“Why?” I told him.
“I said I was a lover, not a fighter.” He sighed, sitting down across from me. “It doesn’t get more jerky than that.”
“Oh, sure it does.”
He smiled. “Look, seriously, though. Because of skipping grades and hanging out with prodigies . . . my social skills aren’t exactly great. Sometimes I say stupid stuff.”
“You don’t have to skip grades for that,” I told him. “I’ve got a B-plus average and I do it all the time.”
“B-plus?” He looked horrified. “Really?”
I made a face, then I leaned over the bowl, which was steaming. The last thing I’d really eaten was half of that soggy burrito, hours ago, and I realized suddenly I was starving. I ate a spoonful. The soup was thick, with egg noodles, chicken, and carrots, and was, in fact, just what I needed.
“Wow,” I said as he sat down across from me with his own bowl. “This is great.”
He ate a spoonful, then thought for a second. “It’s not bad. Needs more thyme, though. Where are your spices?”
He was already getting up, heading to the cabinets, when I said, “Actually—”
“In here?” he asked, already reaching for the one closest to the stove.
“—we don’t really—”
Before I could finish, though, it had already happened: he’d opened the door, exposing the empty space behind it. He paused, then reached for the next one. Also empty. As was the one adjacent. Finally, he discovered the cabinet that held our full array of housewares, which I organized the same way in every house when we moved in. A handful of spices—salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic salt—sat on the bottom shelf, with silverware in a plastic organizer beside it. On the shelf above, there were four plates, four bowls, three coffee mugs, and six glasses. And finally, up top, one frying pan, two saucepans, and a mixing bowl.
“Wait,” he said, moving over to the next cabinet and opening it. Empty. “Is this . . . What’s going on here? Are you, like, survivalists or something?”
“No,” I said, embarrassed, although I wasn’t sure why. I actually prided myself on keeping it minimal: it made moving easy. “We just don’t spread out much.”
He opened another cabinet, revealing the bare wall behind it. “Mclean,” he said, “you have a basically empty kitchen.”
“We have everything we need,” I countered. He just looked at me. “Except thyme. Look, my dad works at a restaurant. We don’t cook much.”
“You don’t even have baking pans,” he said, still opening things and exposing empty spaces. “What if you need to roast or broil something?”
“I buy a foil pan,” I told him. He just looked at me. “What? Do you know what a pain it is to pack glass pans? They always chip, if not break altogether.”
He came back to the table, taking his seat. Behind him, a few of the cabinets were still open, like gaping mouths. “No offense,” he said, “but that’s just plain sad.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’s organized.”
“It’s paltry,” he replied. “And totally temporary. Like you’re only here for a week or something.”
I ate another spoonful of soup. “Come on.”
“Seriously.” He looked at the cabinets again. “Is it like this all over the house? Like, if I open the drawers in your bedroom, I’ll see you have only two pairs of pants?”
“You’re not opening my drawers,” I told him. “And no. But if you really care, we used to have more stuff. Each time we moved, though, I realized how little we were using of it. So I scaled back. And then I scaled back a little more.”
He just looked at me as I stirred my bowl, moving the carrots around. “How many times have you moved?”
“Not that many,” I said. He did not look convinced, so I added, “I’ve been living with Dad for almost two years . . . and I guess this is the fourth place. Or something.”
“Four towns in two years?” he said.
“Well, of course it sounds bad when you say it like that,” I said.
For a moment, neither of us said anything. The only sound was our spoons clinking. I really wanted to get up and shut the open cabinets, but for some reason I felt like it would be admitting something. I stayed where I was.
“What I mean is, it must be hard,” he said finally, glancing up at me. “Always being the new kid.”
“Not necessarily.” I tucked one leg up underneath me. “There’s something kind of freeing about it, actually.”
“Really.”
“Sure,” I said. “When you move a lot, you don’t have a lot of entanglements. There’s not really time to get all caught up in things. It’s simpler.”
He thought about this for a second. “True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don’t have anyone to be your two a.m. Which would kind of suck.”
I just looked at him as he stirred his soup, carrots spinning in the liquid. “Your what?”
“Two a.m.” He swallowed, then said, “You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they’re asleep or it’s cold or you need to be bailed out jail . . . they’ll come for you. It’s, like, the highest level of friendship.”