small behind the books and the bills, added, “Is that okay?” I knew better than to ask to use the car, too, since gas was so expensive.
“Sure, lord knows I don’t have a plan for us.”
The Trillos lived a mile away, in a redbrick house on a street two blocks past the high school, in the direction of a McDonald’s on Ninety-Fifth Street that students would walk to after school. When we were younger, Candace and I would sit on her porch and crane our necks to see girls in groups sharing french fries or couples with their hands in each other’s back pockets walk by. We’d imagine that high school was going to be the beginning of our real life. If you could decide when you got to eat McDonald’s and had someone who liked to squeeze your butt, wasn’t that all you needed?
I showed up at five, because even though supper wouldn’t be until six, I always helped Candace make a salad and lay out plates and utensils. The big treat for Lasagna Night was that we all ate on tray tables in the TV room, and by the time the ABC Sunday Night Movie started, Mrs. Trillo would have dessert ready. My family had never had these kind of rituals, and now I wondered if that was why my parents had split up, or if we’d never had the rituals because they were people who didn’t belong together.
The front door was unlocked for me. The smell of Candace’s mom’s sauce—a simmering mixture of garlic and tomatoes that made me feel as warm as it did hungry—created its own weather. I followed the aroma into the kitchen, where Candace was slicing a loaf of Italian bread and her mom was laying a final wavy lasagna noodle atop a layer of cheese and sauce.
“Susan!” Mrs. Trillo said. “Can you fetch me the ladle, sweetie?”
I grabbed the ladle from a ceramic jar on the counter and handed it to her.
“We’ll do the salad and get the plates out and then we’re going to go to my room, okay, Ma?” Candace said. I could tell that she wanted to talk, so we worked fast, me slicing a cucumber and Candace tearing the lettuce. We layered it all in an oversize orange bowl. Candace dotted it with red cherry tomatoes before we left it on the table with the rest of the stuff for dinner.
We crossed through the TV room on the way to Candace’s room, and her brothers, Frank Jr. and Marty, offered up a lazy “Hey, Suze” as we walked by.
“Where’s your dad?” I asked.
“In the garage. They’re going to be laying people off at his job, and he’s the one who has to do it. The Folgers can is almost full,” she said, referring to the coffee can Mr. Trillo ashed into when he was stressed and smoking in their garage.
In Candace’s room, I picked up a copy of Seventeen with Phoebe Cates on the cover. “What’s the Sunday-night movie this week?”
“The Sting,” Candace said. “Paul Newman. Your favorite. Unless you only have eyes for Coach McMann now?”
I tossed a pillow at her. “It’s not like that,” I said, even if it was a little like that. “He’s my coach. I’m not throwing myself at him.”
“You did wear fake eyelashes to soccer practice,” Candace said, grinning mischievously.
“Look at this,” I said. In the magazine, there was a two-page photo spread of girls playing soccer. Their shirts were tucked neatly into belted shorts, and none of them were sweating. An inset box contained totally basic soccer facts, and I felt as if I were reading a profile of a celebrity who I knew personally. It was wildly self-satisfying to be ahead of the average Seventeen reader on something. “Would you ever want to rejoin the team?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, without even thinking about it. “I went to the football game last night. With some of the pep club.”
It sort of bugged me that she was skipping right over a chance to ask me about soccer to throw the pep club in my face. I had been planning to tell her about Joe, just for something to talk about, but I knew she’d barely ask about our soccer practice and only want to talk about his boyfriend potential. And since there wasn’t any, I kept my mouth shut.
The doorbell rang, and Candace’s head swiveled to look at me. “It’s George!” she said.
“Wait, who?” The news hit me in the