“What is your type?”
“Taller.”
“Like Clarissa?”
“Maybe.”
“She’ll never go out with you.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“Seriously. It’ll never happen.”
“You’d know better than I would.”
“So don’t even think about it.”
“There’s no reason I shouldn’t think about it,” says Blake. “I think about lots of girls that would never talk to me. I also think about being Batman. You think about being Batman too, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” I admit.
“So I’ll think about dating Clarissa the same way I’d think about being Batman. Does that work for you?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. Just know that you’re not fooling anybody.”
“Well, technically, if I was trying to fool somebody, I could argue that I’m fooling Audrey, Clarissa, Mel, and your mother. Good thing I’m not actually trying to fool anybody, huh?”
I take a long, deep breath and count to five.
• • •
I pay attention to all the traffic signs and lights for the rest of the way home despite an odd desire to floor the gas pedal and speed toward a moving train.
Mom isn’t home yet when we get back, but she’ll be home soon, so I start dinner. Under normal circumstances I’d step up my culinary efforts if there was a guest, but since I’m trying to expose Blake as a fraud who’s only pretending that he doesn’t totally suck, I’m going with macaroni and cheese.
Not the good stuff. Not the kind where you get a fancy packet of cheese sauce to squeeze onto the macaroni, and there will be no effort to elevate the flavor profile with bacon or truffles. This is the powder kind of mac and cheese. Not Kraft, but the generic stuff. I’m surprised that “Macaroni & Cheese” is spelled correctly on the box. This is a meal reserved for nights when Mom and I are both exhausted and don’t care what we have.
I start to boil the water. I go through the cupboards and purposely select the plate that has the most chips for Blake. I bet he’s the kind of guy who’d worry about bacteria lurking in a chipped plate.
Mom gets home while the macaroni is cooking. “Thank you for starting dinner,” she says, giving me a hug. “How was practice?”
“Pretty good. Blake offered plenty of useful feedback. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”
An alarm goes off to let me know that the macaroni is done. What I mean is that a timer goes off to let me know that I’ve cooked the macaroni for several minutes longer than the instructions say. Nice and mushy. Yum.
You’re supposed to add milk and butter when you mix in the cheesy powder, but water works as well as milk, right? And I’m sure Blake will appreciate the health benefits of not adding butter.
I happily stir the grossest macaroni and cheese I could possibly make without giving away that I made it gross on purpose. I’d love to add a few tufts of cat fur (we don’t own a cat, but our neighbor does) and some of my own saliva, but that would be going too far. It has to look like I made a legitimate effort to provide a tasty meal.
I pour the concoction onto the plates and announce that dinner is served.
Blake picks up his fork (yes, his fork has a tiny bit of dried food I stuck to one of the tines) and gazes at his plate. I doubt he’d want to eat this even if it was prepared properly. Dinner is going to be pure agony for him. I love it.
“Looks scrumptious,” says Blake.
I smile. “Doesn’t it?”
He scoops up a bite and pops it into his mouth. As he chews, I can see that he thinks it’s utterly disgusting. Will he dare to be rude enough to say something? I mean, your manners would have to be astonishingly poor to speak ill of a meal your generous host prepared for you.
Blake swallows with some effort. “Mmm,” he says.
Of course, the downside to my plan is that I have to eat this too. I take a bite, and it’s even worse than I thought. I choke it down without gagging. “I sure do love macaroni and cheese,” I say.
“Me too,” says Blake, taking another bite. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead. “Yummy.”
“Would you like some ketchup?” I ask, holding a bottle toward him. “It’s kind of watery, but still good.”
Mom takes a bite of her dinner, chews for a second, and then sets down her fork. “Rod!”
“What?”
“You completely overcooked this. You can’t serve this to a guest. And it tastes like you mixed the cheese packet with water instead of milk.”
I can’t believe it. I thought Mom would eat my cooking without complaint. I’ve made plenty of terrible meals on accident, so I never imagined that she’d embarrass me in front of my own cousin.
She stands up and collects all three plates. “I’m sorry, Blake,” she says. “He usually makes it better than this.”
“I thought it was perfectly fine,” says Blake.
“You don’t have to be polite in this household,” Mom informs him. “That was inedible. C’mon, Rod, you know better than that.”
It would appear that my plan has backfired.
“Sorry,” I say. “I never claimed to be a master chef.”
“It’s macaroni and cheese. An eight-year-old can make macaroni and cheese.”
“I don’t know about that,” says Blake. “I was involved in lots of macaroni and cheese–related mishaps when I was a preteen. One time for St. Patrick’s Day I added green food coloring, and I got it all over my shirt. Food coloring doesn’t come out of clothing very well, and my mom was hopping mad. So don’t give Rod too hard of a time over this.”
“Well, Rod isn’t eight.”
“Fair enough,” says Blake. He looks at me. “I tried.”
My face burns with anger and shame. All I wanted was for Blake to go “Bleaarrrgh!” and spit it back onto the plate. Was that so much to ask?
“Now what are we supposed to eat?” Mom asks.
Blake shrugs. “Pizza encore?”
“No, no, we’re not doing pizza again. I’ll make something else.”
“What about
