2) I’ve stumbled on a problem that never seems to stop detectives in books: teenage poverty. Whatever shallow pool of money I made last summer working as scoop girl at the Frozen Gnome has dried to mud in the bottom of the creek bed that is my savings account. Dad is usually pretty reasonable with the money-lending, but he isn’t here, and driving back and forth across Massachusetts to find him has wiped me out.
I turn down multiple offers from Jessa to fill my gas tank on the way home, because while it’s great to have her with me, I’m not looking for a financial backer. Instead I do the only thing I can. I go home home.
My stepmother is back from work and reading in Dad’s armchair in the living room. Pilates-thin and only a little taller than me, Lindy’s swallowed by the hulking red seat, the chair back looming above her like an open mouth. It goes with nothing in the living room, otherwise a collection of almost-matching wood and two couches so old that most of the paisley’s worn off. We’ve had them forever. Since I was little kid, at least. I don’t remember a time without them. Most of our belongings are permanent in this way. The dancing-banana magnets on the fridge, the leather padded weights bench in the basement, the little potted plant that would be a towering oak by now if it weren’t plastic. Lindy’s managed a few changes—now we keep our flour and sugar in fancy little canisters instead of rubber-banded bags—but Dad and I like it the way it is. It’s right the way it is, chipped paint, butt-bowed cushions and all.
The most recent addition to this house, besides my stepmother, is Dad’s chair. He and I dragged it home from a yard sale five blocks over a few years ago. Dad had gone on new meds and was a little jumpy, so he wasn’t supposed to drive just yet. But that couldn’t stop us. We hauled it back on foot, knees knocking against the steep sides of the chair, fingers slipping, sweat spackling our faces.
“This is why you’re my strongest girl yet,” he told me.
I pause in the doorway and Lindy takes her time looking up from the book, though from the way she drops it shut without bothering to mark her page, I suspect she’s been 49 percent reading a biography of Cleopatra, 51 percent waiting for me to walk in.
“Gosh, Immy, is that you? The boss has been making you work double shifts again, I take it? How’s your 401k coming?”
“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ve been scarce.”
“You’ve been absent,” she says, and sighs. “But I get it too.”
I scratch an itch on my ankle with one sneaker. I don’t want to talk, to pretend I’m as lost as Lindy. But the situation calls for more than “Hi, how’ve you been, can you lend me a hundred bucks for mysterious purposes, maybe see you Tuesday!” Instead I land on, “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
She crosses to the couch and spreads her palm out on the cushion beside her.
“Right now?”
“Please.”
I perch on the arm at the far side of the couch, examining my reflection in the darkened windows.
“How’s Jessa?” Lindy asks.
“She’s . . . Jessa. She texts. She talks a lot.”
“What did you two do last night?”
I swallow the unpleasant memory. “Just hung around. Played Ping-Pong.”
Lindy nods; I see it in the window, and Dad’s old, pilled bathrobe wrapped around her instead of the usual cape or kimono robe. “She’s a good friend to you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Did the Prices feed you already?” she asks, maybe a smidge jealously.
“I wanted to eat with you,” I say, which pleases her.
I follow Lindy into the kitchen to help with dinner, though there isn’t much for me to do. My stepmother is as efficient a cook as she is a counselor. Before she starts on the ginger pork stir-fry and mashed veggie-of-the-week, she lines all her knives on the counter by size, her starches and oils by order of use, her vegetables by quantity (three-fourths cup carrots before one-half cup snow peas before one-quarter cup chopped onion and so on). I learned my craft from the Joshua Scott School of Cooking, which is so utilitarian we never used to close the chip bags; in fact, we’d lean them on their sides in the cupboards with their crinkly plastic mouths wide-open and pointed frontward so all we had to do was open a cabinet door and reach a hand in.
Now, I do what Lindy tells me to. Pour this, wash this, move over so I can do this. I try not to think of it as giving her what she wants so I can get something (gas money, a few more days of freedom to search). I try to think of it the way Lindy does: as a bonding exercise.
“It’s awesome,” I assure her when we’re sitting at the table with our full plates, ignoring the empty seat beside us, which only makes it emptier.
“The pork came out very tender, but I think I went overboard on the ginger.”