All Over the Map

9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

“Why not tell your mom what you’re really doing?” Gabe asks a few minutes later as we’re getting back on the highway.

I glance up at the mirror. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

I look at Mia, but she has her earbuds in, watching YouTube. “Mia really didn’t tell you the whole story?”

“No. Said it was yours to tell. I’ve been putting together the pieces, but I’d like to hear it if you want to tell me.”

He sounds . . . not like a jerk? Genuinely interested? That would be a first.

Maybe it’s worth having the conversation if it means he’ll quit questioning every decision I make.

“I took a DNA test. Turns out my mom used a sperm donor but made up a story about a one-night stand. And that means I have biological half-siblings. And she won’t tell me anything, so I’m looking for my own answers right now.”

He’s quiet for a bit. “I didn’t know about the lie. That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of answers are you looking for?”

I am not about to tell Gabe Sandoval that I don’t understand big pieces of myself, and I’m wondering if the other half of my DNA explains them. So I say, “I don’t know.”

“Interesting answer coming from you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always asking people questions about themselves. It’s kind of your thing?” He says the last part uncertainly, like he wonders if he’s breaking this news to me. He kind of is.

“I never noticed.” Is that good? Bad? Annoying? I keep the flurry of questions to myself. You don’t care, Kendall. You aren’t fourteen anymore. “Never thought of myself as nosy.”

“I didn’t say that. Just saying it’s interesting you don’t know what to ask.”

“Fine. You got me. I know what questions I want to ask. I just don’t want to have a conversation about it with you.”

“Fair enough.” He falls quiet while my mind spins with this new development. Gabe has paid enough attention to me that he’s formed an impression of me as a question-asker. Just . . . what?

“Why not emails?” he asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Why a road trip for a conversation? Why not emails or FaceTime?”

Another Sandoval taking family for granted because theirs is always around. But it sounds petty to say out loud, so I just say, “Bonus content for college essays.”

“Boulder? You’ll get in.”

“No. NYU. Which is hard to get into and crazy expensive if I do, so I’ll need scholarships. Which is why I need something to set me apart. A journey to uncover a family secret should do the trick. I hope.”

He falls silent for several minutes, then signals to exit. “I might know how to fix the grandma problem.”

Mia pulls out an earbud. “Why are you exiting?”

“Finding a grandma.” His vagueness is maddening, but then he adds, “I’m not sure if it’ll work yet. I’ll tell you when I am.”

Mia shrugs, clearly as clueless as I am. A few minutes later, Gabe parks in front of a home improvement store, one of the huge ones that could fit our whole high school inside of it.

He kills the ignition and climbs out of the Jeep. “Let’s go.”

I’m halfway out of the car when he says that, but I immediately plop back into my seat. “Nope.”

Mia groans. “Gabe, she doesn’t take orders well. You have to ask, not tell.”

“I wasn’t—” He interrupts himself with a sigh. “Kendall, will you please get out of the Jeep so we can see if my plan to lie to your mom will work?”

“I object to the word ‘lie.’” I stay put.

He leans an arm against the roof over my open door and rests his forehead on it to stare down at me. “What word would you use? Trick?”

He makes me feel claustrophobic, looming. Even his scent invades my space as I catch a whiff of Tide. I can’t think, boxed in like that. “Trick is fine,” I mumble, pushing him out of the way so I can climb out.

He locks the car and heads toward the entrance. Mia loops her arm through mine and drags me after him. “Admit it: you’re curious.”

“That’s not a synonym for bugged, so no.”

Gabe stops for a second to scan the signs overhead listing the different departments before he switches direction. A few minutes later, we’re standing among the displays of model kitchens.

“Does that look like Grandma’s style?” He points to one with rustic cabinets.

“What are you up to?” Mia asks.

“You’ll see.”

Mia checks out the other kitchen models and comes back. “It’s this one,” she agrees, stopping in front of the rustic model. “It looks most like Grandma’s taste.”

“Now we find someone granny-looking and ask her to pose here,” he says.

“And how, exactly, do I pitch that?” I ask. “‘I’m trying to fool my mom. You look like a responsible adult. Will you participate?’”

Mia wrinkles her nose. “Please don’t start arguing again. Tell me how to stop this. Are you accepting bribes? Favors?”

“Relax,” Gabe says. “We’re not fighting. Kendall’s just going out of her way to deliberately misunderstand, like always.”

Like always ? This is not actually a thing I do, and I’m about to say so, but Gabe keeps talking. “I can find a granny, I think.”

“There’s no way you can talk someone into this,” I say.

His voice turns silky. “You want to bet?” I imagine this is how a cat would sound trying to talk a bird down from a tree.

Mia groans. “Don’t do it, Kendall. You know how badly this goes for the losers in my house. He won’t bet unless he’s sure he’ll win.”

