Eden kind of stomp-stomps past us up to the house, and Mommy follows her. I look at Gigi, and she slowly walks over to me and rubs her side against my leg. It tickles real bad, but also feels nice and soft. I bend down and pet her, but then I hear Shadow start barking his head off.
“Don’t let Shadow out!” Mommy shouts to Eden, then she runs up to the house and grabs the door before Shadow can sneak outside. “Come on, Jonah. Let’s go.”
Mommy goes inside and shuts the door so Shadow can’t get out. I look down at Gigi.
“You shouldn’t make poops on our lawn, Gigi,” I tell the kitty, but I know she doesn’t understand what I said, and even if she did, I don’t think she’d care too much. “If Shadow gets out, he’ll eat you.” She meows at me, all lazy and stuff, like she’s not afraid of a big old dog. Then she scampers away from me and trots across the street, back to her own yard.
I go inside just as Eden is stomp-stomp-stomping up the stairs. Mommy calls her and tells her to say hi to Auntie Ruth, and Eden does that snorting thing again but comes back down the stairs so she won’t get in trouble.
Shadow runs over to me just as I drop my backpack on the floor. He starts sniffing me, and at first I think he wants the eggs, but then I realize he’s sniffing Gigi the cat, and maybe Marco, too, ’cause I guess Marco has lots of smells on him since he’s been going home with kindergartners for like years and must have picked up a ton of different smells from all the kids and their houses and pets and stuff. I pat Shadow on the head, then follow Mommy and Eden into the kitchen.
“Hi, Auntie Ruth,” Eden says, still frowning, and I hope Auntie Ruth doesn’t think Eden’s frowny because she’s here. I want to say something like, “Don’t worry, Eden was frowning like that the whole way home in the car.” But I don’t. Instead, I give Auntie Ruth a hug and let her pat my back like she usually does, and then I tell her I won the egg hunt.
“Well, well,” she says, smiling big at me. “Congratulations. Jonah, master of the spring egg hunt. And who do we have here?” She’s looking at Marco, and I kind of stand up straight ’cause I’m kind of proud of myself.
“This is Marco,” I tell her. “He gets to stay with us the whole vacation!”
“Isn’t that something?” Auntie Ruth says, and I can tell she’s excited, too, not just pretending to be. “Nice to meet you, Marco.”
I look up at my auntie. She’s holding one hand in the other and kind of rubbing her fingers. Her knuckles look kind of puffy, like when I fell off my bike on my knee and it blew up like a balloon.
“If you want, Auntie Ruth, you can take him home with you for a couple nights. So you won’t be lonely.”
Auntie Ruth’s eyes go all wide and start getting shimmery and stuff, and behind her, Mommy makes a worried face.
“That was a stupid thing to say, Jonah,” Eden says.
“Eden,” Mommy says in her stern voice.
I feel like I’ve done a dumb-dumb thing, but I don’t know what it is. Mommy looks upset and Eden looks cross and Auntie Ruth looks like she’s going to start crying. Then she bends her knees and puts them on the floor so her face is right there with mine. Her lips are kind of white, like it hurts her to go down on the floor, but she does it anyway. She takes my hand, the one that isn’t holding the bag of eggs, and looks at me really hard.
“Jonah, that is, I think, one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.” She kisses my hand, then her white lips go into a smile. “You are a very special guy. And I want you to know how much I appreciate your offer, but I wouldn’t dream of taking Marco away from you. However, maybe you could bring Marco over during vacation, for a sleepover?” She looks over at Eden. “Maybe your sister could come, too?”
“Could we watch Dancing with the Stars?” Eden asks, and she looks happy for the first time since she got in the car after school.
“I have about two dozen shows on my TiVo,” Auntie Ruth says with a nod.
“Awesome,” Eden says. “That’s totally beast.” I look at Eden, and her smile suddenly leaves her face.
“We can, Mommy, right?” I ask, and Mommy nods.
“Absolutely. Auntie Ruth and Daddy and I will work it out.”
I take my bag over to the kitchen table and climb into one of the chairs, then dump the eggs onto the tablecloth. They roll across the table, but none of them fall on the floor, which is a good thing ’cause Shadow is right there, waiting, and I know chocolate is bad for doggies. Mommy helps Auntie Ruth up and they start talking about lasagna and garlic bread. I look over at Eden and she’s standing by the wall kind of giving me a frowny face.
“Hey, Eden,” I say to her. “Look at all the cookies-and-cream I got. Here, take ’em. Fifty-fifty.” I count out the eggs; there’s fifteen, I know, because I counted them before, and fifteen’s an odd number—Mrs. Hartnett hasn’t teached us about odds and evens yet, but Daddy told me about them and showed me on my whiteboard, so I already know there’s going to be one egg extra. I grab ’em one by one and set ’em apart. One for Eden, one for me, one for Eden, one for me. Pretty soon, I have two piles that have seven eggs each, and sure enough, there’s one extra. I push it into Eden’s pile.
“You can have the extra one,” I tell her.
She comes over to the table and scoops up her eggs, then turns around and heads for the stairs without even thanking me. I think that’s kind of not nice. But then I think of all the times Eden helped me and maybe I forgot to say thanks, like when she helped me color my shapes for my school poster, or when she helped me pass my kinder-reader test, or other times, too. I’ll forgive her for not saying thanks this time, ’cause I know that even though she’s not smiling or anything, the eggs made her happy, ’cause the cookies-and-cream ones are her favorite.
FORTY-FIVE
EDEN
I know it’s not his fault. He’s only five, so I really can’t blame him. But I swear, sometimes having a little brother is like a total bummer. Ryan Anderson didn’t talk to me or even look at me the whole rest of the day, not even once, not after Jonah came running over and hugged me in front of my friends. Even when Mr. Libey assigned groups for Language Arts and Ryan was in my group, he totally ignored me, even when I asked him a question. He pretended not to hear me and started talking to Dustin Schulman about some stupid baseball thing.