“Mom, I’m trying to sleep in here.”
“It’s not Mom.” I opened my eyes. The door opened and Rachel came in my room wearing her usual outfit: a very tiny skirt and so much makeup it looked like she’d spray-painted it on. Funny, when she didn’t have on a fake face she and Mom looked a lot alike—both were tall, with long brown curly hair and big brown eyes. But while Mom looked tired all the time from working, Rachel looked like she worked at one of the makeup counters at the mall. Which was actually her dream job. All that makeup made her look old, though, almost as old as Mom. If she just took off half of the makeup and gave it to Mom, they’d both look great.
Not that I’d ever say that to either one of them. I wasn’t a complete idiot.
“You haven’t stepped one foot in my room in at least a year,” I pointed out. “What are you doing here?”
She looked around at the band posters that covered every inch of the walls not already taken over by my bookshelves. “It hasn’t improved much. Listen, Jimmy’s coming over for dinner and I need you to get your ass downstairs ASAP and make this as painless as possible.”
“I totally forgot,” I said, and closed my eyes again. “Mom said something this morning. I think I’ll just stay up here.”
I felt the weight of Rachel sitting down on the edge of my bed, which was weird enough that I opened my eyes again.
“She probably didn’t tell you she’s decided to cook,” Rachel said, wrinkling her nose. “There are so many ways this could turn into a complete disaster that counting them is making my head explode. I need you to get my back on this one, little brother.” She looked at me with what I could only assume she intended as puppy-dog eyes. All I could see were cracks in the makeup as she widened her eyes as far as they could go.
Still, Rachel almost never let herself get into a situation where she owed me a favor. This could be fun. I stood up slowly, feeling pretty dizzy. “You owe me big,” I said. “But I must have misunderstood you. You said Mom’s cooking? Does she want you guys to break up?”
“That might be the strategy. Cover for me for a bit, okay?”
She disappeared down the hall, and I was left to face the prospect of Mom in the kitchen all by myself. Jimmy was already sitting at the kitchen table by the time I got downstairs. I’d never met him—Rachel had never invited any of her boyfriends to anything involving the family, and this one didn’t go to Libertyville High. As soon as I saw him, I understood why she’d never brought him around: he looked like any parent’s worst nightmare. Tattoos, stretched earlobes, studded leather jacket, the whole thing. I’d have expected someone who looked like him to be lounging, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth even if he was smart enough not to smoke inside. But Jimmy was sitting straight up in his chair, hands folded in front of him like he was at a business meeting. Mom was at the stove, stirring something in a pot billowing with smoke, which was already making me nervous.
Jimmy stood up and held out his hand. “How you doing, man?”
“Not too bad.” I shook his hand. His grip was firm, but he didn’t do that thing guys do sometimes where they almost crush you so you know how manly they are. “So you’re here for dinner, huh?”
Jimmy nodded and tried not to look worried.
“I hope Rachel warned you to eat first,” I said.
“Not nice,” Mom called out.
“Need some help over there?” I asked.
She turned around and I could see beads of sweat on her forehead. “I might just take you up on that, Sammy.”
I hated it when she called me that, especially in front of Jimmy. It almost made me wish I hadn’t offered. But I didn’t want her to burn the house down; we’d avoided fires in the past, but narrowly. There was a macaroni-and-cheese incident that I was still trying to forget, and some stains in the ceiling brought back memories of exploding eggs every time I looked up.
I walked over to the stove and looked into the pot, waving away the smoke to see a sludge of white and brown and black, though I couldn’t identify anything that actually looked like food. “What is that?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.
“It was supposed to be risotto,” Mom said. “With mushrooms and—”
She was interrupted by the smoke alarm. I reached over and shut off the burner, then took the pot and put it in the sink while Mom disabled the alarm. I hoped Jimmy wouldn’t notice that we had a system. “What do you like on your pizza, Jimmy?” I asked.
Rachel laughed behind me. I turned and saw she’d changed into a slightly longer skirt, taken off a little bit of the makeup. She looked just respectable enough to make Mom happy. She must really like this guy. “Nice outfit,” I said.
“Jerk.” She pinched my arm, hard, reactivating the soreness from the bruising, but it made me kind of happy—she used to do that when we were younger, when I’d follow her around just to get her to pay attention to me. Negative attention from her was just as good as positive, when I was little.
“I can eat anything,” Jimmy said.
Mom sighed and went to get her wallet.
“Sausage and peppers it is,” I said, and went to call it in. We weren’t exactly kosher. Sausage and peppers was my favorite; Rachel usually lobbied for Hawaiian, but I figured she wasn’t about to fight with me in front of her new boyfriend.
After I hung up I sat at the kitchen table with Jimmy while Rachel helped Mom scrape the burned risotto off the bottom of the pot. We sat and stared at each other for a while. It felt like he was waiting for me to say something, but Rachel must have warned him that I’m not exactly the world’s best conversationalist. “Rachel says you’re into music,” he said finally.
I nodded, though I was surprised she’d told him something so positive, at least compared to what I would have imagined she’d say.
“What are you listening to these days?” he asked. I’d changed from my relish-crusted Metallica shirt into a vintage Coca-Cola T-shirt I’d found at a thrift store. “Mostly alternative stuff, am I right?”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. Yeah, he was right, but who was he to judge me just on my clothes? Had he looked in the mirror lately? “The Ramones, right now.” It was sort of true; it was what had been on the playlist when I’d listened to it on my way home from school.
“Good stuff. I’ve been digging the Clash lately, myself. I’ll burn London Calling for you if you don’t have it already. You’ll like it.”
That was actually pretty cool of him. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as I thought.
Mom and Rachel came back in and started setting the table with paper plates and plastic silverware. As if we were really going to cut up our pizza. “So how’d you get into the Ramones?” Jimmy asked.
Rachel snorted. “Since when do you listen to the classic stuff?” She turned to Jimmy. “I made him listen to every album I ever bought and the only stuff of mine he ever liked was indie.”
To his credit, Jimmy didn’t change his facial expression at all. “It’s all about variety, man,” he said, and held out his fist.
What the hell. I bumped fists with Jimmy and said exactly what I was thinking. “I started listening to the Ramones because Hayden put them on his suicide-note playlist.”
The kitchen got really quiet, and I knew right away I’d gone too far.
“Sammy, now might not be the time,” Mom said finally.
“No, it’s cool, Mrs. Goldsmith,” Jimmy said. “I kinda went through something similar myself.”
“You did?” I asked, before I could help myself. I wondered if Rachel had known. Mom and I both looked over at her. Mom’s mouth was hanging open.
Rachel shrugged, but she didn’t look that surprised.