I m bored.
She won’t respond. It’s Tuesday evening, which means she’s supposed to be out helping her granddad do I forget what. Maybe smoke a pipe and sort through old newspapers, snipping out articles about capitalism and world wars and the weather. I wonder if he has a weather clipping from every day since the war. Is he old enough to have been alive during one of those big ones? I could probably try to calculate it, but why bother?
My phone rings and I snatch it up, thinking it might be Kat, but it’s stupid Stephen-the-Leaver. I refuse to give him a moment’s thought. I hit the ignore button, hop off the washer, and head in search of my real parent who actually cares. She’s in her computer room, furiously typing numbers into some Excel spreadsheet. She’s been spending a lot of time doing that since her marketing company started doing so well.
“I’m going for a walk,” I report, then duck back out of there before she can subject me to some boring rant about how much she hates accounting. “You should hire a bookkeeper,” I always tell her, and she always says she can do it herself.
“Meg!” she calls after me, and my heart sinks.
“What?” Reluctantly, I stick my head back inside.
“Take your sister with you,” is all she says, not taking her eyes away from the screen.
I see her then. Kenzie sits on the floor at Mom’s feet, rolling Mom’s pant leg up and down. She gives me an impish grin.
“Come on, little wingling,” I say, swatting her lightly on the back to corral her out of the tiny room. Upstairs, I bundle Kenzie up in her fluorescent-pink snowsuit and alligator hat, then grab my own winter coat, and we head out.
Kenzie purrs some song about a pirate mermaid as we march along—probably one that she made up, but possibly not. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she’s learned at day care. The wind is nippier than I expected. It seeps through my jeans, making my not-so-recently shaven leg hair stand on end. Fashion be damned; I should have worn snow pants like Kenzie.
“Hey, Meg!” The call comes from across the street. Boxer Boy—Grayson—is waving at us. At me.
There’s a busy street just a few blocks away that hums with constant traffic, but cars are rare on this side avenue, so Grayson barely glances each way before crossing the street to meet us. I stand up straighter, instantly relieved that I didn’t wear snow pants, the ugly things. They’d make my butt look about five sizes larger. Though maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Big butts and all that.
“You babysitting?” he asks as he draws up beside us. His green scarf is bunched around his neck, like a strangling boa constrictor.
“Kind of. This is my sister. Kenzie, say hi.”
She pops her thumb into her mouth, glove and all. Mom has been trying to get her to stop sucking her thumb for about a year, but even mittens won’t deter her.
“I like your snowsuit,” he says, grinning at her. She looks down at her body, brow furrowed, as if she’s just realized what she’s wearing.
“She likes pink,” I tell him. I think that’s why she likes Kat so much, since at least half of Kat’s wardrobe is pink. Kenzie tries to clamber into Kat’s lap pretty much every time she comes over. Kat never seems to mind, though, and she’s better at LotS than me even with Kenzie’s hand under her own on the mouse. “Where are you going?”
“Heading home from archery. I practice Tuesdays and Fridays, usually.”
I glance down the street at the nearby park he must be coming from. It’s really more a square of lawn than a park—snow-covered now, of course—with one large rock and a single line of planted trees. “What do you do? Practice on squirrels or something?”
He laughs, and a little wrinkle forms in his forehead, just above his eyebrow—adorably cute. “It’s target archery, not hunting archery. There’s a range at the club. About five blocks that way.” He waves his hand haphazardly in the direction he had been coming from.
“Oh. That makes a lot more sense.”
“Hey, you going to Schiller’s party on Friday?” Grayson asks. I know Ryan Schiller, but I didn’t know that he was having a party. Now that Lindsey and I don’t talk anymore—we haven’t texted since that weekend she went away—I never know about the good parties.
“Of course,” I say. “You?”
It might just be the snow reflecting in his pupils, but I swear his eyes lighten a little at my words. He nods. “Do you want to— Hey, should your sister be doing that?”
I whirl around, cursing Kenzie in my head before I even see her. She’s two houses away, on someone’s porch, pouring their small tub of ice melt into a heaping mound right in front of the door.
“Kenzie!” I shriek at her. “Put that down!” She doesn’t, of course, and blue crystals keep pouring like a landslide from the tub in her hands.
“At least they won’t have to worry about slipping on ice when they step out the door,” Grayson calls after me, laughing, as I run toward her. I bound up the front steps, snatch the bucket from Kenzie’s hands, and point at the blue pile.
“Clean that up,” I demand, and she scowls at me. As I scoop up gloved handfuls of the stuff, I look back to the sidewalk. Grayson has already moved a few houses down the street, but he’s still looking at us.
“See you Friday!” he shouts, waving.
My hands are full of blue crystals, and I can’t wave back.
KAT
MEG POPS HER HEAD INTO THE KITCHEN, HER SNOW-DUSTED BLACK CURLS hugging tightly together, free from their frequent ponytail. Snow in October is something I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get used to, no matter how long I end up living here.
“Did Mom let you in?” I ask. “I didn’t hear the doorbell.”
“No, your door was unlocked, so I just came in.”
“It was?” I smother the panic in my voice.
“Yes. And an evil murderer named Meg broke in. Be very afraid.”
“Shut up,” I yell over my shoulder as I duck into the hallway to lock the door. When I return to the kitchen, Meg’s sitting in a kitchen chair, backward—she has actually gone to the effort of turning one of the chairs around just to sit in it that way. Her chin rests on the top of the chair back.
“So, let’s talk about what we’re going to wear to Friday’s party.” Since she doesn’t lift her chin, the rest of her head bobs up and down as she talks.
“I thought you came over to borrow my math textbook.” She texted me that she forgot hers at school, and apparently she’s going to get a detention if she fails to do her math homework one more time this month. “And wait, what party?” There’s no way I agreed to go to a party. I would never agree to go to a party.
Meg slips off the chair and heads toward the fridge. “And people say I have a bad memory. I messaged you about it last night. Grayson’s going. Remember?”