Chapter 9
Nine
My first morning in the Beaumont house is overwhelming. Marcus has already gone to work by the time I get up and go downstairs,
where Valencia is waiting for me.
“Good morning!” She takes the pizza plate I brought down, putting it in the sink, and asks me how I want my eggs.
“Scrambled is fine, thank you.”
She hands me a thick fan deck of paint samples to look at for my room and tells me to sit at the kitchen table while she cooks.
I absentmindedly look through the colors but I still feel weird changing Nate’s room.
“How did you sleep?” she asks.
“Fine.” In truth I slept better than I thought I was going to. Maybe it was exhaustion catching up with me. Or maybe the past
eight months have taught me to get sleep however I can, wherever I can, for as long as I can. Because who knows when the next time I’ll get it will be?
“I’ve taken the rest of the week off,” she says.
So she’ll be here all day? That’s not good.
“You don’t have to do that. Really, I’m fine.”
“I know how overwhelming all this is for you.” She uses a spatula to put the eggs on a plate and walks it over to me. “You’re in a strange house, to you we’re strange people. I don’t want you to feel alone.”
I think I’d rather feel alone for a bit. Especially because if I’m alone, then I can get out of here.
The front door opens, and Valencia moves to the kitchen doorway. Her smile grows and she waves. “Honey, come in here. Your
brother’s up.”
Easton enters the kitchen and looks right at me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking because his face is blank. He’s dressed in
shorts and a sweat-soaked T-shirt, so he must have gone for a run.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi.”
Valencia goes back to the stovetop. “Do you want some breakfast?”
“Sure,” Easton says. Then he goes over to the fridge and gets a bottle of water. He chugs it down, his Adam’s apple bobbing,
and stares at me from across the room. Just like last night, it’s as if he’s studying me, trying to find the flaw that proves
I’m not who I say I am.
My heart is in my throat.
Once he finishes the water, he goes over to the sink and stops, staring into it. Then he looks back at me and smirks.
“You took the onions off.”
Valencia turns to him. “What’s that, hon?”
Easton reaches into the sink and takes out the plate. “The onions on the pizza. He took them off.”
“I don’t like onions,” I say. But my heart is picking up speed. What if Nate was an onion fanatic? Maybe they got onions on
their pizza for Nate. I don’t mind cooked onions in things like casseroles, but raw on a pizza is a definite no.
“Yeah,” Easton says. “I know you don’t. You never did.”
I look at Valencia, who’s staring at the plate with wide eyes, as if it’s the last bit of proof she needed to know her son
is home. Then she laughs.
“Some things never change,” she says, and goes back to cooking Easton’s eggs.
My heart starts to slow. Easton puts the plate back in the sink and refills his water bottle.
Fucking onion. Maybe Nate and I aren’t that different after all.
Easton sits across from me at the kitchen table. He gives a resigned sigh and shakes his head. “Welcome home, Nate-o. Try
not to get stolen again, please.”
“Easton!” Valencia scolds him from across the room.
“It’s fine, Mom, humor as a coping mechanism is very healthy.”
“Well, maybe I’d rather not make a joke about the single most traumatic experience of our lives.”
“The joke is me making the joke. It’s funny because it’s uncomfortable and something I shouldn’t say out loud, and you making me explain it is removing all the humor. I’ve got
a real good tight five on child kidnappings that I’ve been working on the past ten years.”
Valencia looks exasperated as she walks a plate of fried eggs over to Easton. “Well, I’m not ready for it, so you’re going
to have to put your comedy routine on the back burner.” She sets the plate in front of him and pats his shoulder.
She tells him they’ll have to pack up his dorm at the end of the month and then asks about his finals.
He tells her four of his teachers are letting him take the final online, one is passing him without taking the final since he already has a high average and aced the midterm, and another said there wasn’t going to be a final but rather an essay, due next week.
He also starts explaining what his essay is about—something to do with the evolution of medicine from the twentieth century
to today—but it all goes way over my head.
Easton is smart. Really smart. But not boring smart.
Finally, he jumps up and says he’s going to shower. “Then I’m going to hang out with JT. There’s a party tonight we might
go to.”
“I was thinking we’d have a family dinner tonight,” Valencia says. “Gramma is coming over.”
Gramma? Valencia’s mother, maybe.
Easton looks disappointed. “Can I invite JT?”
Valencia deflates a little. “I think family might be enough.”
“Because Gramma is a very low-key individual with a calm and soothing personality.” But the way he says it makes me think
Nate’s gramma is not any of those things.
“You don’t think introducing your brother to JT might be a little overwhelming, too?”
Easton smirks again. “Of course I do. But in a humorous way. And say it with me, family: humor is a . . .”
He conducts us with his hand as Valencia rolls her eyes and looks at me. I actually can’t help but smile, so I say at the
same time as Valencia: “Coping mechanism.”
Is this how families usually act? You mean to tell me it’s not all walking on eggshells and hiding in your bedroom until you’re called to dinner?
“There we go.” He throws his water bottle into a recycling bin under the counter. “And didn’t even have to make a joke about
kidnapping.”
“Fine, JT can come. But try and keep him calm.”
“Impossible,” Easton calls over his shoulder, hitting his hand against the top of the doorway on his way out.
“Who’s JT?” I ask.
“His friend.” Valencia shakes her head. “His very, very . . . strange friend.”
At least it’s someone I don’t need to watch how I act in front of. And with a grandparent in the mix, maybe I’ll hear a few
good stories to help me fake my way through this.
“Sounds like fun.”