes. She was also maintaining one of the highest GPAs in her class, was a star athlete, and had a circle of friends that included jocks, punks, stoners, and outcasts, so, she was, like, perfect? Okay, maybe there was some sisterly bias in there, but if this Tucker kid rejected her…
I would find him.
Anabel stopped squeeing. “What happened? Your face just got weird.”
“Nothing,” I said, wiping all thoughts of murder from my mind. “You seen Mom?”
She rolled her eyes. “She’s probably out on her and Dad’s balcony smoking pot with Meg, Dave, and Grandpa.”
So that explained where they all were. “Thanks. I’m going to say hi and then help Sofia and the grandmas in the kitchen if you want to come down.”
“Sure,” she said, looking at her phone. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Anabel, he likes you. Trust me. That’s a pretty straightforward text from a teenage boy.”
She grinned at me.
This boy better deserve her.
I slipped into the hallway before my expression gave away what I’d do to him if he didn’t. As Anabel predicted, I found our last four family members on the back porch, bundled up in heavy winter jackets, smoking dope. Grandpa imbibed because of his glaucoma, Dave for inspiration – he was a staff writer for one of Maine’s larger newspapers, Megan because it calmed her down, and Mom because it soothed her hippy soul.
