“I know a new school is tough,” he told me as there were three more pings in quick succession. God, he was popular. “My dad was in the military. Eight schools in twelve years. It sucked. I was always the new kid.”
“So how long did you go to Perkins Day?” I asked, figuring maybe a short stint would explain him actually liking it.
Ping. Ping. “I started as a junior. Best two years of my life.”
“Really.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, picking up a glass and helping himself to some orange juice. “You know,” he said, “I understand it’s not what you’re used to. But it’s also not as bad you think.”
I withheld comment as four more messages hit his page, followed by a thwacking noise behind me. I turned around just in time to see Roscoe wriggling through his dog door.
“Hey, buddy,” Jamie said to him as he trotted past us to his water bowl, “how’s the outside world?”
Roscoe’s only response was a prolonged period of slurping, his tags banging against the bowl. Now that I finally had a real chance to study him, I saw he was kind of cute, if you liked little dogs, which I did not. He had to be under twenty pounds, and was stocky, black with a white belly and feet, his ears poking straight up. Plus he had one of those pug noses, all smooshed up, which I supposed explained the adenoidal sounds I’d already come to see as his trademark. Once he was done drinking, he burped, then headed over toward us, stopping en route to lick up some stray muffin crumbs.
As I watched Roscoe, Jamie’s laptop kept pinging: he had to have gotten at least twenty messages in the last five minutes. “Should you . . . check that or something?” I asked.
“Check what?”
“Your page,” I said, nodding at the laptop. “You keep getting messages.”
“Nah, it can wait.” His face suddenly brightened. “Hey, sleepyhead! You’re running late.”
“Somebody kept hitting the snooze bar,” my sister grumbled as she came in, hair wet and dressed in black pants and a white blouse, her feet bare.
“The same somebody,” Jamie said, getting to his feet and meeting her at the island, “who was down here a full half hour ahead of you.”
Cora rolled her eyes, kissing him on the cheek and pouring herself a cup of coffee. Then she bent down, mug in her hand, to pet Roscoe, who was circling her feet. “You guys should get going soon,” she said. “There’ll be traffic.”
“Back roads,” Jamie said confidently as I pushed back my chair, tugging down my sweater again before carrying my now empty bowl and plate to the sink. “I used to be able to get to the Day in ten minutes flat, including any necessary stoplights.”
“That was ten years ago,” Cora told him. “Times have changed.”
“Not that much,” he said.
His laptop pinged again, but Cora, like him, didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she was watching me as I bent down, sliding my plate into the dishwasher. “Do you . . . ?” she said, then stopped. When I glanced up at her, she said, “Maybe you should borrow something of mine to wear.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
She bit her lip, looking right at the strip of exposed stomach between the hem of my sweater and the buckle on my jeans I’d been trying to cover all morning. “Just come on,” she said.
We climbed the stairs silently, her leading the way up and into her room, which was enormous, the walls a pale, cool blue. I was not surprised to see that it was neat as a pin, the bed made with pillows arranged so precisely you just knew there was a diagram in a nearby drawer somewhere. Like my room, there were also lots of windows and a skylight, as well as a much bigger balcony that led down to a series of decks below.
Cora crossed the room, taking a sip from the mug in her hands as she headed into the bathroom. We went past the shower, double sinks, and sunken bath into a room beyond, which turned out not to be a room at all but a closet. A huge closet, with racks of clothes on two walls and floor-to-ceiling shelves on the other. From what I could tell, Jamie’s things—jeans, a couple of suits, and lots of T-shirts and sneakers—took up a fraction of the space. The rest was all Cora’s. I watched from the doorway as she walked over to one rack, pushing some stuff aside.
“You probably need a shirt and a sweater, right?” she said, studying a few cardigans. “You have a jacket, I’m assuming. ”
“Cora.”
She pulled out a sweater, examining it. “Yes?”
“Why am I here?”
Maybe it was the confined space, or this extended period without Jamie to buffer us. But whatever the reason, this question had just somehow emerged, as unexpected to me as I knew it was to her. Now that it was out, though, I was surprised how much I wanted to hear the answer.
She dropped her hand from the rack, then turned to face me. “Because you’re a minor,” she said, “and your mother abandoned you.”
“I’m almost eighteen,” I told her. “And I was doing just fine on my own.”
“Fine,” she repeated, her expression flat. Looking at her, I was reminded how really different we were, me a redhead with pale, freckled skin, such a contrast to her black hair and blue eyes. I was taller, with my mother’s thin frame, while she was a couple of inches shorter and curvier. “You call that fine?”
“You don’t know,” I said. “You weren’t there.”