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Twelve
My mom has the car, because it’s hers and it’s a weeknight and she has to go to work, so I walk to Holden’s with my equipment slung on both shoulders. By the time I reach his house, my fingers are numb from the cold and I’ve thought about turning back home to get gloves at least three times. Holden and Taj are playing basketball in the driveway when I walk up.
“Saine Sinclair,” Taj greets me, breathless, his hair windblown. “Watch this!”
He throws the basketball into the hoop and it bounces down the driveway, past me. I watch it roll into the road.
“What was supposed to happen?”
“Really, you’re gonna play me like that?” He chases after the ball. “I made it in the hoop.”
“Sorry. I’m all out of participation trophies. Would a high five suffice?”
He dribbles the ball back to us. “No,” he says, looking down his nose at me. “It wouldnotsuffice.”
Holden, cheeks splotchy and red, takes the camera bag from my shoulder. “It was a good game, dude.”
“Who won?” I ask, tracking him to his front door.
“Me,” they both say.
They stop and face each other, nearly identical glares in place. “Me,” they say again at the same time.
“Don’t listen to him,” Taj says, pushing past him and opening the door. “I let him win.”
“So you admit it! I won!” Holden lets me go first and the two of them follow, the sound of playful slapping filling the foyer.
“Is Mara here?” I shrug out of my jacket and hang it up.
“No, Taylor’s home for fall break or something so Mara’s spending the week at her mom’s.”
“Does she see her mom a lot?” The one good thing about a father who skipped town is that I don’t have to split my time between him and my mom; it seems like it would be hard.
Taj bounds into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator, pulling out the half-empty jug of milk. He moves to a cabinet and frees a bowl, then finds cereal and a spoon.
“Yeah, but her mom works as some kind of trainer for office jobs, so she travels a lot. She’ll be gone for like a week, then back a week. Repeat.” Holden checks his phone. “We’ve got three minutes. I’ll go get my computer.”
He leaves Taj and me across from each other at the dining room table. I unpack my camera while he slurps up his cereal.
“Can I interview you?”
Slurp.“About what?”
“Holden. This competition.” I hit record.
“Oh yeah, for the VR stuff.”
“Yeah. That. You’re going to New York with us next weekend, aren’t you?”
“No, he just said that if his mom asks, I’m going to New York with him. My parents wouldn’t let me.”
I frown, heat pooling in my stomach. “So you’renotgoing?”
“No,” he says slowly, like I’m not understanding and, well, I’m not. “I’m not going, but you are. His mom would freak out if she knew he was going with just you, so he says he’s going with me.”
I’mfreaking out knowing he’s going with just me. Things were different when there was a third person.
“It’s dead!” Holden says, running into the dining room. His socks slip on the hardwood floor. “My laptop.” He sets it down next to me and unfurls his charger from around his arm, plugging it into the wall and then the laptop. It does that classic Mac power noise and slowly comes to life.
