“Tuition,” Nita said, and groaned under her breath.
“Student loans,” Kit said. “It’s a good thing she’s just going to SUNY. But this still looks like a ‘nothing at all’ day.”
“Don’t think I don’t hear you two lurking in there!” Kit’s pop said.
“Not lurking, pop,” Kit said. “Nita’s getting a sandwich. She didn’t have time to eat anything at the Crossings.”
“Because we were busy meeting with the friends who’re going to come!” Carmela said, swinging back into the living room and flopping down onto the nearby couch, where she lay staring at the ceiling in a vaguely hopeless way.
“Who you want to have come,” her pop said, “and who you really should thought about not wanting to disappoint before you issued an invitation that you don’t know if you’re going to be allowed to fulfill!” He turned a page, and the paper rustled quite hard.
“Uh oh, the getting-permission-first thing,” Kit murmured.
“Yeah,” Nita murmured back, “I hit her with that. Didn’t count for much at the time. She was too buzzed.”
“If she’s smart, she won’t push him…”
Possibly realizing this, Carmela merely made a little disappointed moaning sound and went quiet.
“Anyway, there’s plenty of time to think about this,” Kit’s pop said. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”
“But some of the guests need time to get their schedules sorted because they’ll be coming such a long way. Ireland! Germany!”
“16 Aurigae,” Nita added helpfully.
The newspaper rustled again, and this time the right-hand page twitched aside just enough for Nita to catch a glimpse of Kit’s pop’s eyes looking toward her over the tops of his reading glasses. “Sixteen what?”
“Aurigae. It’s a star about two hundred and thirty light years from here,” Nita said. “An orange giant.”
“About two hundred and thirty?” Kit’s pop said.
“Give or take,” Nita said. “That’s where Filif comes from.”
“So this is one of the three who stayed in your basement in their little holes in the wall,” said Kit’s mama as she appeared through the door on the far side of the living room that led to the back bedrooms.
“Elective access gated spaces,” Kit said. “Puptents, we call them. They don’t take up any space in our space: just somewhere else. It’s like taking your home with you, a little.”
His mama leaned on the passthrough’s shelf. “And the one we’re discussing, 16 Aurigae Guy—? This is the one who looks like a Christmas tree?”
Nita raised her eyebrows at Kit. His mother had always seemed to have the superpower of being able to hear—or overhear—any conversation that took place under the Rodriguezes’ roof, no matter how far away she was in the house. Sometimes it was really useful, and sometimes it was a pain in the butt, but Nita had learned to deal with it.
“He’s a Demisiv,” Nita said. “That’s both the planet and the species. They’re carbon-based like us, but they evolved… really differently.”
“To wind up looking like they do, I’d imagine so.”
Nita shrugged. “They’re related to trees the same way we’re related to the tetrapods.” She noticed Kit’s pop giving her a slightly confused look from behind the paper, and added, “You know, one of those fish species that got out of the water a long time ago, developed legs out of their fins and started walking around. There’ve been a lot of branches in the evolutionary tree between them and us. Same number of branches, pretty much, between Filif and his species’ ancestors.”
“A lot of water under the bridge for his people, then,” Kit’s pop said.
“Five hundred million years,” Kit said, “give or take.”
“Huh,” said Kit’s pop: a neutral sort of sound. He went back behind the paper again, turned another page.
Kit’s mama came into the kitchen and stood still in front of the stove for a few seconds, giving the cooktop a long thoughtful look. “Spaghetti and meatballs?” she said.
“Sounds good, Mama.”
“Then don’t overdo the sandwiches, you two.” Kit’s mama got down on one knee and started going through the cupboard under the counter: Kit and Nita moved to either side to get out of her way. “So what else does Mr. Christmas Tree Wizard do besides get all excited over the thought of being decorated?”
“He’s been working with the authorities at the Crossings as a go-between for the Interconnect Project,” Nita said. “The Demisiv have been a big part of the Project for a long time. It’s a group of species who specialize in long-distance intergalactic transit: keeping it running, helping people get around. They also do emergency work… help move populations who have to find new worlds to live on, because their stars have blown up or they’ve had planetary natural disasters or whatever.”
“So… kind of a humanitarian organization?”
That wasn’t a comparison Nita had thought to make. “Yeah,” she said.
“For a whole lot of values of ‘human,’” Kit added.
Kit’s mama didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept looking around in the cupboard. “Juan,” she said, “are we out of spaghetti again?”
“There’s fettucini…”
“It’s not the same.” She got up, sighing, and opened an upper cupboard. “Okay, we’ll do it with fusilli. But you said you were getting spaghetti on the way back from work…”
The paper rustled. “Sorry. My head was killing me and I just wanted to get home.”
“Well, tomorrow then.”
“I’ll make a note.”
Kit’s mama rummaged around for a big pot and started filling it with water. “Well,” she said while the faucet was running. “He sounds like a good influence. One thing, though.”
Kit and Nita looked at each other. “Yeah?”
“Is your friend a needle-shedding type?”
“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Kit said.
“The occasional berry,” Nita said. “But only when he’s in trans.”
Kit’s mama put her eyebrows up. “Doesn’t sound like a problem,” she said. She put the pot on the stove and turned on the heat under it. “How many people are we talking?”
“We’re still working that out,” Nita said. “Wanted to get the okay from you first.”
“You did, at least,” Kit’s mama said, and flashed a grin at Nita.
Nita did her best to produce a We-are-so-busted expression that would acknowledge the realities of the situation without assigning blame to any specific party. Kit simultaneously looked elsewhere and looked innocent.
“And this is supposed to be a one-night sleepover? On the twentieth?”
“That’s right,” Kit said. “We wouldn’t be up here all that much. Mostly in the puptents: there’ll be more room.”
Nita heard another newspaper page turn, but purposely didn’t look that way, because Kit’s mama was doing so.
A second passed. “The carol-singing thing’s the night after,” Kit’s mama said. “Don’t forget.”
“We won’t,” Kit said.
His mama headed out of the kitchen and through the living room again. ”Just try to keep the other collateral damage to a minimum, yeah?” she said to Carmela as she passed by the couch. “It wouldn’t be good to freak the neighbors.”
“At least any more than they have been already,” muttered Kit’s pop from behind the paper.
“Oh Mama thank you!” Carmela shrieked and bounded up off the couch to grab her and hug her as she passed through.
“Don’t thank me,” said Kit’s mama. “Thank your Pop.”
The logic of this might not have been instantly obvious to the casual bystander, but Nita had seen enough of these family discussions at Kit’s house to understand that with his folks, parental consensus was often reached by some mechanism she didn’t understand and probably wasn’t meant to. “Thanks, Mr. Rodriguez!” Nita immediately said over the noise of Carmela diving past the newspaper, seizing her Pop and covering his face with smooches.