“Aww,” I say, “you care!” I reach across the Jeep and hug her tight with her arms pinned to her side.
She groans. “Stoooooop.”
“You love it,” I tell her.
She growls and bites my arm as a warning.
“Okay, okay,” I say, hopping out of the Jeep to grab my bike. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Inside, Dad is sitting in his recliner reading a Clive Cussler paperback. “Hey, sugar,” he says as he dog-ears his page and pushes his reading glasses on top of his forehead—a ridiculous pair with multicolored frames he picked up at the dollar store.
As I chug a glass of water, I check my cell to find no new messages from Grace. I sit down on the arm of his chair, and it’s then that I realize my legs are a little achy from this morning. Working out is for rich people. I don’t have time to feel this exhausted for no reason.
Dad immediately pulls me to him, and I curl into a ball in his lap while he hugs me tight. Being held by my dad is one of the few times when I still feel small. All six-five of him wrapped around my six-three frame reminds me who gave me my height and that maybe life up here isn’t always so bad.
“I needed a good Ramona Blue hug,” he says.
Sometimes when I don’t know how to explain my relationship with my mom, I can only describe it as a void. Whatever she is to me is everything my dad is not, and vice versa.
He lets go, and I plop down on the couch across from him.
“I checked the medicine cabinet and noticed you were running low on your cholesterol meds and a few otherthings, too,” I say. “Have you gone to the pharmacy to refill?”
“Waiting for payday,” he answers.
“Well, is that gonna last you until then?” I ask. “I could float you the cash.”
He shakes his head. “Who’s the parent here, okay?” He smiles. “How was school?”
I shrug. “Went to the Y this morning with Freddie and Agnes.”
He laughs a little too loud. “How’d you get conned into that?”
I roll my eyes. “Freddie.”
“He’s a good man. Glad you’ve got a real friend.”
“I had friends before Freddie, Dad.”
“Hattie’s your sister,” he says. “And Saul is, well, Saul.”
Saul is Saul. He is the sun, and the rest of us are just orbiting around him. He doesn’t have friends. He has an audience. “I have Ruth.”
He laughs. “Ruth barely likes you.”
I pelt him in the arm with the TV remote. “Ruthie barely likes anyone—except you.”
“Jeez! That’s gonna bruise.” He grins. “Go do your homework or something like that.”
I stand and pull my backpack up by the strap. “Don’t read too many books. They turn your brain to mush.”
I grab half a box of Triscuits for dinner and head to my room. We never really have family dinner. Since all of us work in the restaurant industry, preparing and servingother people’s food, none of us is too quick to volunteer homemade meals.
I spread out my homework across my unmade bed like I might actually do something besides wait for Grace to call me back.
My phone vibrates and my whole body twists into a knot of tension. It’s only a text from Freddie, asking where I ran off to so fast, but I’m too anxious to respond.
And then my phone really rings. It’s Grace. I force myself to let the phone ring three times before I pick it up. I take a deep breath, and even though my door is shut, I whisper because nothing about our walls is soundproof. “Hello?”
