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“Good! I was over at Mackenzie and Claire’s for a little while. They volunteered to grade my practice exam.”
“How’d it go?” Tanner asks at the same time as Leo says, “Mackenzie?”
I smirk, deciding to let his obsession slide. “It was okay. I think I might have gotten as far as I can possibly hope to get in math, though, so I might just focus on my written and verbal sections to try to get my score higher.”
“Flashcards!” Tanner exclaims, and before I can blink, he’s scrambling off the couch and disappearing into his room.
“Flashcards?”
“Flashcards,” Leo confirms. “Tanner has a thing for studying with them. I’m a little surprised it’s taken him this long to break them out, honestly.”
It only takes a few seconds before he’s back in the living room, a stack of colorful flashcards in hand. I follow him over to the table next to my little corner, where he opens his laptop and pulls up a website full of suggested words to learn for the SATs. I’ll need to budget for one of those, I realize, looking at the sleek computer. There’s apparently some money tucked away in a 529 college account that my dad wasn’t able to touch, but I suspect that will only go so far. Budgeting is another thing on my list of topics to tackle sooner rather than later.
Tanner spends a few minutes explaining his study method to me, then he leaves me to it as he and Em—Leo—go back to their game.
An hour goes by, but I barely notice.
Eventually, a knock at the door and the smell of food pulls me out of my study bubble. Apparently, the boys were feeling too lazy to go to the dining hall—their words, not mine—so they went ahead and ordered chicken wings. I smile when Leo walks over with a salad and a small container of wings for me.
“Not spicy, just like you like ‘em.”
“Gracias, Emilio,” I coo in appreciation.
“You’re the only Mexican I know who doesn’t like spicy food,” he grumbles good-naturedly.
“Half-Mexican.” I stick my tongue out at him. It’s an old argument. Despite the wonderful food my mom used to cook for us, I never did learn how to tolerate anything with too much heat. “No Lincoln tonight?” I ask, looking around the dorm room in case I somehow managed to miss him walking in.
“Nah, he’s on duty,” Leo replies, pulling over his own bucket of wings that smell decidedly more dangerous than my own pile.
I try to ignore the little stab of disappointment that washes over me at hearing Lincoln is busy. It’s just my desire to have my whole family pack around me. Perfectly natural, or so I assume.
We eat in comfortable silence for a little while. Tanner disappears into his room to study, though he leaves some sports game on the TV that Leo seems to be watching halfheartedly. I’ve never cared much for sports, but the background noise it creates is soothing. Just being here, in a cramped dorm room at a cramped table, eating mediocre wings with my brother, is nice.
More than nice.
“So, do you have a costume picked out for Halloween?” I ask, noticing the game has gone to a commercial. “Mason told me about the annual event the swim team puts on. You were some sort of bat last year ...?” From the pictures I saw it was hard to tell what he’d been going for, standing there covered in soaking-wet fabric with a grin on his face.
“Flying squirrel,” he corrects.
“Last I checked, those things weren’t known for their swimming ability.”
“Yeah, well, I tried to use the space in the arm flaps to rig some inflatables, thinking it might counteract the weight of the material. Didn’t exactly work out as planned.”
We laugh, and I move to grab a glass of water from the small kitchen. When I sit back down, I notice Leo looks decidedly more serious.
“So. Mason, huh?”
“Ummmm ... yeah? I went with him to the library the other day to study, remember?”
“And you’ve been hanging out with Micah a lot. Working on those illustrations with him.” It’s not a question, but I feel compelled to answer anyway.
“We’ve met up a few times. He’s nice. And you’re friends with them too,” I accuse, feeling suddenly self-conscious and slightly defensive.
Leo doesn’t meet my eye, and an awkward silence spreads between us for what feels like forever but is probably just a few seconds.
“Jeez, you know I’m no good at this shit, Espy,” he finally states, looking over at me with a grimace.
“Good at what?”
