in-com-PA-RA-ble: adj. unequaled in greatness My dad looks older than I remember him looking. Tired. Even his smile seems strained. “Hi, baby. I’ve missed you.” He gives me a hug.
“Is everything okay?”
“Work is just keeping me busy.”
I tilt my head, trying to decide if “busyness” is a good enough excuse for the stress he’s trying to hide with a smile.
“I’m glad you’re here.” He turns me sideways and grabs my blue strip of hair. “So this is what has your mom worried?”
“Yeah,” Laila says, coming up the walk with our bags, which my dad immediately takes from her. “Isn’t it awesome, Mr. C?”
“Awesome isn’t exactly the word I was thinking of, but it’s far from Future Crime Lord.”
“Exactly,” I say with a sigh. “She grounded me over it.”
“As she should’ve,” he says with a smirk, making me know he just has to say that as a responsible adult but doesn’t really mean it. I’ve missed him so much.
“We hate to show up and then run, but we’re going to catch the football game.”
“No worries. I know you came for the game. You’re all mine tomorrow though.”
“For sure.”
He shows me to a room that looks more sterile than a hospital and says, “I know it’s kind of plain, but it’s yours for whenever you visit, so feel free to put up your comics pictures and stuff.”
“Thanks, Dad. I will.” He starts to leave, and I stop him with, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He chuckles. “I’m fine, Addie.”
As Laila and I get ready in front of the cramped bathroom mirror, she asks, “Did you and Duke do any more surveillance last night at Poison’s house?”
“No, we didn’t have time. Why, did you?”
“Yes. But it was nothing different from last time. Just druggies going in and out. Is it weird to you that half the druggies are teenagers?”
I go over my hair with a straightener, wondering if I should’ve reverted back to curls for the wetter air. It’s already a little frizzy. “I know. I found that odd as well. I don’t know why, but I guess I thought our classmates were smarter than that.”
She adds some black eyeliner under her eyes. “You know what it has confirmed to me, though?”
“What?”
“That we’ve been worried over nothing. Duke feels the same, right?”
“Yeah, he does. There is nothing but extreme-brain-cell-deterioration going on at Poison’s house.”
At the game, I wish I had brought an extra layer of clothing—it’s pretty cold. I blow on my hands and then rub them rapidly across my thighs. Laila is bouncing up and down next to me, and I can’t tell if it’s in an effort to stay warm or if she’s excited. She solves the mystery when she says, “I don’t believe we’ve never been to an away game before. What’s wrong with us? This is fun.”
“Yeah, exciting.”
“The Norms seem so … normal.”
“Here they come.” I point to where the team, led by Duke, runs out of the tunnel as the announcer says a drawn-out version of our school name.
Duke runs to center field and bows.
I sigh. “I wish he wouldn’t do stuff like that. It makes him seem more cocky than he is.”
“It’s just Duke having fun. If we were closer, you’d see the teasing twinkle in his eye.”
Teasing or not, the whole stadium probably thinks he’s full of himself. Why doesn’t that bother him? To our left is the other team’s student section. I notice Laila looking over.
“What?” I ask.
“Norm boys are pretty cute.”
I scan them as well. They seem like the guys I see on a daily basis at my own school.
“We should mess with their minds.”
I laugh. “How?”
“Okay, pick out one of those boys and I’ll get him to come over here.”
“How?”
“He’ll think it was his own idea. You should do it too, since you’re supposed to be practicing Thought Placement. How is that going anyway?”
Not well, and I’m tired of practicing. Whenever we have free time, it’s all Duke wants to do. “I think I’m getting better.”
“Prove it. We’ll have a race. Whoever gets her boy to come over first wins.”
I roll my head to the side and groan. “Fine.”
“Okay, name your boy, so we’re not trying to call the same one over.”
This time I study them closer. “The one with his hands in his pockets. Cowboy boots. Dark hair.” He looks sort of familiar to me, but I can’t place him.
She rolls her eyes. “Of course, typical Addie boy. I pick the guy with the foam finger.”
“Which one?”
“The one jumping all over the place. Shoulder-length hair, beautiful skin.”
I zero in on him. Just when I think I’ve figured out Laila’s taste in guys, which for a while I thought was just any male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, she surprises me by picking someone completely different. Like this guy, for example; he’s cute enough, but thin and too dressed up for a football game. I thought Laila liked to have the upper hand in the style department.
“Ready?” she asks.
I nod.
“Go.”