I dig through my tote for the phone, then slide the sleek apparatus over to him.
He sits up straighter. “You took pictures of your diorama?”
I smile. “I know you don’t need the phone, but I really can’t take it. Not after… Anyway, I’ve rebooted it.”
“My mother sent it to me as a welcome-home present.” His jaw is smooth today. No stubble in sight. It makes him look a little younger, a little softer. “If you don’t want it, I’ll leave it in the lost-and-found box. I want nothing to do with it.”
Just like he wants nothing to do with his mother. And yet she sent him a housewarming gift. I don’t get it, but I promised Mom I’d try to.
“Don’t give me that look,” he says.
My lids pull up. “What look?”
“The one like I’m this evil, ungrateful kid.”
I bite my lower lip and lower my eyes. I don’t think that’s the way I’m looking at him, but I doubt he’ll see anything else after our conversation at homecoming.
Mrs. Larue’s assistant walks into the classroom and announces that Mrs. Dabbs is out sick, then urges us to get some homework done, that she’s trying to find us a supervisor for the hour.
The second she walks back out into the hallway, the noise level grows. I doubt anyone’s going to be doing any homework, but I’m wrong. Ten pulls out his history notebook and starts making annotations in the margins.
“Are you visiting the boarding school this weekend?” I ask.
“No. Colleges.”
“Which ones?”
“Brown. Cornell. Princeton.”
“You really like New England.”
“I really like any place that isn’t geographically close to Tennessee. Or Nevada.”
“Why Nevada?”
“Mona got her start here, but blew up with her Vegas show.”
Right…
He underlines a sentence in his notebook, then adds, “Our names were her idea.”
I frown. His sister’s name is Nev—oh… “Nev is short for Nevada?”
“You didn’t know?”
I must’ve read about it but filed it in the dusky recesses of my brain. “I like your names.”
He grunts. “Of course you do.Shecame up with them. You like everything about her.”
I flinch but don’t lash out. I allow him to be angry. “Will you look at colleges on the West Coast? Or maybe in Europe?”
Ten’s eyebrows pull together. “Maybe.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “Did Jade tell you to be nice to me or something?”
My pen jerks across my paper, slashing through the quote.
“She did, didn’t she?” He shakes his head, and his hair, which seems spikier than usual, doesn’t even budge. “You don’t have to act interested in my life.”
I’m too tongue-tied to tell him that I’m genuinely intrigued by his choice of colleges. I haven’t given college any thought because I’m planning on taking a sabbatical next year to work on my music. I’ll probably have to send some applications out, but I’m choosing easy schools in the area. Hopefully, Mom won’t make me go to any of them.
