four
While I was waiting for Heather to show up at my house that morning, I worked out for about half an hour on the elliptical machine in Luke’s exercise room and then snuck into Mom’s bathroom to shower—mine was just a regular shower but hers had seven showerheads all spritzing you from different angles. It was crazily great and I didn’t even feel guilty about it, since the house had been built green, and our gray water—water we’d only used a little bit, like for showers and stuff—went directly into our yard and watered the plants.
This house was ridiculous in the best possible sense—huge and comfortable and luxurious . . . practically decadent. It sometimes freaked me out to think that this was the only house Jacob would know, that he would grow up thinking this was normal. He’d never know what it was like to share a one-room apartment with Mom or spend a few years in a small house so close to your neighbors that you could hear them calling to each other from one room to another. The funny thing was, I almost felt sorry for him. This house was so big, I often didn’t know who was home and who wasn’t. I liked having my space, but in a weird way, I was glad I’d had so much togetherness with Mom when I was little.
I heard the gate buzz right after I got out of the shower. I hit the wall panel to let Heather in and used the intercom to tell George to open the front door. I threw on a pair of shorts and a clean tank top and headed downstairs in my bare feet; it was late July and super hot outside, but the house was comfortable with the air-conditioning running.
Jacob was slowly turning in circles in the big open foyer area at the bottom of the stairs. Our housekeeper, Lorena, was standing on the steps talking to him.
Lorena was roughly my mother’s age and had an eleven-year-old daughter of her own, who she talked to about ten times a day on her cell phone. Mom had hired her to clean a couple of days a week when we first moved into the big house. After Mom got pregnant with Jacob, Lorena mentioned that she liked taking care of babies and Mom instantly hired her full-time. I think the whole Westside nanny thing kind of freaked Mom out, so she was relieved to have someone around to help without going down that road. Mom told me she expected me to continue to be responsible for making my bed and cleaning my room, but over the course of the last few years, we’d all gotten a little lazy and used to being waited on. If I left my clothes on the floor, they ended up in the hamper or cleaned and folded in my drawers—so why keep picking them up? And Lorena made my bed much smoother than I could.
We were all slightly terrified of her, even though she was totally sweet. It was just that she could be intractable. Like once she thought that a pillow looked better on the smaller armchair in the formal living room, but Mom had bought it for the bigger one. Every time Lorena was in the living room, she’d put it on the smaller one, and then Mom would switch it to the bigger one. This went on for weeks. They never discussed it or acknowledged there was a battle of wills going on. But eventually Mom gave up and just left it on the smaller chair. “She’s stronger than I am,” Mom told me with a good-natured shrug.
“Let’s do something else,” Lorena was saying now to Jacob as I came close. “Oh, look, there’s Ellie. Don’t you want to say hi to Ellie? Look at Ellie and say hi, Jacob. Jacob! Stop going in circles and say hi to your sister.”
He kept turning, his arms wide, his head thrown back so he could stare up at the ceiling. It was a classic Jacob thing to do.
I grabbed his arms and stopped him from spinning long enough to drop a kiss on his head and tell him he was my baby dude, and then I let him go and went on into the kitchen, while he went back to twirling behind me. Lorena may have been stronger than Mom, but Jacob was stronger than Lorena. And therefore everyone else.
Heather was already sitting at the big round table. George was at the counter, sticking another pod into the coffee maker.
Heather was chattering away—something about how glad she was to be done with junior year but how terrified she was of all the college application stuff.
George put the cup of coffee in front of her and said, “Do you want milk or sugar?”
“Milk, please. I can get it, though.”
“No problem. I’m up anyway.” He went over to the refrigerator.
“You’ll wait on her, but not me?” I said.
“Heather asks nicely,” George said, setting down the milk carton and taking his seat. “You should try it. You guys ready to do some work?”
“I should warn you that I did terribly on the PSATs,” Heather said. “I may be hopeless.”
“That’s why you’re here,” I said.
George gave us a bunch of multiple-choice math word problems. It took me a little while on one, and I made a careless error on another, but I basically knew what I was doing, which he acknowledged.
But Heather kept saying, “I just don’t get it. I don’t get how you can turn this into something solvable.”
“You make x stand in for the unknown answer,” George said, for about the fourth time in five minutes. “And then you create a simple equation and solve for x. Did you see how Ellie set hers up?”
“My brain doesn’t work like Ellie’s.”
“I’ve just done more SAT prep than you have,” I said. “That’s all.”
“I’ve taken an eight-week class and two one-day workshops,” she said morosely.
While we worked, my phone kept vibrating with texts from my school friends Riley and Skyler, who wanted to get together with me that afternoon. The fourth time I picked up my phone to read a text, George plucked it out of my hand and said, “You can’t have this thing near you. You’re an addict.”
“Some of us have social lives. You wouldn’t know about that.”
He squinted at the screen. “Who’s Skyler? Boy or girl?”
“Never occurred to me to find out.”
“Whoever it is wants to come over.”
“Shocker,” I said, because everyone always wanted to come over to my house: my house was where Luke Weston lived. I grabbed my phone back and quickly texted Skyler and Riley—while George tapped his fingers impatiently on the table—to tell them I’d rather meet at the mall and go see a movie. “If I don’t answer, they’ll just keep bugging me,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. “Ready to get back to work?”
“One sec.” Now I had to text Mom to let her know my plans and make sure she wasn’t counting on me for dinner or anything. Texting was our main method of communication. Mom liked me to keep her informed, but sometimes I had no idea if she was even home or not (like I said, our house was really big) so . . . texting. The next best thing to being there.
“Okay, now,” I said, and put the phone down for the rest of our study time—except when I got bored waiting for Heather to catch up and used the time to check my Instagram feed.
Once George said we were done for the day, I invited Heather to come to the mall with me, and she ran to the bathroom to get ready.
George looked up from his keyboard; he was back to researching anniversary celebration venues. He said idly, “So . . . is Skyler a girl or a guy?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah. I could be walking down the street and someone could yell, ‘Skyler’s getting away!’ and I wouldn’t know who to look for.”
“Probably a dog,” I said. “In that scenario.”
“Yes, but a boy or girl dog?”
“You’d have to look between its legs to figure that out.”
“Sounds risky.” He beckoned to me and lowered his voice. “Listen, Ellie, Heather’s really sweet but you might want to study with someone who can keep up with you.”
“I like helping her.”
“Very noble,” he said. “But if she’s slowing you down—”
“I’m back,” Heather announced from the doorway.