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“Our group went down to the pond and we dissected frogs! Or, the counselor did, but we got to watch.”
“For fun?”
She dug into the applesauce. “No, for science.”
I put the spoon down, officially done eating. Maybe done with applesauce for the rest of the pregnancy, its creaminess now wrapped up for me with Sammy’s frogs.
“It was awesome,” she said. “I got to see the heart.”
I interrupted her, fighting back the vomit. “That’s great, Sammy,” I said. “I’m so glad you had a good time.”
She motioned in the direction of her classroom. “Do you want to come see the frogs?”
“Definitely not,” I said. “I did want to talk to you, though.”
“About what?”
“That school you were telling me about.”
She looked up, and I could see it wash over her face. Excitement. And then the opposite.
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ve been wondering about something. If there was a way to make it work, would you like to go there?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
I met her eyes, waited.
“I would like to,” she said. “Why?”
“There’s a job I could take. It would make it possible to help pay for it. Get you and your mom a place to live nearby there.”
“My mother won’t want that.”
“Probably not, but . . . I think it’s a good thing to know what you want. If you do, you have a chance of getting it. If you don’t, you have a chance of getting only what someone else wants you to have.”
She wiped her hands. “I think I’d like for you to take me home.”
48
It started raining on the way back to the house—a summer shower—though by the time we pulled down the driveway, the shower had turned into a downpour. And we had to make a run for it, to not get soaked on the way inside.
When we walked in, Thomas was standing by the stove and making dinner. Or, more accurately, Thomas was hobbling on crutches by the stove, attempting to make dinner. It looked like a lasagna, rich and meaty, with about a pound of cheese on top. And totally burnt. The smell rose off of it, gnarly and intense.
Sammy pinched her nose as Thomas turned and saw us in the doorway.
“I thought we were ordering pizza tonight,” she said.
He looked back and forth between us. “We are now,” he said.
Then he pushed the lasagna away, dramatically for effect.
Sammy laughed. “Great,” she said. “Call up when it gets here.”
She disappeared up into her loft, leaving us in the kitchen alone. I watched her go, trying to will her downstairs.
I looked back at Thomas. I tried not to stare at this guy who had been my sister’s partner for the last several years. He was tall, if a little gangly, with a mop of blond hair on top of his head that made him look younger than he was. This was the first time we were really meeting, except for the brief exchange the morning I’d stumbled home from seeing Danny.
