“Yeah.” She’s got on her usual: stretch pants (black today) and a short, worn cotton tee (yellow today). She looks not un-bee-like.
Ivy doesn’t like clothes that are tight or uncomfortable or have a lot of buttons, hooks, or zippers. She also hates shirt tags and long sleeves and necklaces, watches, and rings. That leaves her with a pretty limited wardrobe.
“Maybe change first?” I say. “You have a gray skirt, right? You could wear it with that blue top I gave you for your birthday. That would look really nice.”
Her hands start vibrating at her sides. “I don’t like wearing skirts. I can feel my legs too much.”
“Okay. Then how about you keep the pants but change your top?” The one I gave her is longer and looser, and will cover up the lumpy elastic waistline of those pants.
“Why do you want me to look nice?”
“It’s just nice to look nice when you’re meeting a friend.” Okay, I sound like an idiot. I don’t know what else to say, though. I don’t want to make her more nervous . . . but I want her to look decent. For her sake.
“Okay,” she says, but you can tell she’s not happy about it, and once she’s put the top on, she keeps plucking nervously at the gauzy fabric.
She starts pacing around our bedroom. “We should go,” she says. “Why aren’t you ready?”
I tell her again that it’s too early, but after about twenty minutes of enduring the exact same exchange every thirty seconds, I give up. “Fine, let’s go. We’ll be early, though.”
Joke’s on me—?a lane of Sunset is blocked by a moving truck, and traffic’s backed up, and once we get past that and down to Montana, I can’t find parking close to the yogurt place.
“It’s three-oh-four,” Ivy says when we finally get out of the car and start walking. “We’re late. It’s bad to be late.”
“It’s okay. You’re allowed an extra five minutes to show up somewhere before you’re considered late.”
“Five minutes late is late.”
We reach the shop. I open the door and follow her inside. “I bet he’s not even here yet.”
“Yes, he is.” She points across the shop, halting so abruptly that I bump into her.
“Don’t stop,” I say, and give her an impatient little shove toward Ethan, who’s slouching by the frozen yogurt machines, his hands stuck deep into his pockets. There’s a guy next to him whose back is toward us; he’s reading the yogurt information above the machines. “Come on,” I say, because Ivy is hesitating again. Her hands are snaking at her sides, and any second she’s going to start slapping at her hips. I grab her by the wrist and tug her over to Ethan, who regards us gravely.
“Hi, Ivy,” he says.
Ivy looks down at the floor and mutters a barely audible “hi,” and I try to make up for her apparent lack of enthusiasm by practically shouting, “Hey, Ethan!” The guy next to Ethan turns around, a polite smile on his face, which fades the second he gets a look at me.
It’s David Fields.
“Chloe?” he says. “What are you doing here?” He looks back and forth from me to Ivy. “Oh, my God. Is she your sister?”
“Just for my whole life.” Now I know why Ethan looked so familiar: he’s a thinner, more-hunched-into-himself, and less-savage version of David. “Ethan’s your brother?”
“Just for my whole life.”
“Huh.” I don’t know what else to say. If he were a friend, it would be a cool coincidence. But if he were a friend, we’d probably have figured out a long time ago that we both had siblings in the same special needs class.
“We need to get frozen yogurt,” Ivy says, shifting nervously.
“Right,” I say. “But isn’t it funny that I know Ethan’s brother? He goes to my school. Ivy, this is David. David, Ivy.”
“Nice to meet you,” David says, and shakes her hand. He then introduces his brother to me, even though I said hi to him already, and we shake hands.
It’s strange how much the two of them look alike and also don’t look alike. Ethan is thinner and more slope-shouldered, and his light brown hair is longer and bushier than David’s, which is pretty short. But there are subtle differences too—?there’s all this awareness and calculation and judgment in David’s brownish/grayish eyes, and Ethan’s just look innocent and uncertain.
I separate a couple of paper bowls from a stack and hand them to Ivy and Ethan, who wander down the row of yogurt machines, checking out the different flavors, not consulting or even acknowledging each other, but sort of together anyway.
“Are you staying?” David asks me.
“Yeah—?Ivy wants me to. How about you?”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
He just shrugs. “You and your sister look a lot alike.”
“I was going to say the same thing about you and your brother. He looked familiar when I saw him before, but I didn’t know why.”
“It’s such a weird coincidence.”
“So weird.”
There’s an awkward pause. Then we both start to speak at the same time and stop.
“Sorry, what?” he says.
“I was just going to ask if you were going to get some yogurt. What were you going to say?”
“Just that I almost didn’t recognize you without James at your side. I thought you two were permanently attached at the hip.”
Ugh. His brother may be my great hope for Ivy, but David’s still a jerk. I don’t even bother to respond—?what do you say to something like that, anyway?—?just grab a bowl and stalk away to the other end of the row of machines, where I splurt some chocolate yogurt into it.
Ivy’s moved on to the toppings bar and is ladling a ton of colorful sprinkles onto her yogurt. Ethan’s waiting for her to finish—?apparently he likes his yogurt plain.