“You have any ideas?”
“For our science fair project?”
“Yeah, what else?”
“A couple.” As I start to explain the ideas I’ve researched, she finally flops down on the couch to listen, feet tucked up under her. I’ve Googled a lot, but I can’t decide if I like any of the topics I’ve found. There’s this paper you can use to separate out the different chemicals in a liquid—we could use that to determine the ingredients of different types of pop. Or test tooth decay in a variety of different liquids over time, though I’m not sure where we’d get the teeth. Or we could use cutworms to test the durability of different breeds of grass.
Meg follows along with the first two, asking questions and nodding her head. But in the middle of my explanation of cutworms, she yawns unapologetically and gets to her feet.
“I need a break. How about a house tour?” She marches out of the room before I can protest, and I have to hop up and sprint after her. She stops when she reaches the stairs—half a staircase up, half a staircase down. “Up or down?”
I wasn’t expecting to give her a house tour. I mean, I wasn’t expecting her to be here at all. “Um, down, I guess.”
She grabs the banisters and launches herself over all seven stairs, landing with a thud at the bottom.
I don’t usually swear, but a curse pops out of me.
She laughs. “You should give it a try.”
“No, thank you.” I take the stairs one at a time, holding carefully to the railing.
Downstairs, Meg keeps chattering away, examining my dad’s shelf of knickknacks. Some people who talk a lot are know-it-alls, but Meg’s ramblings are more random than lecture-y, like she never learned the difference between thinking and talking.
“Where’s this from?” She lifts a striped wooden mask with short, stubby antlers. I should tell her to put it down, but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind if she broke it. I wouldn’t be surprised if its leering grin appeared some night in my nightmares. It’s terrifying.
“South Africa.”
“Oh, cool. Have you been there?”
“No.” My parents and Luke went last summer. I refused to fly—planes are claustrophobic metal cages of gravity-defying death—so I spent those three weeks at my aunt’s farm in southern Ontario instead. Dad wanted to force me to go, but Mom talked him out of it. I overheard them talking one night.
“She’s only fourteen.” Dad.
“That’s old enough.” Mom.
“She’s going to regret it.”
“Then she regrets it. And if she does, maybe that will be enough to push her out of her comfort zone next time.”
On the first half of the trip, they went on an elephant safari, paddled in dugout canoes, and ate peanut stew. On the second half of the trip, they all got so dreadfully sick that Dad refused to eat solid food for at least a month after they got back. I didn’t regret staying behind.
I show Meg my mom’s office, the rec room, then the kitchen and bathroom back on the main floor. She prattles away throughout, picking up and asking about little odds and ends everywhere.
Upstairs, she stops to study a picture in the hallway. “Your parents still together?”
I nod.
“That’s nice. My dad left when I was four, then promptly died in a car accident three months later. So, frozen in a perpetual state of having just left us.”
“I’m sorry.” I have to say more than that. I search my frazzled brain. “Maybe he would’ve come back, though. If he had lived, I mean.”
“Maybe, but probably not. What’s in here?” She points to the closest door.
“My room.” I swing open the door and gesture for her to enter.
She steps inside. Then she squeals like a piglet.
MEG
THERE IS A LUMBERLEGS POSTER ON THE WALL. A LUMBERLEGS POSTER! HIS LotS character, with its tree-stump legs and teasing grin, winks at me as he tumbles off the side of a cliff and hurtles toward a pool of lava below. Even his in-game persona makes me want to giggle. I leap up onto the bed and kiss his perfect face.
Then I turn to grin at Kat. “I can’t believe you like LumberLegs! This is fate.” This is the moment—I have found my new best friend. Thank goodness, because Lindsey hasn’t responded to any of my texts since she hung up last night, and I’m starting to wonder if she ever will again. But that doesn’t matter now. Kat and I can swoon over Legs’s FaceCam together, and she can come to LotSCON with me, and we can both be awesome, just like Legs always says.
Kat pulls at the sleeves of her pink knit sweater so they cover her hands. “You know who LumberLegs is?” Apparently she’s never found anyone to watch with either. Maybe Legs’s millions of subscribers are actually all bots except for me, Kat, and that girl who moved away. Oh, and my old friend Larissa, but she likes the game more than she likes Legs, so she doesn’t count.
“Know who he is?” I say. “I’m going to marry him! He’s hilarious. You can be one of my bridesmaids. How do you feel about turquoise for dresses?”
“I . . . what?”
“I’m joking, don’t worry. I’m not a creepy stalker. He is awesome, though. Hey, you’re not going to move away anytime soon, are you?”
She blinks at me a few times, then shakes her head. “We just got here.” She looks unusually small, like she’s shrunk to Nolan’s size, or even Kenzie’s. Probably doesn’t help that she’s standing on the floor, while I’m still standing on the bed.
I plop down, landing on my butt on the mattress. “Excellent. Hey, Legs is livestreaming tonight, right? We should totally watch it. We could walk down to the corner store and get enough salt-and-vinegar chips and Rolos to survive an apocalypse, then pig out while we watch it. What do you say?”
Kat just stares at me.
KAT
MEG GRINS EXPECTANTLY AT ME, HER SMILE SO WIDE THAT IT PUFFS OUT her cheeks and turns her oval face round.
She wants to watch a LumberLegs livestream. Together. With salt-and-vinegar chips and Rolos.
One asparagus . . . two introvert . . .
I am not good at making decisions, at least not without a good pro-con list. If I reached for a pen and paper right now, though, I’m pretty sure she would classify me as a freak. I do a quick tally in my head instead.
REASONS I SHOULD SAY NO TO MEG:
1. The first thing that popped into my head was that, if she watched LotS with me, I could make Luke feel like I’ve replaced him. Which I’m pretty sure makes me a sociopath (the kind that lies and manipulates people, not the kind that murders prostitutes and buries them in a farmer’s field).
2. She’s probably one of those people who talks the whole way through movies and videos, as if her own thoughts were more important.
3. I told her I have a thing at five, so I have a perfect out.
REASONS I SHOULD SAY YES TO MEG:
1. I can make Luke feel like I’ve replaced him.
2. The box under my bed that already has both salt-and-vinegar chips and Rolos in it.
3. The livestream is the thing I was going to do at five.
I kneel down, push aside my blankets, and reach into the darkness for the box.