“Adoption’s still not selling the baby! What are we, in the Twilight Zone? She’s keeping them keeping them. Like, raising the kid. As a Larssen. Or, wait.” Mom looked up at me. “As a Rodriguez? Your choice, of course.”

That was something I hadn’t considered. Would I give the kid the name of the bio dad I didn’t know, who’d left me with so much angst about the half of me I wrestled to understand? Or would I name the kid after my quasi-dysfunctional grandmother who threw shoes and hadn’t talked to me for days because she’s an emotional terrorist?

“Dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I’ve got about six months to decide.”

“Serendipity is a Larssen,” Mormor announced. “The birth certificate is a piece of paper with a bad name. We raised this girl. She’s ours. She’s a Larssen. This baby is one of us, too. I told you the ultrasound looks like a Larssen. It’s in the nose.”

I looked back through the kitchen door, at the refrigerator. “They look like a legume from where I’m standing. A legume with eyes.”

“That is incredibly creepy,” Mom said.

“My great-grandchild is not a legume,” Mormor insisted. “They are beautiful.”

“It’s a joke, Mormor.”

“It’s not a funny one. Do you want to be called a legume? Legumes are ugly. I ought to give you the shoe.”

Mom sighed, raking her fingers through her hair. “Well, I guess things are back to normal.”

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Weller proved to be the banshee of all my teachers. I was pretty cool with my calculus teacher, my history teacher, even the health teacher who’d be giving the moral lesson on how not to grow up to be a Serendipity Rodriguez, but Weller was hardcore, delivering not only the in-class essay, but another at-home one on the other summer reading that I had to turn in on Friday. At least I could use the internet to my advantage; I was pretty confident in my paper, despite only reading half the book.

The one downside to the week was how tired I was during the day. I didn’t nod off, but I came close a couple times, and I started chugging a bottle of Starbucks iced coffee between classes two and three to keep me awake. The doctor didn’t say no caffeine, just limited amounts. That was my limited amount. It was enough fake energy to get me through midmorning.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t scramble my kid’s still-developing brain.

Sorry, kid. Mom really needed to get through Math.