“No, Mom, you’re imagining it. I’m actually wearing a penguin suit.” I grab a dough dumpling off the table. “I’ll see you later.”
Mom sets the leftover saltfish she just pulled out of the microwave on the counter and wipes her forehead with her sleeve. Kenzie and Nolan’s cartoon fills the kitchen with a punchy beat, even though they’re watching it all the way in the other room. “You’re leaving already?” Mom asks. “I made supper.”
“Yeah, it’s after six. I need to leave before he gets here!”
“Meg,” Mom sighs, but without conviction. She hates him, too. When they first split up, just the mention of his name could start her ranting for hours. Now she doesn’t bother to rant anymore. She’s already said it all. She wipes at her face again. Her makeup is wearing off, and the bags under her eyes are starting to show through. I’d throw her the concealer in my purse, but we can’t share makeup like we do hair stuff, since mine’s a darker shade of brown than hers.
“I’ll be home by midnight,” I promise. My usual curfew.
“And no city buses alone after ten.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Meg.”
“And no city buses alone after ten, I got it.” I throw an air kiss at Kenzie and Nolan in the other room, then wave my dumpling good-bye and slip out the door. I’m out of here.
KAT
“KAT, CAN YOU GRAB THE FRONT DOOR, PLEASE?” MOM CALLS DOWNSTAIRS TO me. “I just heard the car.” I hit pause. Normally I hate answering the door—and the telephone—but I have a sudden need to see Granddad, to know for sure that time hasn’t caught up to him and stopped his heart. I close the LumberLegs video I was watching and take the stairs two at a time.
When I open the door, my still living Granddad is taking his final wobbly step up onto the front porch. “Hello, Katharina,” he says. He’s always called me that, for as long as I can remember.
“Hi,” I say quietly as I open the door nice and wide for him. I wanted to see him, but now that I have, I’ve no idea what to say.
Mom says that Granddad is recovering much faster than they expected him to after the hip replacement, but I find that hard to believe. He is definitely wobbling as he takes one slow step after another through the door.
I look out the door behind him instead of at him. “Where’s Dad?” According to Mom, Dad took Granddad to his appointment, then to grab a few groceries.
“Your dad’s still at the car. I beat him here with my superhuman speed.” He grins, but the joke tastes sour to me. Like an emaciated child in Africa joking about having too much food to eat.
I lean carefully toward him. After school, I purposely changed into my softest pants and my fluffiest knit sweater, no zippers. It’s really more of a pat than a hug that I give him, but it’s still close enough to feel the jutting boniness of his shoulders. If his skin did tear off, perhaps there would be no oozing flesh underneath, only brittle bone. Like a shadowdragon—all skeleton and shadow.
Dad arrives in the front door then, blue-plaid-shirted arms laden with cloth grocery bags. “Kat, my favorite daughter!” He holds the grocery bags out to me. I roll my eyes, then take half of them.
It’s been an exhausting week, and all I want to do is disappear downstairs to the computer and work on my castle until Luke comes on and we can do a rift raid. But first I have to survive family dinner.
“How was school today?” Dad asks once we’re all sitting at the table. He adjusts his tie. He never takes it off until after dinner.
“Yes, Kat, how was school?” Mom passes me the roast turnip with a raised eyebrow that says, “I notice you don’t have any of this delicious vegetable on your plate.”
“Fine, I guess.” I scoop a spoonful of diced turnip onto my plate. Definitely not my favorite, but I’m not going to argue with Mom’s raised eyebrow, especially with Granddad sitting there watching me. I mean, he’s not watching me right this minute, but I’m sure if I started arguing with Mom, he would.
“Any major events?” Dad’s forkful of mashed potatoes hovers in front of his mouth. “Meteors? Apocalypses? Math tests?”
I don’t really want to talk about my clueless new science fair partner, but it’s either that or explaining how I almost ate my lunch in a washroom. “We had to choose partners for our science fair projects.”
“Oh? And who’s yours?” Mom asks.
“This girl Meg.” I want to sneak a peek at my phone to see what time it is and whether Luke will be calling soon, but that’s sure to earn a lecture from Mom or Dad, and then what would Granddad think of me?
“Is she nice?” Mom likes to ask questions more than she likes to eat.
I shrug again. “She didn’t know what a science fair was.”
“Well, maybe she didn’t have to do a project last year.”
Yeah. Because this isn’t her second time being a freshman. I take a biteful of potatoes.
“So what are you going to do for your project?” Dad asks.
“I don’t know. I was looking up some ideas this afternoon, but nothing popped out at me.” Last year, my partner and I did ours on how fast helium balloons deflated in different temperatures and why. I barely knew my partner, despite having gone to school with her since kindergarten, but fortunately, school wasn’t her forte and she was content to just let me do most of the work, so we didn’t actually have to spend much time together. We got an A, but I don’t think my analysis section was quite up to snuff, because we only came in eighth. This year’s will be better. Assuming this Meg girl doesn’t ruin it.
“Oh, you shouldn’t look something up, sweetie.” Mom again. “It’ll feel too rote. Make up something creative.”
“Like what?”
“We’ve got some interesting new materials we’re experimenting with at work,” Dad says. He’s an engineer of some sort. Mechanical, maybe? I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what he does, only that his company is apparently just as happy to have him doing it here as in Ottawa. “Don’t know if I could get clearance for you to run tests on it, though.”
“Why don’t you test how effective human urine is as a fertilizer?”
If anyone else said it, my response would be “Eeeeewwwwww!” accompanied by a scrunched-up nose. But my two-hundred-year-old granddad stares at me, bifocals perched on the tip of his bony nose, likely awaiting a more sophisticated response.
Fortunately, Mom saves me. “Dad,” she says, smacking him on the arm a lot harder than she should, considering that just falling down was all it took to break his hip. “Kat isn’t going to pee on a bunch of plants for her school science project.”
“Maybe not. But it would be a real showstopper.” I can’t tell if he is grinning at me or if the wrinkles in his cheeks are so deep that they yank at the corners of his mouth.
I have no idea what to say to that. My fingers itch to check my phone. I pull it out of my pocket and wrap my fingers tightly around it. “I do like the idea of plants,” I finally say.
“Can’t go wrong with plants,” Dad chimes in. “They’re timeless.”