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sixteen

“I need the TV,” Dean said. He grabbed the remote from the armrest and tried to jump over me onto the couch, but tripped and face planted onto the cushions instead.

I had one foot resting on the coffee table, but I used the other to kick his leg.

It was hard until I shoved him off the couch and he landed on the ground with a loud thump. “What was that for?”

“What do you think?” I asked. I snatched the remote out of his hand so he couldn’t change the channel and settled back into my spot.

Dean grumbled as he came to sit on the couch beside me but didn’t try to take the remote again, which was probably for the best because I would have smacked him dead with it if he had tried.

“I heard Sebastian gave you a ride home,” he said. I kept my face forward like I was still watching the TV but looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

“Uh-huh,” I said, trying to act like it was nothing out of the usual.

I really had no metric to go off about how Dean would react to this.

He might think nothing was out of the ordinary, especially since Ainsley had been in the car too so it was basically like I was just carpooling with a friend, or he might be ready to kill me over it.

Sometimes, it just depended on the mood he was in.

We hadn’t fought about me talking to his friends recently, though, which made me hope he wouldn’t be too angry about it.

“He’s been driving you a lot lately,” Dean said.

The words were said like a statement, but I was sure there was an accusation behind it.

I still didn’t look at him and tried to keep my face nonchalant.

It was hard, though, when the show cut to commercial a second later, giving me nothing to pretend to be interested in.

Still, I had one weapon left in my arsenal to get him off my case and I was happy to use it.

“Maybe he wouldn’t need to if you came to pick me up instead of going out with a girl.”

That shut him up quickly. Not that I thought Dean cared if I knew what he was doing—but I knew he cared a lot if my parents knew and tried to shut it down. And if he knew that I might be willing to tell them, then he was going to stay off my case.

After that, the silence became stifling. I was terrified he was suddenly going to turn and say that he knew about the kiss, even though I was sure if he knew about it, he would have told me by now. But I didn’t want to sit around waiting for that shoe to drop so I got to my feet.

“I need a drink,” I said. I dropped the remote in his hand. “Pause the show if it comes back from commercial, okay?”

I didn’t have any faith that he would do that, or that he wouldn’t change the channel, but not seeing the end of the episode was a small price to pay for my mental peace.

I might have felt differently about that if I knew my mom was going to be in the kitchen when I walked in.

“Eleanor!” she said in her usual sickly sweet tone. She was still dressed from work, in her suit and heels, and had been flipping through the mail on the counter, but she dropped it again to come over to me.

“Hi Mom,” I said through gritted teeth. I forced a smile as she gave me a kiss on each cheek because I knew she would ask me to, but I didn’t look her in the eyes. “How was your day?”

“Oh, it was lovely, dear.” She kept her hands over my cheeks, which was one of her favorite moves lately, and tucked them under my head, lifting it up. “How was yours?”

I considered telling her how my day was. I considered telling her everything that had happened over the past few days with Sebastian and Ainsley and Thomas. But I settled for saying, “It was good, thanks,” because I knew that was what she was really asking. There wasn’t any other option.

“I need a favor.” She scooped up some papers from the counter and held them out to me. “Could you take these next door?”

I stared at the papers in her hand like they were going to burn me. Next door. Sure, we had neighbors on either side, but she only ever sent me to the Novak’s, where Sebastian was almost guaranteed to be.

“Yes, give them to Jennifer Novak,” Mom said. I didn’t hold my hands out for the papers but she shoved them at me, not giving me the chance to refuse if I didn’t want them to fall to the floor. “They’re important documents for the PTA. I would take it myself but I really should get dinner started.”

“I could get dinner started,” I offered immediately. “I know you’ve been wanting me to learn how to cook. And then you can?—”

Her airy laugh cut me off. To most people, it would probably sound like just a normal laugh, but I knew my mother well enough to know that it was a sign she wasn’t happy.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Eleanor. It’s not the daughter’s job to deal with the household work. The daughter’s job is to do what the mother asks.”

