“You look kind of out of it, sweetie. You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m . . .” I look at the pancakes. “What are these supposed to be?”
“Hearts?” she says. There’s flour on her chin.
“Ohhhh.”
“I guess they kind of look like penises.”
“Yup.”
“And scrotums,” she adds.
“Mom, that’s so appetizing.”
Honestly, it’s not the first time Patty has thrown down the word scrotum in reference to a meal. She’s a midwife, so I may be a little too used to her talking about this stuff. Once she spent an entire drive to the mall explaining to Cassie and me that the so-called “doggie lipstick” was really the dog’s penis coming out of the shaft. She seemed to know a lot of the anatomical details.
I don’t think either Cassie or I will ask about the lipstick again.
“You should let your brother try one,” she says.
I nod. “Xav loves scrotums.”
Patty raises her eyebrows.
She takes the plate back, and I peek into the dining room. Of course everyone’s already awake. Nadine is a teacher, so even in the summer her body is used to waking up “butt-early,” as she calls it. Sometimes she calls it the ass-crack of dawn. And Xavier wakes up butt-early because he’s a butt-early kind of baby.
“Don’t drop that,” Nadine says, giving him the evil eye. Xavier gives me a giant grin from his high chair and says, “Momo,” which means “Molly.”
So, here’s us in a nutshell: Patty used a sperm donor to conceive Cassie and me. Nadine used the same donor two years ago for Xavier. Strangers have a really hard time wrapping their minds around that. There’s this subset of people who like to inform me that Xavier’s my half brother, not my real brother. They’re the same people who tell me Abby’s not really my cousin. Nadine’s not really my mother. I’m pretty sure people wouldn’t question any of this if Nadine, Abby, and Xavier were white.
Needless to say, I hate these people.
Xavier flings a chunk of banana to the floor and starts whimpering.
“Dude, no,” Nadine tells him. “Banana’s gone. You’re SOL.”
“Do you even know what that means?” Cassie asks from across the table.
“I know so much more than you think I do.” Nadine grins. Then Xavier lets out another goat wail, and she leans over to kiss his head. “Hey. Xavor Xav, be cool.”
Xavor Xav, like Flavor Flav. Nadine is just like this.
Patty walks in with a plate of bacon, pressed between paper towels. “Hope you’re ready,” she says to Cassie.
Cassie’s love of bacon is well documented and notorious.
But she leans back, smiling. “I’m actually not hungry.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Cassie?” Nadine asks, eyes narrowing.
Cassie laughs and shrugs, and I notice she hasn’t touched her food. Not a bite. And it’s a little surprising. Normally, Cassie’s one of those skinny girls who eats like she’s about to go into hibernation.
“I’m serious, Kitty Cat. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m not . . .” She trails off, hands disappearing under the table. She glances downward, quickly.
She’s reading a text.
From Mina. I’m sure of it. Probably scheming about how to get Will to date me. My whole face heats up just thinking about it.
“So, Molly, how are you feeling?” Nadine asks. “Are you nervous? Are you freaking out?”
“About what?”
“About your big day. About entering the world of the working.”
I wrinkle my brow. “You realize this isn’t like a brain surgery residency, right? I’m working in a store.”
“Momomomo!” Xav interjects. “Cacacacaca!”
Cassie gives him the side-eye. “Hey. Stop calling me that.”
“Never stop calling her that,” says Nadine.
Cassie makes a face, and then she slides her foot against mine under the table, lengthwise—toe to heel. Our feet have always been the same size, almost to the millimeter. I guess we grow at the exact same rate.
“Hey, when are you leaving?” Cassie leans forward on her fists, smiling.
“In a few minutes . . . ,” I start to say, but she gives this very meaningful stare. I try again. “Right now?”
“Great! I’ll walk you to work,” she says, standing abruptly, slipping her phone in her back pocket. “Let’s go.”
“I texted with Mina for four hours last night,” she says as soon as we step outside. It tumbles out of her mouth like she’s been bursting to tell me.
“Wow.”
“I know.”
I feel Cassie looking at me, and I can tell she wants me to say something. Or ask something. Maybe it’s twin telepathy—I can just feel her excitement. It’s like it has a pulse.
Somehow, I don’t think this is about finding me a boyfriend.
“What did you talk about?” I ask.
“Just, you know . . .” She laughs. “I honestly don’t even know what we talked about. Music. Photography—she does photography. We just talked about everything, really.”
“For four hours.”
“Yup.” She smiles.
“That’s awesome.” I pause. “Did you find out if she likes girls?”
“Molly. I don’t know.”
There’s this edge to her tone, and it throws me. “Okay,” I say softly.
And for a minute, we’re both so quiet I can actually hear tweeting birds.
I should mention that Takoma Park is beautiful. You kind of don’t notice it most of the time, but then it hits you all at once. Like, when it’s eight fifteen on a summer morning, and the sun is soft and filtered through tree branches. And the houses are brightly painted, with porch swings and wind chimes and front steps lined with flowers.
I think I just want to stare at the flowers. I want to walk up Tulip Avenue, and be hungry and sleepy, and I want Cassie not to be annoyed at me. I guess asking her about Mina was a mistake. Though if she’s going to be prickly about her own love life, it’s pretty messed up that she’s got her hands all over mine.
Except a minute later, she says, “So, we’re meeting Mina at FroZenYo this afternoon to talk strategy.”
“Strategy?”
“For seducing the ginger. Operation Boyfriend. Operation Molly Makeouts.”
Oh my God. Seriously.
I shake my head. “Okay, well, I have to—”
“Molly, I know you have work. But you get off at three, and we’re meeting her at three thirty. Okay?”
“I don’t want to intrude. I don’t want to vag-block you.”
“Molly.” Cassie laughs. “You can’t vag-block someone in a frozen yogurt shop. A frozen yogurt shop vag-blocks itself.”
“That is true.”
“And seriously.” She looks at me. “I need you there.”
She looks so sincere. “Okay,” I say finally.
“Hell yeah.” Cassie high-fives me. “Oh man. It’s on.”