5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
“I messaged Seth. He confirmed he’s my half-brother.”
Mia leans back and stares at me, eyes wide. “Whoa.”
“Yeah. And he invited me to Arizona to meet him, so I’m going to go.”
“When?”
“Next week. Road trip.”
This is, among countless other reasons, why I love Mia: she doesn’t flat out tell me I’m crazy when I announce this. She hates the idea. I can tell by the smile she gives me. She usually reserves it for lying to her nephew about how much she likes his scribble pictures. Road trips to locate recently discovered half-siblings aren’t Mia’s kind of spontaneity.
She picks at her bottom lip, pulling at the dry skin she always has from sun exposure during softball season. “You don’t have a car,” she says.
I rest my chin on my fists and smile at her sweetly. “But you do.”
She’s already shaking her head. “There’s no way my parents will go for it.”
“We don’t tell them. We’ll go next week while your parents are on their cruise.” The Sandoval boys swear a lot. Mrs. Sandoval has a swear jar she calls her cruise fund. Enough money has gone into it to buy every Sandoval a ticket, but it’s their anniversary trip, and Mrs. Sandoval said “hell, no” to bringing the whole family and stuck five more dollars in the jar. Gabe has spring break next week and volunteered to keep an eye on Mia.
Which is dumb. Gabe’s just eighteen months older than her. Fifteen months older than me. He’s only two grades ahead of us because of where his birthday falls. He’s no more qualified to look after Mia than she is, but it was probably his idea. He’s always acted like he had five years on me. Us.
“Gabe won’t go for it,” Mia says flatly.
“We won’t tell him until they’re gone. What can he do when your parents are in the middle of the ocean? When we get back safe and sound, he’ll be over it and not say anything.” It’s the only good thing I can say about him: he can keep his mouth shut when it counts. That was the other lesson from that awful night.
Mia does at least four start-and-stops, almost saying something, then cutting herself off before almost saying something else. That means she must have seen at least four more flaws with this plan. She picks one to start with. “There’s no need to rush. Just email Seth for a while. Talk on the phone. You can go this summer.”
“No, I can’t. Next week is the perfect opportunity. I don’t know how to pull it off this summer. And I need to do it before the fall so I can use this experience in my scholarship application essays.”
She hesitates, then with a small smile, she nods. “Yeah. I guess the only insurmountable problem is that your mom isn’t going to let you do this in a million years. Plus infinity. Times another infinity.”
It’s definitely the bigger problem. It’s almost as big as she makes it sound. Almost.
“I’ll think of something.”