now there was no one.
I was giving serious thought to jumping out the window when there was a scratching at my door.
“Beat it, Turk,” I said.
But the scratching went on.
Finally, I got up from my desk, went over to my door, and jerked it open.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
Turk was standing there with two hot mochas in one hand and her laptop under her arm.
“Want to do homework?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Me neither.” And she came in.
She looked at my science assignment.
“Devonian fishes and cod?” she said. “That’s totally lame. It should be a comparison of Devonian fishes and sharks. Then you might have something valid. Well, what have you got so far?”
“‘The,’” I said. “And thanks for the mocha, by the way.”
“Whatever,” Turk said. “Talk fish to me.”
And it was weird, but talking to Turk worked. She wasn’t even in the same class I was, but she knew what questions to ask. And by answering them, I got the framework of my answer. By the time we were done, I had five pages of notes. I could write that essay in a couple of hours now.
To celebrate, we went down to the espresso machine and made two more mochas.
“I got to tell you, Turk,” I said. “That was a huge help.”
“What else you got?” she said.
I had a rewrite of a history assignment, I had two lessons in high jenti, I had a math assignment that could have had Einstein reaching for his cheat sheet, and I had a few other things.
“Let’s take a look at ’em,” Turk said.
By midnight, we had the math knocked off, the history thing redone, and everything else except the high jenti, which Turk didn’t know any more about than I did. It was amazing to work with her. Her mind was like a machine, slicing the assignments into doable chunks, and showing me how to fit them back together. By the time we were done, I felt like there was nothing I had to learn that I couldn’t handle—as long as I had Turk to help me.
“Want to kick back?” I said when we were finished.
“What’ve you got in mind?” she said.
“Something wild and crazy,” I said. “Like watching an old movie, maybe.”
“Something with vampires,” Turk said.
Mom and Dad were already in bed, so we took over the watching room. This was the name Mom had given to the room downstairs where she and Dad curled up with their movies after Dad had brought in our gigantic new flat-screen.
Turk picked out something with a title like Dracula’s Third Cousin. It was a typical vampire flick. Castles, dark and stormy nights, and Count Casimir, a tall, dark guy with an English accent who went around sucking blood until somebody put a stake in his heart after about an hour and a half.
I’d seen this movie five or six times. It was a joke. But tonight, it wasn’t funny. Somehow, the stupid script and the hammy acting were real in a way they’d never been. Not scary real, sad real. And damn it, when the vampire nailed his third victim, I started to cry.
That was weird enough. But what happened next was even weirder. Turk put her arms around me.
“Hey,” she said. “Hey, go ahead, stupid. It’s about time.”
And I did.
When I was wiping my nose and the movie credits were rolling up the screen, I felt better, the way you do, and I hugged Turk back.
“Easy,” she said. “I can’t take too much touchy-feely family stuff.”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning, my voice shaky. “Why are you being so nice to me, anyway?”
“I feel sorry for you,” Turk said. “I figure you’re finding out what I’ve known since I was six. People always leave you.”
“No, they don’t,” I said. “A lot of people hang together forever.”
“How many friends from California are still in your life?” Turk said.
“I still get e-mail from some of them,” I said.
“When was the last time?” Turk asked.
I couldn’t remember.
“A few months,” I said. “I guess. But my parents. I mean, a lot of people. People in New Sodom. Jenti stick together like they’ve got Velcro on their wings.”
“Not so much,” Turk said. “A lot of the people you think are tight with each other aren’t. It just looks that way. From the outside.”
“You still haven’t said anything about my mom and dad,” I said.
“How long have they been together?” Turk said. “Eighteen, twenty years? It’s a long time, Cuz, but it ain’t forever. Forever hasn’t happened yet. And