The funeral is still a good idea, even if the vigil wasn’t.

The funeral was my idea.

My mother heaves herself off the couch and double-checks the lock on the front door. “I’m gonna crash. I have to go in early to help process all the arrests. Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

“I won’t.”

Fact-Check Rating: Abjectly false.

I will stay up until nearly four a.m. watching footage online and reading the Crimson Cryer’s account of the disastrous Lullaby Doe candlelight vigil.

The only upside to a bomb threat during midterms is that the school board decided to cancel all the tests. Or, more accurately, to make them optional. They didn’t think it was fair to force students to perform under such stressful conditions. Also, I don’t think the teachers wanted to grade tests any more than we wanted to take them.

Those who want to take midterms for a chance of raising their grades will be allowed to when school’s back in session after the holiday. (Of course, that small group includes my brother.) The rest of us just got lucky.

That midterm exemption may be the only stroke of luck I’ve had in two weeks, and I have to say, it’s a hell of a way to kick off the winter break. Violent protests and negative news coverage of Clifford notwithstanding.

Mom has already left for work by the time I get up around eleven a.m., so I wake Landry by caressing her cheek with a bag of chocolate chips. She blinks up at me, squinting while she waits for my face to come into focus. “What’s going on?”

“Mom’s at work. Penn’s out, probably trying to deadlift single-wides at Dogwood Village to impress the West Point admissions committee. You and I are going to make cookies.”

She sits up, a grin splitting her face wide open. “Really?”

“Yes. The butter’s already softening. Do you want to invite Norah?”

“No.” Landry frowns. “She’s kinda being a bitch right now.”

“Language.”

“Fine. She’s kinda being a pain right now. And she definitely doesn’t deserve cookies.”

“Fair enough. Get dressed.”

My little sister might be in charge of the actual cooking—and she might force an unnatural number of vegetables upon us in that endeavor—but I am the cookie connoisseur of the family. I mean, it’s not like I do anything fancy. But I’m incredibly adequate at turning a bunch of flour and sugar into pretty much any drop cookie you can imagine.

“What’s the plan?” Landry asks as she pads into the kitchen barefoot half an hour later, in one of my baggy sweaters. I’m wearing her apron, so I decide to call us even on the clothes-borrowing front.