“No occasion.” I pulled out the bag of salad and set it on a clear space on the counter. “I just thought it would be good for us to eat dinner together.”
Phil opened the cupboards and found a box of Cheez-Its that had hopefully been put in there not too long ago. After shoving a handful of crackers in his mouth, he said, “Bull.” Tiny crumbs of cracker flew out of his mouth in a dry, orange shower as he spoke.
“What?” I asked. He always thought he was so smart.
“Bull that you don’t want anything,” he said. “You’re totally fishing for something from her. What is it? You want a cat? Or a new bike?”
I made a show of concentrating on opening the salad and digging through the bottom cupboard for a cleanish bowl to put it in. “No.”
The bag crackled as he fished around the bottom for whatever crumbs were left. “Well, I’m not falling for your ‘let’s be a happy family’ act. You wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t want something from her.”
I sighed and wiped a dinner plate with a wet paper towel. “It’s just that I was thinking about trying to have some girls over here. For my birthday.”
Phil wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “Why would you want to do that?”
For someone in AP classes in high school, he could be such an idiot. Was it really that different for him? Did he not care that he could never have anyone over to play video games or hang around watching late-night TV? Didn’t it bother him that we always had to make excuses for why nobody could come in the house, and that we always had to figure out ways to meet people outside? Maybe boys just didn’t notice those things. Unfortunately, girls did.
“A couple of the girls in my class wanted to have a sleep-over. You know, have one over here because we always go to someone else’s house. I’ve been stalling them for months, but they’re starting to get suspicious.”
I secretly thought that Elaina from my class had a crush on Phil—God only knows why—and that’s why they all wanted to come over here. We weren’t even very good friends, but she was always asking if he was going out with somebody, or if he was going to be home after school. Elaina said once that she thought Phil’s curls were hot, and did I ever think he would grow his hair out. I gave her such a look that it never came up again. Luckily, he was in high school, and seventh-grade girls were totally off his radar.
Phil looked around the room. Knowing him, I figured whatever was going to come out of his mouth would be obnoxious. But he just nodded. “I can see how that would be a problem.”
Buoyed by his sudden understanding, I continued letting my thoughts form into words. “So I figured I’d be nice to Mom, you know, make it easy for her, and then see if she would let us clean up a little bit—it wouldn’t have to be perfect—but enough so I could have a couple of girls over just this once.”
“That way, they won’t have anything to say behind your back,” he said. He opened the fridge and stuck his head all the way in. “Did you get any soda?”
I leaned against the sink to look at him carefully. Because he was five years older than me, we didn’t do much together. He ran track at school so he was in pretty good shape, if you could think that about a brother. The fact that I wrinkled my nose made me realize you couldn’t actually think that about a brother. “No soda,” I said. “But there are ice-cream sandwiches in the freezer. They’re shoved way up in the corner.”
Phil opened the freezer and grabbed the box, sending a cascade of ziplock bags full of mysterious meat products onto the floor. “Crap,” he said, hopping around on one foot. “Those things are like bricks.”
I helped him pick up the bags and shoved them back into the freezer. We slammed the door quickly so nothing else could attempt an escape.
“Thanks,” he said. He unwrapped the top of a sandwich and took a bite. As he put the wrapper in our one trash can that lived under the sink, he looked me in the eye.
“About the whole Mom thing,” he said. He shut the door to the cabinet and looked around the room. I felt closer to him at this moment than I’d ever felt before. We never talked about what went on in the house. Not after what happened with Aunt Jean. “Yeah,” he said. “Good luck with that.” He shoved the last of the ice cream in his mouth and ducked out of the room.
I was sitting at the kitchen table when Mom got home. I’d managed to clear enough space for two place settings, complete with placemats and napkins. Phil had taken a plate of food to his room, but I didn’t care, as it didn’t look like he was going to be all that much help.
Mom set the bags she was carrying down in the doorway to the kitchen and looked at the table. “Did I miss a holiday or something? What’s all this?”
I brought the plates into the kitchen where I’d set up the food. “I just thought you could use a break,” I said. I was so nervous I couldn’t look at her directly. One wrong word would set her off, and I needed her to be in a good mood. The only question was what that word would be. “I picked up some dinner after school. You didn’t plan anything else, did you?” Since the closest we got to family dinner was all meeting up at the pot of SpaghettiOs at the same time, it was more of a rhetorical question.
“No,” she said cautiously. “I didn’t. This looks nice.”
“Yeah, I’ve got some salad and chicken. There’s ice cream for dessert. I borrowed a twenty-dollar bill from the kitchen jar—is that okay?”
“It’s fine.” Mom washed her hands with the special antibacterial soap she got from work. She was afraid of germs and washed her hands until they were bright red. I’m sure she would have liked to declare a national holiday for the day they invented sanitizing gel for your hands. Mom was always telling us to bundle up so we wouldn’t catch cold, no matter how many times I told her that clinical studies proved it didn’t make any difference, and she would never, ever, even if it was the last morsel of food on earth, take a bite from someone else’s fork. “That’s how you get sick,” she always said. Forget about living with rotting food on the counters, mold spores in the air, and no clean dishes—just make sure you didn’t share food with anyone.
We filled our plates and took them to the kitchen table, eating in awkward silence like we were on a first date. My stomach was in knots, and even though I’d spent a lot of time thinking about the food, I could barely eat.
Mom spoke first. “So, how was your day?”
I speared a giant piece of lettuce and tried to decide whether to cut it or just shove it in my mouth whole.
