No answer to Tests going smoothly? Or to How many did you end up doing? Or to Don’t forget to randomize. Though to be fair, that last wasn’t a question, so I suppose it didn’t technically need an answer.
I shove the trash bin away, slam the cupboard closed, and glance at the clock. 2:15. This is typical Meg lateness, but it still makes my fingers itch. If the bread had risen, I could have used the time to split it in two, transform the mountain into logs, and stretch them out across the bread pans to rise for the second time. But again—that only works with yeast.
The doorbell rings. Finally.
When I open the door, Meg is staring off toward the road, so all I can see is her lime-green backpack instead of her face. The test results are probably in there.
“Hi,” I say.
She whirls around. “Oh, hi! Did you know that your neighbors don’t have curtains? What if they wanted to walk around their house naked? Have you ever seen them just walking around with their junk hanging out?”
“No, of course not.”
She shrugs, wanders inside. “Probably a good thing.”
“How was your party yesterday?” I ask, politeness winning out over my desire to demand that she show me the test results immediately.
“It. Was. Amaze-balls. My cousin Charlotte is so hilarious. She can do this perfect imitation of Bugs Bunny. Seriously, I practically peed myself.” Meg kicks her boot off and it topples over, snow forming piles of slush on the mat. “And my cousins that I never see came up from Lethbridge. I didn’t know they’d be there. Someone threw on some soca music and their dance moves are beyond epic. Brian—he’s the oldest—is seriously your double. Like not in looks—that’d be weird—but in interests and stuff. If you and Syth ever get divorced, you should definitely call Brian.”
“Syth and I aren’t—”
“Do you have apple juice?” She waltzes past me toward the kitchen, backpack still slung over her shoulder. “I’ve got a super-loud craving for it, which probably means I’m PMSing or something.”
I scurry after her and pull a glass from the cupboard while she pokes around in the fridge. She emerges with the jug of strawberry-kiwi juice Mom just bought yesterday, twists off the lid, and tips it forward over the glass in my hand.
“That’s not apple,” I warn her.
“It’s a fruit. Same difference.” She caps the jug, then twirls around to stick it back in the fridge, which she’s holding open with her foot. “Do you think that’s a thing?”
“What? Strawberry and apples being the same?” I want to snatch the backpack right off her shoulder.
“No, having cravings while PMSing. Like with pregnancy.”
The backpack has slid down to the crook of her elbow. It sways back and forth as she raises the glass and sips.
“I don’t know,” I say. “You’re not, though . . . right?”
She laughs, spewing her mouthful of pink liquid across the floor. “Pregnant? Dude, you have to have sex first. Did they not have sex ed in Ontario?”
I grab a roll of paper towels from under the sink. “Well, you might have done it and just not told me.” It is a thing teens our age are doing, right? I assume based on health class and movies that they are, but I’ve never thought to ask. I have a bajillion other things on my mind. Like science.
“As if I could keep something like that to myself. No way, José!”
I start scrubbing at the floor, harder than I need to. This is not the first time Meg’s laugh has had a juice-spewing side effect, and even when she kneels down to help, my annoyance doesn’t abate. It weighs down my shoulders like a backpack that’s supposed to be full of test results but instead is full of rocks. Why are we kneeling on the floor talking about something stupid like sex when our entire science project hangs in the balance?
“How many did you do?” I spit out.
“What, guys? Only LumberLegs, and only in my dreams. You know that.”
“No, not—I mean test results! How many tests did you do?”
She stares at me, face blank, eyes blinking stupidly. “Tests for what?”
It’s a peculiar sensation, the blood draining out of my face, down my body and legs, and out through my toes to pool with the splatters of pink liquid on the floor.
MEG
KAT’S FACE IS WHITE, LIKE PURE WHITE, LIKE WEARING-A-BLEACHED-SHEET-as-a-ghost-costume white.
“I’m kidding,” I tell her. “Holy cheese balls, you’re so gullible.” I expect relief, or at least color, to flood back into her face, but it remains motionless and colorless. Seriously, she’s whiter than a mutant rabbit.
Her silence is unnerving. I reach for my backpack. Maybe I should have sorted the papers before coming. Too late now. “Look, stop worrying,” I say. “I did a ton. Do you really think I could forget with you reminding me like every ten seconds? You’re worse than my mom.” I mean it as a joke, but she just scowls at me. At least the scowl brings a bit of color back. “Okay,” I say. “Don’t joke about our science project unless I want a stare of death. Got it.”
She gives her head a shake, as if dispelling those creatures the weird, awesome girl in Harry Potter thinks make brains go fuzzy. “Sorry. Good. You have them with you?”
“You betcha.” I unzip my backpack and plunge my hand into the jumbled mass of paper. Last night, when Mom decided out of the blue that it was time to go home, I had to dart about like I was playing tag, gathering up questionnaires from under coffee mugs and off the bed upstairs and stuffing them into my bag. But I ran through the house three times, and I’m confident I found them all. I deserve a pat on the back for that, or maybe even a shiny gold medal. “Okay, here’s . . . my aunt Hilda’s. No, never mind. She had to leave early and never did her speed runs, so we can just throw that one away.”
I crumple the paper and toss it across the room. My house just has a kitchen, with a marker-scribbled plastic table. Kat’s kitchen opens into a proper dining room, with a long, fancy, mahogany table that they use every day, not just for special occasions. The paper ball skips across the ground toward the table, coming to rest under one of its carved wooden chairs.
“I’ll get that later,” I say, then dig my hand into my bag to pull out another. I smooth out the paper on the kitchen floor, then slide it across the tile toward Kat. “There you go.”
She snatches it up and stares at it in silence. I watch her face, waiting for more of its color to flood back, but it doesn’t. She bites her lip. “This is empty.”
“What? No, it’s not.” I stretch forward and grab it out of her hand, but she’s holding it so tightly that a corner of the page tears off and remains behind, snared between her thumb and pointer finger. Her nail polish is pink, no surprise there. I scan the page. “This isn’t empty.”
“Well, it isn’t full either.”
I look back down. The first two questions are dutifully filled out in red pen. After that, nothing.