the beginning of summer, so it had been getting shaggy. Nan had given me crap about cutting it before school started, but I didn’t. Now, it was cut short, almost a buzz cut, except the top was long. I stared at it. Wow, I looked lame. It was so bad I thought it very plausible I could have given it to myself last night, while I was sleeping.
In the hallway I stopped outside my mom’s room. Her door was closed and I listened there for a minute but heard nothing. I didn’t stay long because I had other things on my mind. I thought of Nan, going off to get the Touch the night before. She told me it was done. She’d gotten Flight of Song and told Bryce to leave us alone. And that had worked, right? I was alive. In fact, I was better than alive, I realized as I descended into the living room.
I was cured.
And not only that, the living room was better, too. There was a new, leather sofa and a big-screen television. Nan’s old recliner was still there, but everything else was posh and expensive-looking. I could hear that kid giggling and smell eggs frying in the kitchen, so I went in, expecting to see Nan at the stove.
Instead, there was a party going on. I don’t think I’d ever seen that many people in my house at once. My mouth gaped. Some lady—the new maid?—stood in front of the stove, scraping a pan and holding a gurgling infant on her hip. The Spider-Man imp and another kid chased each other around a nice kitchen table. Some older guy sat in the midst of it all, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee.
Okay. So the maid came to clean and brought her entire family? Where was Nan? She definitely wouldn’t be putting up with this if she were here. I cleared my throat, and the lady turned around. Before I could say something to put her in her place, she said, “Oh, Nicky! Sit down. You’re late. You’ve got to get off to school soon.”
But I wasn’t listening. I was staring at her. Her hair was short. Her eyes weren’t dark-circled. And then there was the necklace, on a fraying cord. The green elephant, with its trunk up. It was her.
It was my mom.
I swallowed. Again and again.
She tried to hand me a plate of eggs, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to take it, so she jabbed me in the chest with it. “Why are you just standing there? Eat. What’s wrong with your hands?”
Hands? I looked down. They were shaking. I almost couldn’t stand. I almost couldn’t breathe anymore. Finally I took the eggs and said, “Mom?”
She wiped a little drool from the baby’s mouth. “Yeah? What?” She studied me. I studied her back. Trying to see what was there from before. What was new. What about her I still remembered. “Why are you staring?”
“Because you’re … beautiful,” I finally said.
“Aw, honey,” she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. Then her face hardened. She inspected me closely, as I did the same to her. “I think your brother’s right. Are you on something?”
“My … brother?” I spat out.
She pointed at the food. “Sit. Eat.”
I sat down, but eating was the furthest thing from my mind. Instead, I watched the kids run around the table. There were new, sparkling white appliances everywhere. Nan’s tomatoes were gone. In fact, if Nan’s Heaven’s a little closer in a house by the sea mural wasn’t hanging under the cabinets, I would have definitely thought I was in the wrong house. I tried to shovel a forkful of eggs into my mouth to make New Mom happy, but then I stopped halfway when my eyes caught on the guy across the table, reading the paper. If these kids were my brothers, then was he …? He munched an English muffin like this was any ordinary day, like he’d eaten with me a million times before, and said, “Hey, Nicky. Fun night last night?”
I stared at him, completely disregarding the question. Maybe it was the way he fidgeted his long legs under the table the way I did, or that he had very familiar dark hair that kind of went every which way, or that he had the same eyebrows that arched in a point in the center. He was a stranger; I was positive I’d never seen him before, but something about him was like déjà