Chapter 2
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” I said.
“Really?” Bobby asked as he started moving again. “Because it sounds like you don’t want to help.”
I was currently in Labrador Retriever mode, which meant I was following Bobby around our room.
When he stopped at the dresser to get socks, I stopped behind him.
When he checked his hair in the mirror, I was right there beside him.
When he squatted to retrieve a pair of sneakers, I hunkered down too.
“But that’s exactly it,” I said. “That’s my whole point. That’s what I’m trying to communicate: I do want to help. I want to help with, uh, this. I love helping. I love volunteering and service and, um, charity.”
“Interesting. Because Keme asked you for help with his scholarship application last night, and your exact words were ‘Help is for the weak,’ and then you tried to do the, quote, ‘skullcrusher’ on him.”
“But he beat me up instead!” I said it with a little too much enthusiasm, and to judge by the look on Bobby’s face, I might have been overselling my point. “And I did help him—”
“Dash, if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to go.” Bobby grabbed his keys from the tray on top of the dresser, and let me tell you: if you’ve never heard someone pick up their keys angrily, it’s a real art. Bobby nailed it, of course. “But I wish you’d told me.”
“No, I do want to go. It’s just that I’m so busy—”
The words were a mistake. I heard it as soon as they left my mouth.
Bobby swiveled.
There’s this thing his eyes do when he switches into deputy mode. They don’t actually glow, but you can tell he’s doing this supercomputer math about how many parking tickets he can write and if he should arrest you for “annoying boyfriendlihood in the third degree.”
Okay, maybe in the first degree.
“You told me you weren’t busy,” he said.
“You said you didn’t have anything to do.
You said you finished that short story and you were giving yourself a weekend to relax.
” I opened my mouth, but Bobby rolled over me.
“And you’re finished with grading, because you threw yourself a cookie party after you scored the last essay.
And you don’t have any emergency lesson planning because you’re not making Indira stress bake. ”
Listen: most of the time, I’m quick on my feet. Most of the time, the creative part of my brain is awhirl with thoughts and possibilities.
Right then, though?
Total blank.
“Perfect,” Bobby said—a little too grimly for my liking. “Here we go.”
And that was how I ended up in reverse Labrador Retriever mode, with Bobby hounding me down the stairs.
“You’re doing a good thing, Dash,” he said, as though this was somehow supposed to comfort me. “When we finish, you’re going to be happy we did this.”
“Debatable,” I said, but under my breath.
“There’s nothing like the satisfaction of knowing you helped someone.”
“There’s the satisfaction of video games,” I said. “There’s the satisfaction of a good nap. Oh! There’s the satisfaction of—have you ever been wrapped in a blanket and had a beautiful man feed you tacos?” I tried to brake on the landing. “Just to be clear, that’s not a sex thing.”
Bobby’s answer was a push between the shoulder blades, and it was either scramble down the steps or fall.
I reached the servants’ dining room without falling, and voices from the kitchen told me I wasn’t the only one caught on the horns of this dilemma.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Fox was saying. “It’s that I’m too busy.”
“Really?” Indira said crisply. “Because you told me yesterday that you were looking forward to a long weekend of bothering Dash because the world of art was a world of chicanery and nonsense, and you hereby declared yourself free from it, etcetera, etcetera.”
The best word for Fox’s silence was staggered.
Indira emerged from the kitchen a moment later. She gave me and Bobby an appraising look.
“We’re almost ready,” Bobby said.
She didn’t say anything. Sometimes, Indira has this witchy energy. It’s like she looks at you, and she looks through you, and she knows everything you’re going to say and everything you’ve ever done wrong, and if you step out of line so much as an inch—ZAP.
And then she strode toward the front of the house.
Bobby and I let out breaths of relief at the same time.
“I’m going to pull the Pilot around,” Bobby said. He started toward the door. Looked back. “Please don’t make me look for you.”
“Bobby!”
“Please, my love.”
“I’m an adult man. I’m independent and responsible and—and an adult.”
“And don’t try the attic, babe, because I will find you, and you hate spiders.”
I gaped.
I was still gaping when he left.
Fox poked their head out of the kitchen. “Good God. Are they gone?”
“Not for long. And don’t even think about trying the attic because Bobby already guessed that one.”
“I shouldn’t have said I was busy,” Fox said morosely. “Panic. Pure panic.”
“I tried the busy angle too,” I said. “No joy.”
“Does it say something about us that we’re so quick to try to avoid doing a simple act of service?” Fox wondered aloud. “Are we morally bankrupt?”
“Bobby wants us to give up a whole Saturday,” I said. “And where are Keme and Millie?”
“Good point.” Fox tilted their head. “You should have said you were tutoring some poor fool at the college.”
“Oh my God. Why didn’t I—”
“Some benighted sap, some scholarship student, some hapless imp of fate who had the misfortune to go to you, seeking help.”
“Okay, well, it was less insulting the first way you said it. Oh, you should say you have a bad back!”
Fox brightened for a moment, and then glumness settled in again. “A bad back is too pedestrian.”
“Ready?” Bobby called from the front of the house.
“We’re leaving,” Indira announced in a voice that suggested thunderbolts.
Fox and I hustled to meet them.
“I’m tutoring someone at school,” I said. “I forgot.”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed.
“And we both have weak ankles,” Fox announced.
I tried not to cover my face.
“You have weak ankles,” Indira said in a tone that wasn’t quite a question.
Bobby was looking at me so intently that I glanced over my shoulder. “What exactly do you think we’re doing?”
I said, “Uh.”
Fox shrugged.
“Picking up garbage?” I said. “No! Volunteering at a shelter. Wait, we’re helping repair a trail.”
Bobby looked at Indira.
Indira looked at Bobby. And she smiled.
He held the door for her.
“Wait,” I said again.
Bobby arched his eyebrows.
“Uh, what are we doing?”
“We,” Bobby said as he stepped outside, “are volunteering at a charity bake-off. You know—cookies, cakes, pies. And the volunteers are welcome to sample as much as they want.”
And he shut the door.