“Oh…yeah.” Chip shuffled his utensils. “We, um, we don’t have to pick our majors for a year or two. So I’m just taking a bunch of classes. And probably row. I guess. They row a lot. In Boston. They have a…big river. I forget what it’s called.”

“The Charles,” Marlene said. “I looked up your school online, and some stuff about Boston.”

Sometimes, Marlene could be really creepy. She could get away with it while she was eleven, but it was going to be a problem really soon.

“Oh right,” Chip said, smiling. “Yeah, I knew it was a name.”

“You knew the name was a name?” Spencer asked politely.

Scarlett thought she felt a kick brush by under the table.

“I won the canoeing trophy,” Marlene said. And this time, she provided an explanation. An extremely long one. The trophy had apparently been the result of some all-day adventure course where Marlene had to navigate around the lake. They were treated to descriptions of every single girl in Marlene’s bunk (she didn’t like them, except for one named Zoe, who sounded like she was now Marlene’s little lieutenant). Chip listened intently. A conversation about eleven-year-olds rowing around a lake was one he could keep up with. And he was a rower. Paddling techniques were exchanged. This had a softening effect on Lola, who liked it when anyone paid attention to Marlene.

After a while, Chip must have felt like he had to share his attentions with another Martin, and so he finally turned to Scarlett.

“Hey, Scarlett,” he said. “Good summer?”

“I…guess?”

“Are you still seeing that guy?” he asked. “Ed…no…”

“Eric,” Scarlett corrected him, far too hastily.

“Right,” Chip said. “Eric. Nice guy. From the show, right?”

“Right…”

Spencer fell back in his chair and looked up at the red-tiled ceiling, probably wishing that it would choose this moment to collapse.

“That guy was an idiot,” Marlene continued. “He was just messing with Scarlett. And he was really—”

“Marlene!” Lola said brightly. “Tell Chip about the Powerkid of the Year competition. Marlene is being considered for…”

The interruption only confirmed Marlene’s suspicion that she was onto something worth talking about.

“Eric was gross,” Marlene went on, leaning toward Chip. “I hated him, and…”

“Hey, is this one spicy?” Spencer said, making a wide reach across the table for the Scotch bonnet salsa, the one that glowed an alarming yellowish-green. Before anyone could answer, he filled a chip with a massive scoop and ate it.

The reaction that followed, while certainly exaggerated, was not entirely fake. The gasping and grabbing all the glasses of water—the banging on the table that drew the attention of all the nearby diners and the waiter—all of it was designed to kill this avenue of conversation. Marlene took the hint this time.