I’m well aware of the Sandoval brothers’ bets. Mia hasn’t taken one since she was eight and losing meant she had to cut her bangs to her hairline. That was a rough six months.

But this is a gamble I won’t lose. “I’m taking the bet.”

Gabe smiles. “If I can find a granny for this picture, you have to ride shotgun the rest of the day.”

My palms grow clammy at the idea of sitting up front with him for hours. “You’re picking that to be spiteful. I wanted to be on this road trip with Mia, not you.”

His face goes blank. “Good thing she’ll only be twelve inches behind you. What do you care if you’re sure I can’t do it?”

If the risk is that high, I’m adding a condition to make it worth the gamble. “You have to get a fake granny and my mom has to buy it or no bet.”

“Deal.”

He turns to walk off, but I call after him, “Wait, you don’t know what you’re betting.”

He stops. “Doesn’t matter because I won’t lose, but sure. Name your price.”

What makes us even? I smile. “If you lose, you can’t talk for the rest of the day.”

Something flickers through his eyes. It’s gone before I can pin it down. He nods. “Prepare for shotgun and my five-hour monologue. Both of you stay here.”

He heads toward the gardening department and disappears through the sliding doors leading to all the plants.

“What do you think he’s up to?” I ask Mia.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure you’re riding shotgun.”

We do not “stay here.” Instead, we wander over to the paint department and entertain ourselves by choosing color chips to repaint each other’s rooms based on personality and the paint name.

She picks Hidden Sea Glass, a teal shade. “You’re steady and responsible like blue, but you have other tones that people don’t see unless they get to know you, and that’s where all the fun is.”

I look for a couple of minutes, then grab a color and press it into her hand. “This is you.”

“Fired Brick,” she reads from the label. “Um, that’s an ugly name.”

“I broke the rules. It’s not about the name. It’s about the color. Look at it. It’s red but it’s got hints of brown and yellow and gold and orange and all the things. All the things that are warm and good and interesting.”

She throws her arms around my neck. “I looooooooove you.”

Sandovals do this. They drop “I love you”s like they shed hair. You can’t leave their house without cheerful “I love you”s clinging to you.

“Weirdo,” I say into her curls as Gabe walks into the paint section.

“Meet Grandma.” He extends his phone, and I drag Mia’s arms from around my neck so I can look at it.

It shows a picture of an older Latina woman with a cloud of soft gray curls standing in the model kitchen. Her back is to the camera but she’s looking over her shoulder and waving. If I didn’t know he’d just set it up, it would definitely look like a grandma cooking at her own kitchen stove.

“Oh, my gosh. Her hair is exactly like Grandma’s,” Mia says. “How’d you get this?”

He shrugs. “Twenty bucks talks. You take shotgun, Barrows.”

I stare at the phone because I can’t meet his eyes. “It still has to fool my mom.”

“Text her and we’ll get lunch while you wait for her answer.”

I cross my arms and do nothing.

“Dude, I told you, you have to phrase it like a request,” Mia says. “I’m one of two people on Earth who’s allowed to tell her what to do, and I’m smart enough to boss her but shove sugar in her face afterward so she doesn’t get mad.”

“Like Maverick? Seriously? Give me your—” This time I don’t even have to glare before he corrects himself. “ Will you give me your number so I can send you the picture?”

Mia rattles it off to him as I head for the parking lot. There was a time when I’d have died for Gabe to text me, but now I don’t care, and I search for nearby restaurants instead.

He drives to a taco place up the road while I text my mom the picture.

I caught her when she had already started the posole, but Mrs. Ramirez says hello!

We’ve just taken our seats in the restaurant when Mom texts me back.

Lucky. I love posole. Thank Mrs. Ramirez for me. Call me later!

Any relief I feel evaporates the second Gabe asks, “Was that Maggie?”

I don’t want to answer him. I want to savor that I have fooled Mom and gotten away with this for today. But as I open my mouth to snap at him, I think about him comparing me to Maverick, their toddler nephew, and shrug instead. I’m not a child, no matter what he thinks. “Guess I’m riding shotgun.”

I would prefer to chew the gum stuck beneath our table. Instead, I’ll have to spend all my time making sure he doesn’t catch me looking at him, even on accident.

Quit staring at me. It’s creepy, and I hate it.

It wasn’t even the worst thing he said that night.

“Cheer up. It’s roomier up front anyway,” he says.

“I’d rather be locked in a clown car full of freshmen boys ripe from PE, but sure. Roomy is good.”

“That’s why he picked that bet,” Mia says. “I can’t believe you fell for it.”

Yeah, well. Falling for stupid Gabe things is an old habit. Fortunately, I’ve broken it before.