MEG
WHEN KAT ARRIVES AT THE STAIRWELL, SHE IGNORES MY GLARE AND TUCKS herself in beside me, cross-legged on the floor.
“It was fine,” she says quietly. “He’s a good tank. It was nothing special.”
My mind whirls with a thousand different questions—What does he sound like? Did he make any jokes? Did you turn on video? What were you wearing? Can you please recite every single thing he said from start to finish?—but something about the solemn, almost sad way she says it makes me bite my tongue. Seriously, I don’t ask a single probing question. “I’m growing as a person, everybody!” I want to announce to the group. If only I could grow a little in body, too. Stupid short gene.
“But it was fine?” I say. “You went on VoiceChat and you were fine?”
Her mouth quirks into a half smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
“Cool,” I say.
Roman interrupts us. “You guys in this round?” He gathers the cards strewn about the circle, stacks them, and begins to shuffle.
Kat shakes her head and answers for both of us. “Meg and I have some science stuff to talk about.”
“We do?”
She scrunches her nose at me like a bunny. “Ha-ha, hilarious.” Then she rummages through her knapsack and slides out a red folder. “Here’s the email I drafted for Luke,” she says, handing it to me. “And the step-by-step instructions we wrote. You’ll need them for the tests you do.”
I flip the folder open, study the pages of tiny black text, flip it closed again. Kat’s head is buried in her knapsack. She reemerges with a slim white box, which she holds out in my direction.
“Sugar cubes,” she says, then narrows her eyes. “Don’t eat them.”
“What do you think I am? A horse?” I give a loud whinny, and Grayson laughs. He’s playing cards, but he must be listening to us, too.
Kat’s mouth stretches into a fake, impatient smile. She points to the red folder in my hand. “I’ll email that to you, too. Do you think your mom would let you go on the computer just to print it out? If you lose it, I mean?”
“I won’t lose it,” I snap. I’m tired of people treating me like a child.
“Sorry,” Kat says, bumping her shoulder into mine. “You’re right. I’ll stop being all overbearing. I just want to do well, you know?”
“Yeah,” is all I say. Because contrary to popular belief, I want to do well too. I grab my own knapsack and start to slip the red folder into it, then stop. If I put the folder in here, next to my science book, then end up shuffling my books around and putting the science book back in my locker, I might pull the red folder out with it, not even noticing. It’s the kind of thing I do—the kind of thing my ADHD does.
I whip open the red folder, pull out the perfectly smooth white piece of paper with our instructions, and start to fold it—one . . . two . . . four times. Then I slide it along my leg, down into my shiny black hooker boot. Grayson cocks his head at me, puzzled, as the guys start badgering him to take his turn. Kat just nods. She gets it. This is the only way I can think of to make sure I actually take it home. Well, short of eating it and pooping it back out again, which probably wouldn’t be particularly effective.
I pick up the little white box beside me on the floor, tear it open, pull out a grainy white cube, and pop it into my mouth, pulverizing it with the first bite.
Kat rolls her eyes at me, then sticks out her hand, palm up. With exaggerated solemnity, I place a glittery cube in the center of it.
“Neigh,” she says, deadpan. Then she pops it into her mouth and chomps down with a satisfying crunch.
CHAPTER 12
KAT
LUKE IS DUE TO ARRIVE IN EDMONTON AT 13:57 ON FLIGHT AC 2157 ON THE last day of school before the holidays. In geography, I watch the clock and say a silent prayer that the plane’s landing gear doesn’t stick and that the runway isn’t icy and that visibility is clear enough. I hate planes. When we moved here, Dad flew out first for work and to help Granddad, and I drove in the moving truck with Mom. I wish Luke could have driven instead of flown. One blazing inferno . . . two emergency exits . . .
When the clock ticks to 1:58, then 1:59, then eventually around to 2:30 and my phone still hasn’t buzzed with horrified messages saying, “Oh no, Luke’s plane has crashed and he’s dead,” my heartbeat slows to a normal speed, and a grin creeps onto my face.
For the rest of the school day and my entire bus ride home, I sing in my head, to the tune of “O Christmas Tree”: O Luke is home. O Luke is home. It’s Christmas break and Luke is home.
When I get home, I barrel through the front door, get directed downstairs by Mom, and find him in the basement bedroom, where I bury him in a bear hug. Neither of us are big huggers, but I don’t care.
“Hiya, champ,” he says as I pull away.
“Hiya, sport,” I say right back. “I bet I’m taller than you now.”
“You are not. There’s no way.” He drops the shirt he was folding and turns around, back to me. I whirl around and we stand back-to-back, smacking each other on the head as we try to measure. We end up having to call Mom down to judge; it’s that close. In the end, though, at least according to Mom’s nonexpert judgment, he is still half an inch taller than me, which, though I wail at the injustice of it, is actually just fine. I would happily stop growing; if I get much taller, I’ll start standing out.
For supper, Mom serves up a feast almost as elaborate as we can expect for Christmas dinner in a few days. Except with ham instead of turkey and with applesauce instead of cranberries. And no stuffing, of course, since it would be weird to stuff a ham.
Luke keeps tossing glances at Granddad as they both shovel down their mashed potatoes. Granddad looks stronger to me now—not strong, just stronger. More like a ravenous zombie than a fleshless skeleton. And he doesn’t wobble so much when he walks. But Luke didn’t see what he looked like three months ago, hasn’t seen him for probably a year, since Granddad last visited us in Ontario. I’ve gotten so used to zombie Granddad, I can’t remember what he looked like then, but judging by Luke’s raised eyebrow, I bet it was not like this.
Aside from that, though, and aside from the fact that we’re all in Alberta instead of Ontario, everything is the same as it was before Luke went away to school. Dad asks Luke what book he’s reading—a murder mystery, of course. I beat both Dad and Luke to complimenting Mom about the food, stealing all the points for best manners. Luke glares at me. Dad is oblivious. Luke tells a bad joke. Mom tells a worse joke. Granddad tells a good joke, which is different from before because Granddad wasn’t at our family dinners in Ontario, but I’m so used to Granddad being around now that it feels the same.