I have fingers and toes to count on, all three of us are basically spun out onto different planets.
But there it is, a month later: an email in my inbox, directing me to a website that apparently knows more about me than my sixteen years of knowing myself.
I scroll down, morbidly fascinated by the details. It tells me I’m most likely brunette (check), have curly hair (aggressive check), and am prone to getting a unibrow (rude, but also check). It tells me I’m probably not lactose intolerant and probably don’t have issues with sleep, and that I am more likely than others to flush when drinking alcohol (noted, for future college endeavors). It also tells me I’m 35.6 percent Irish, a fact I immediately tuck away to rub in Connie’s face when the time comes.
But whatever else it knows about me is abruptly cut off by the hum of my phone. It’s from Leo, texting the group chat: DNA results came in. Big fat nothing.
It’s the kind of text that I don’t even have to wait for anyone to respond to in order to know we’re all going to head over to Leo’s. Still, I wait a few minutes, putting Kitty in her case and popping some gum in my mouth, giving Connie a chance to catch up to me so we’ll get there at the same time.
“Where are you headed, kiddo?”
Allow me to clarify, because in the last few months of him shifting into working from home more often, I’ve become semifluent in Dad. In this case, Where are you headed, kiddo? loosely translates to I’m pretty sure you haven’t finished rewriting that English essay you tanked, and I’m 100 percent using this as a loving, yet still deeply passive-aggressive way to bring it up.
I tighten my grip on my helmet, keeping my eyeballs as still as I possibly can even though resisting an eye roll right now might actually be pressurizing something in my brain.
“Leo’s.”
My dad pulls one of those affable, apologetic smiles of his, and I brace for the usual segue into the routine he and my mom have been perfecting since the start of junior year, when my GPA first took a swan dive.
“How’s the old Abby Agenda?”
Ah, yes. The infamous “Abby Agenda.” This chipper turn of phrase includes, and is not limited to, all the exhaustive tutoring sessions my parents signed me up for, the student-run test prep meetup for the SATs they keep making me attend, and a giant running list of all my homework assignments put on a whiteboard in the kitchen (or as I like to call it, the Board of Shame). I will give them points for creativity, if not subtlety.
“Dad. There are like, five days before summer vacation. I’m good to go.”
He raises his eyebrows, and just as he intended, there’s a fresh wave of guilt—not because I care all that much about anything on Abby’s Annoyingly Alliterative Agenda, but because he looks straight-up exhausted.
“I’ll be good to go,” I correct myself. “But it’s Saturday. And it’s illegal to talk about homework on Saturdays.”
“Says the kid with two lawyer parents.” His smile is wry, but not enough to let me know I’m off the hook.
I blow a stray strand of hair out of my face. “I’ve got another draft ready, okay? I spent half the day on it. Now can I please go look at the sun before it swallows up the earth?”
He nods appreciatively. “We’ll take a look at it when you get home.”
I’m so relieved by my successful jailbreak that I basically tear holes into the street with my skateboard on my way to Leo’s. It’s only after I roll to a stop and shake the helmet head out of my mass of curls that I see the text from Connie, who is yet again held up at a Student Government Association meetup, and has essentially left me for dead.
“Well, shit.”
If this were a few months ago, hanging out with Leo one-on-one would have been just another Saturday afternoon. But this isn’t a few months ago. This is right the heck now, and I am standing like an idiot in his driveway, the shadow of the BEI creeping over me like an extremely humiliating, pheromone-ridden ghost.
Before I can decide what to do, Leo spots me and opens the front door.
“That’ll be the Day,” he says.
In lieu of nicknames, Leo’s greetings of choice include any and all idioms about the word Day, which happens to be my last name.