“Well, when we were driving past my house, Axel was running down the road so we had to save him and take him home. All the way down the driveway.” Imagining my house through Austin’s eyes gave me a deep wave of shame.

“All the way?” Peaches stopped drawing and stared at me.

The funny thing about being kids is the unspoken stuff feels really weird when it is spoken about finally. Peaches knew I didn’t have people over. I didn’t have people drive me to my door. So although we had never discussed it, she knew this was something that was an issue for me somehow.

“Was your dad there?”

“He wasn’t and then he was. He and Austin shook hands.”

Peaches flipped on her back and studied the ceiling. “Ugh, he met your dad. That’s right out of our middle school dream journal. Remember when my mom found that book and forbade me from pining over a dude in a skirt?”

“I do remember that. And I remember you standing up pretty strongly to your mom.”

Peaches nodded. “And you know what else? Mom saw Austin like last month mowing the lawn and she came home and said, ‘I get it now.’ Such a hypocrite, but then again, maybe it’s best that Austin was an adult when she noticed this.”

“Yeah, it’s one hundred percent more acceptable that way. I don’t know how it’s going to go down when I go back home in the future. I think Dad was more insulted that I didn’t come and stay at the house when I was in town. Mostly, I just wanna make sure Raven is doing okay. She was pretty shaken up that Axel had run away.”

“Isn’t that like Axel‘s main focus every day besides eating dinner?” Peaches twisted her torso so that she could draw again.

“Oh yeah. He absolutely loves to eat his dinner and find something disgusting to roll in outside.” I added some balloons.

“Well, I hope she’s all right. How old is she now?” Peaches switched up the pen from green to brown.

“She’s going to turn thirteen next month.” I added a few slices of cake to the five.

“Tough time of life. Those teen years are brutal.” Peaches put her pen in her mouth, pensive.