“You staying long?” Jude asked me.
“Hopefully forever, so she never has to go back to that nasty old Chicago,” Mom groused because her steady diet of twenty-four-hour news meant she thought every American city was simply the movie set ofThe Purge.
“Chicago is amazing,” I said. “The restaurants are awesome, there’s always something to do, and there are tons of shows and movies filmed there. They’re filming the new Spider-Man movie there right now!”
I wasn’t going to mention that I recently hooked up several times with a Spider-Man stuntman I’d met on the Spark app. I called him Spider-Man Mateo, because, to be honest, I couldn’t 100 percent recall if we’d actually exchanged last names or not.
To his credit, he did bring some fairly acrobatic moves into the bedroom, and without his mask, he was gorgeous. He had an accent to die for, as well as a stack of for-real washboard abs. I liked him because he never asked for commitment and didn’t pester me with awkward exclusivity talks. In fact, he didn’t pester me with much talk at all, which was my idea of the perfect date.
Just thinking about Spider-Man Mateo seemed to summon a small spindly little spider, which crawled onto the counter near the sink. Mom screeched, “Spider!” and raised her tray of muffins, ready to squash the bug.
“No!” I shouted, grabbing her arm. “Don’t kill it.” I grabbed an empty mug from a hook over the sink and gingerly edged the spider into the cup, pushed open the door of the Airstream, and gently released it outside. It scurried into the grass and disappeared.
“Can you believe she saves those things?” Mom muttered in disgust. “She reads one book as a kid, and spiders are her friends forever.”
“Charlotte’s Webis a classic,” I argued.
“Remember when a spider made a web outside our bedroom window?” Olivia said, wistful. We shared a small room with white bunk beds for most of our childhood.
“Of course I remember!” It was a big web that took up half the window. We watched it nightly. I kept expecting it to spell out messages to us.
“I remember that when it died, you made us bury it in a matchbox in the yard,” Mom groaned, rolling her eyes. “We had to have a whole funeral.”
“Oh, I remember,” Jude said. “She asked me to play violin.”
I’d forgotten about the scratchy notes of Mozart floating through the yard as I dug a hole under the elm tree behind the Airstream with a garden spade.
“You made us all say a few words,” Olivia recounted.
“Right, and I believe I said, ‘Why are we here, again?’” Mom quipped.
“Spiders get a bad rap, but they’re good to have around,” I pointed out.
“You don’t mean that,” Mom said, trying to gaslight me again. “Jude! Tell my daughter spiders should be killed on sight.”
Jude just laughed a little. “Mama Jenny, I would never tell any woman what to do.” He put up both hands in surrender, making both Mom and Olivia laugh. “Especially not one with a black belt.” He eyed me. “And who won the Junior Krav Maga Championship.”
Sophomore year, I nabbed the title by beating another fifteen-year-old girl who was built like a Teamster.
“That’s just because you’re too nice,” Mom said. The only person Mom adored more than Jude was Oscar, her clear favorite of the family. “That’s the kind of good men you find here in Lake Sanguis.”
Mom was as subtle as a freight train.
“Lake Sanguis is boring,” I declared.
“It’s safer than Chicago,” Mom pointed out. “We don’t have serial killers running loose.”
“Low blow,” I told her, even though she was right. Lake Sanguis’s biggest crime last year was the theft of a tandem bike from Margaret Morton, and we were pretty sure her husband disposed of it himself to avoid summer rides with his wife down the lakeside trail.
“Jude, will you tell Ella that she needs to get off the Spark app? It’s dangerous,” Mom pleaded.
Oh, Lord. Why did she tell him I was on the Spark app? Jude might be a cheese scientist, but I’m sure he didn’t live under a rock. He had to know that the Spark app was best known forcasual meet-ups. Jude looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Er…” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Mom, Jude does not need to know this,” I said, but that just fueled her more.
“You know Ella used to have such the crush on you,” Mom continued, because there wasn’t any situation she couldn’t make more embarrassing if she tried hard enough.
I felt my face flame hot as I remembered a starry-eyed, fifth-grade me writing his name and circling it with pink puffy heart stickers. Why’d she have to expose me like that?
