‘Yeah, great sign,’ I said, yanking it out of his meaty hands, and holding it so that the lettering faced the floor. ‘Can we go? I wanna pick up my bags before someone else does.’

‘Oh, right,’ my mom said. She gave me one last hug. ‘Oh, I’m just so glad to see you! You look so great . . .’ And then, even though you could tell she didn’t want to say it, she went ahead and said it anyway, in a low voice, so no one else could hear: ‘Though I’ve talked to you before about that jacket, Suze. And I thought you were throwing those jeans away.’

I was wearing my oldest jeans, the ones with the holes in the knees. They went really well with my black silk T and my zip-up ankle boots. The jeans and boots, coupled with my black leather motorcycle jacket and my Army–Navy Surplus shoulder bag, made me look like a teen runaway in a made-for-TV movie.

But hey, when you’re flying for six hours across the country, you want to be comfortable.

I said that, and my mom just rolled her eyes and dropped it. That’s the good thing about my mom. She doesn’t harp, like other moms do. Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc have no idea how lucky they are.

‘All right,’ she said, instead. ‘Let’s get your bags.’ Then, raising her voice, she called, ‘Jake, come on. We’re going to get Suze’s bags.’

She had to call Sleepy by name, since he looked as if he had fallen asleep standing up. I asked my mother once if Jake, who is a senior in high school, has narcolepsy, or possibly a drug habit, and she was like, ‘No, why would you say that?’ Like the guy doesn’t just stand there blinking all the time, never saying a word to anyone.

Wait, that’s not true. He did say something to me, once. Once he said, ‘Hey are you in a gang?’ He asked me that at the wedding, when he caught me standing outside with my leather jacket on over my maid of honour’s dress, sneaking a cigarette.

Give me a break, all right? It was my first and only cigarette ever. I was under a lot of stress at the time. I was worried my mom was going to marry this guy and move to California and forget all about me. I swear I haven’t smoked a single cigarette since.

And don’t get me wrong about Jake. At six foot one, with the same shaggy blond hair and twinkly blue eyes as his dad, he’s what my best friend Gina would call a hottie. But he’s not the shiniest rock in the rock garden, if you know what I mean.

Doc was still going on about wind velocity. He was explaining the speed with which it is necessary to travel in order to break through the earth’s gravitational force. This speed is called escape velocity. I decided Doc might be useful to have around, homework-wise, even if I am three grades ahead of him.