“My dad’s on his way home,” Trevor yells. “Everyone clear out.”
“Can you give me a ride?” I ask Maliah as I chug the last of my beer.
Trevor pops up next to us and slings his arm around Maliah’s shoulders. “‘Everyone’ doesn’t mean Mal.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “You’ll be okay, right? It’s still light out.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say, because it’s not about safety! I just wanted to hang out with my best friend. “What are you doing tomorrow? I don’t work on Tuesdays or Thursdays.”
“Maybe Thursday, then? I already have plans tomorrow.” She looks so cozy wrapped up in Trevor’s bicep.
“Okay, Thursday then.” I wave and walk toward the gate.
Jax jogs up beside me. “Did I hear you need a ride?”
“I guess you did,” I say. “Which is weird because I thought you were all the way over there.”
“I have excellent hearing,” he says. “Ask doctors.”
“Which doctors?” I ask. “Any doctors?”
“Any doctors that have tested my hearing,” he says. “They’re always impressed. Come on. Where do you live?”
I barely know him, of course, but when you don’t drive, you get used to jumping in cars with friends of friends. I give Jax directions to my house and follow him out to his silver BMW. Boys from Westglen Preparatory High School always have nicer cars than my parents do. At this point, I expect it.
“So you like burgers, right?” Jax asks me.
“What? Burgers?” I shoot him a look. “Because I’m fat?”
“No! You’re not—”
“I am,” I say. “It’s fine. Being fat isn’t bad. Acting like fat’s an insult is, though.”
“Uh, okay then,” he says, though pleasantly. Of course, then he cuts off two cars as he swerves around a line of traffic backed up to turn on Riverside Drive.
“You’re terrifying,” I tell him.
“Just answer the question, Abby.”
“Yes,” I say. “Like most intelligent people, I like burgers.”
“I have to do this project,” he says. “It involves burgers. You in?”
“Am I in? To a project you haven’t explained at all? And also, I barely know you?”
“We’re like, friends-in-law,” he says with a grin. “The couple’s two best friends.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It’s completely a thing—”
“You missed my street,” I say, and he screeches the car around in almost a U-turn. Somehow we’re both still alive as he pulls up to my home. I haven’t seen Jax’s house—I mean, why would I?—but I assume it’s like Trevor’s, tucked into hills with its own gate. Our bungalow is all but mere inches apart from the houses on either side of it. It’s the sort of difference I didn’t know was a thing for a long time, but then you’re in a BMW post-private pool party with a lacrosse player, and your house that you very recently thought was normal is actually a teeny toy home.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say. “Though it nearly killed us both.”
“That was nothing,” he says. “I’ll text you more info later.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I gotta get home,” he says. “But time will answer all questions, friend-in-law.”
“Seriously,” I say as I get out of the car. “That’s not a thing.”
CHAPTER 4
The house smells delicious when my beeping phone wakes me the next morning. By now I know not to expect breakfast in the kitchen, but a food photographer. When I tiptoe out in my pajamas, I see that I’m right.
“Look how great your mom’s burgers look,” Dad tells me. Until last year, Dad worked at a media agency, but now he’s managing all the non-Norah Eat Healthy with Norah! business, like scheduling and publicity and accounting. He used to come home and tell us funny stories about the grumpy old executive vice president he reported to. Now he reports to Mom, so even though I’m sure there are funny stories, he’s stopped sharing them.
“Sure,” I say, but for two big reasons they don’t at all. Mom’s food always sounds like a good idea, if you don’t hear the details. It’s a cheeseburger! What could go wrong? Well, first, there are no buns but fake “bread” made out of grilled mashed cauliflower. And it seems unfair to call it a cheeseburger when instead of cheese, the ground turkey meat is sprinkled with nutritional yeast.
Also, of course, there’s kale instead of a piece of lettuce.
But that’s not even the worst of it. That stuff’s just healthy and so I can get behind that. But food photography is actually really disgusting. The burger’s grill marks would be good enough for real life, but to make sure they really show up on camera, they’re touched up with dark brown eyeliner. Everything’s brushed with oil to make it shinier, and this burger is actually in perfect stacked order because little pins are holding it together. The kale has been misted with plant food, but that’s not as bad as it could be. The other week there was a photo shoot with a bowl of fruit, and it had all been sprayed with deodorant.
“Abbs.” Dad sighs while smiling. I can tell he thinks this will make me feel guilty, but it’s only mostly effective. “You have to forgive her at some point.”
“I should get dressed.” I glance at Mom and then at the woman standing next to her who’s holding a much fancier-looking camera than Maggie gave Jordi yesterday. My pajamas might be cute—a pink tank top with cupcake-printed shorts—but I’m still wearing pajamas in front of a stranger.
And you don’t have to forgive anyone you don’t want to.
It didn’t feel like this when Rachel was still here. It was easier for Mom to forget how disappointed every facet of me made her when the perfect daughter she would have picked out from a catalog was standing right beside me.
