Aaron shrugs. “That sweater is older than me. Pretty crazy to think about.”
Granny Dee rolls her eyes. “A whole lot of things are older than you! What are you? Seventeen? Do you want me to go around this whole house pointing out all the things that are older than you?”
“No, ma’am,” says Aaron politely, but I can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Unless you want to?”
LaoLao marches over to him and thrusts her sweater, the one Granny Dee said was too big for her, into Aaron’s arms. “How old you think my sweater is?”
Aaron looks at me, eyes dancing with repressed laughter. “I don’t know, LaoLao. Maybe … ten years?”
LaoLao snatches her sweater back. “Ten years! This sweater only two years old! Practically brand-new!”
Granny Dee’s eying the sweater now. “Just two years old?”
“I only wear it a few times,” LaoLao says, sounding like a used-car salesman. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”
“Maybe I can alter it,” says Granny Dee, taking the blue wool sweater from LaoLao. “If you really are giving it to me?”
“Of course I’m giving it to you. I shrunk your sweater, so now I give you new one.”
“This isn’t gonna be like that time you gave me that lotion and then got angry when I used it all?”
“You said your hands were dry, so I gave you my special lotion to be nice, and what happens? Next day it is all used up!”
“I didn’t know you wanted it back!”
“Of course I wanted it back! If you were going to use whole thing, you should have asked!” LaoLao sniffs. “It would have been polite thing to do.”
“Well, you know I was sorry. And didn’t I get you a whole new bottle for Christmas that year?”
LaoLao gives a grudging nod. “You did. But that same year I give you fancy bubble bath.”
“That was a good Christmas,” says Granny Dee.
LaoLao nods again. “Maybe this year you can give me jade bracelet,” she says with a sly smile.
Granny Dee chuckles. “You stayin’ for dinner, Aaron? This one’s cookin’, so I can’t promise it’ll be any good…”
“Everything I make tastes good!”
“All right, all right.” Granny Dee holds up her palms in surrender. “You make some OK dishes. I like those spicy green beans. Are you making those?”
“Maybe,” says LaoLao, waddling into the kitchen. “But only if you cut and wash them.”
Aaron ends up staying for dinner – he doesn’t have much choice after both my grannies insist – and now we’re in the living room, pretending to watch TV. I’m in the armchair in the corner and Aaron’s on the couch. Everyone else is getting ready for bed. I keep waiting for my mom to come down and tell Aaron it’s time for him to go home, but she doesn’t. I guess, now that I think about it, she’s never told him to go home before.
“Sorry about my grandmas,” I say, tugging on a stray curl.
“Don’t worry about it. Man, your grandmothers crack me up,” Aaron says, smiling and shaking his head. “I don’t know anyone like them.”
“Nobody knows anybody like them,” I grumble, but I’m smiling too. “They fight less now, though, with Marcus being in the hospital.”
Aaron nods. “Makes sense.”
“I’m sure when he wakes up they’ll be back to arguing all the time over every little thing.”
Aaron doesn’t correct me, doesn’t tell me that there’s nothing to be sure about when it comes to Marcus. Instead, he pats the spot on the couch next to him. “Come here,” he says. “This show is about to start and you can’t see from where you’re sitting.”
I can see just fine, but I don’t tell him that. I just grin and go sit next to him.
CHAPTER 37
I never used to think about getting better at running. I just did it, I just ran, and then I got faster, and then I pushed further, and that seemed to be all there was to it. I figured that training with Coach Kerry and the rest of the team would be more of that.
Coach Kerry has different ideas. She has us doing all kinds of crazy stuff that she claims will make us faster. Make us stronger. Make us better.
I’m not running with Aaron as much now; he’s training with the boys’ team, same track as us, but on the other side. Feels farther than that, though. Still, when we go round and round that track, I can feel his eyes on me. I know he’s watching.
I hope he’s not watching right now. Coach Kerry has me and Eliza in some kind of harness, the kind Santa would use for his reindeer, and we’re pulling weights, actual weights. Usually running makes me feel light and free, but this, this isn’t running. I’m sweating so much I can barely see, and I can hear Eliza panting as we both try to drag these dumb weights around the track.
“Again,” says Coach Kerry after we get around. “I know you girls can be faster.”
“Why we gotta do this?” says Eliza, and it’s the closest I’ve ever heard her come to whining.