And then she booped me on the nose. I cringed away but tried not to make a face, knowing she would get angry about that too.

Even though she said it in her usual airy tone, I knew that it was an order, and I’d be better off not arguing with her when she was in a mood like this. So I nodded stiffly and walked out.

I stopped in the living room to grab my sweater and wasn’t surprised to see the TV was now on some sports game. Dean glanced at me, clearly ready for me to fight him for the remote again, but relaxed as he saw me putting on my sweater and picking up the papers again.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “I thought you’d want to finish your episode.”

“Well, I’m not sure if you know,” I said, imitating my mom’s airy voice and putting on a fake smile like hers, “but it’s the daughter’s job to obey and do what the mom asks, so I’m going next door to deliver these papers.”

Dean laughed. “Sorry I must have forgotten.” He glanced over my shoulder warily. “She in the kitchen?”

“Yeah and she’s starting dinner now, so I’d steer clear.”

Dean and I might have been divided on a lot of issues, but we were united in helping each other steer clear of our parents.

“See you later,” I said. He barely held a hand up in a wave as I slipped on my shoes and walked out.

Like always, I walked down to the sidewalk instead of cutting across the grass, turning the 10-second walk into almost a minute.

But it also gave me the chance to look at the cars in the driveway.

I recognized their mom’s car, of course, and then there was a second one that must have been Lavender’s new one.

But I was happy to see that Sebastian’s car was nowhere to be found.

And, even better, Tiffany wasn’t sitting on his front porch either.

Even though I’d been sent over on behalf of my mom, I had a feeling she wouldn’t take too kindly to me showing up.

Even though she’d always put on a smile in front of me, I wouldn’t be quick to forget the way she’d spoken about me to Sebastian when she thought I couldn’t hear.

I knocked on the door and rocked back and forth on my heels as I waited for it to open.

The Novak’s front door was older than ours, with paint that was slowly chipping off.

Mom mentioned over the summer that Dean and Sebastian could repaint for them, but that was just before Mr. Novak left and the idea had fallen away, just like all the other plans they’d had.

I thought of Ainsley in the library, saying she hadn’t picked any of her courses because it had been too hard of a month for her, and wondered how the other Novak siblings had been affected.

I felt a little guilty as I realized it never occurred to me before now.

I’d thought of their dad leaving in a smaller way: they came over to our house because of the fighting and when they went back he was gone.

The end. I never considered how that must have bled into every other area of their lives.

How it was probably still draining them all now.

The door swung open, revealing the only Novak sibling I almost never spoke to.

Lavender’s hair was thrown in a messy bun and she was dressed in a black muscle tank and athletic shorts, looking like she was either mid-workout or about to start.

I was pretty sure she was an athlete, just like the rest of her siblings, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what sport she played.

“Hi?” she said, the word coming out more like a question.

I wondered if she recognized me. I would assume so, given that we’d lived next door to each other for five years, but then again, I wasn’t sure that we’d ever had a conversation.

Maybe one or two hey, how are you? but I wasn’t sure that was enough to make her remember me.

She was a year older than me, in the same grade as Sebastian and Dean, so we didn’t have any overlapping classes, and whenever our families got together for barbecues or block parties, she either stuck with the boys or her other friends that were around.

I would have assumed that she didn’t like me, except I thought it was the even simpler solution that she just didn’t remember me every time we met.

“My mom sent these over for your mom,” I said, holding the papers out for her. She took them carefully and glanced over the papers with more interest than I thought was necessary. Maybe she thought they would have some identifying information about my mom so she could figure out who I was.

“Thanks,” she said as she finished flipping through them and looked up at me again. “Do you know what they’re about?”

I thought she would probably have a better idea of that than me since she was the one who’d just read through them but I said, “I think something about the PTA. She didn’t really say.”

Lavender nodded and glanced at them again, which I took as my cue to leave. But just as I turned around to step off the porch, she spoke again. “Does your brother ever talk about me?”