Are you almost here? Remember the whole my-aunt-is-in-town thing? I’ll have to strand you again if you don’t get to the parking lot. Why are you always going on these missions without me?

I reached her car and opened the passenger door. “Because you take twenty minutes to leave the locker room and I take five, that’s why.”

“I feel like I haven’t seen you all week.”

“Because you haven’t.”

“Well, you get this ten-minute car ride to fill me in on everything.”

“Ten minutes is not enough.”

“Then you’d better talk fast.”

First I told her about Robert and the conversation we just had, finishing with, “Then he asked me out. Do you believe he asked me out?”

“Deflection!”

“What?”

“He’s Heath Hall.”

“What?”

“He was trying to shock you into forgetting your accusations.”

“I don’t know. If he is, he’s the best actor in the world, and I never considered him all that good at lying.”

“We’ll see Saturday, won’t we? Maybe you should call him and say you’ve changed your mind. That you want to go out with him Saturday. Then if Heath Hall doesn’t show up because he’s out with you at the movies, we’ll know for sure.”

That wasn’t a bad idea. It wasn’t really a good idea either. Because if Robert wasn’t Heath Hall, then I’d be stuck at the movies with Robert.

“How about we both go to the bridge, and while we’re watching Heath Hall, I call Robert on the phone.”

“Yes. Brilliant. Then you don’t actually have to go out with the loser.”

She pulled up in front of my house. “I will sit here for five more minutes and face the wrath of my mother for one more story.”

I wanted to talk about the Jackson/Eric connection that was still plaguing me. I hadn’t told her before and now I was regretting it. But that would take more than five minutes. I needed her full attention and her advice and I wanted to be able to vent for as long as I needed. So I settled for the other story I hadn’t told her yet. “When you abandoned me at school the other day, Jackson drove me home.”

“Home? Here?”

“No, one of my other five homes. Yes, of course here.”

“So you had to tell him the story of the truck?” How was that the first thing she thought of when it didn’t even cross my mind until we were almost to my house? Maybe because I saw it every day and it was as common to me as the grass or the driveway or the mailbox.

“That’s the thing. I didn’t have to tell him. He just assumed it was my dad’s and I let him.”

“Wait, he doesn’t know about your brother?”

“I guess not.”