But I want to say something real to her. So I try again: Seriously. I don’t know how I never realized how awesome you are. Apart from your art, anyway.

After a minute, there’s no response, so I add: I’m glad I know you better now.

After a pause, the response comes: *searching database for appropriate responses to compliments from humans* *coughs up piece of paper that reads ERROR*

I have to smile. You’re no robot. Robots don’t care as deeply about people as you do, and they certainly don’t make the kind of beautiful, expressive art that you do.

She writes: *dissolves into the data stream and crafts an invisibility cloak out of ones and zeros*

I write: *shakes head* Okay, good night, robot girl. Talk to you tomorrow?

She responds: *runs odds report* *calculates high probability*

I send her a smiley.

It is a comfort to know she’ll be there with her kindness and wacky sense of humor and startalk through the days that lead up to Friday, when my parents pack up Jonah, drive him to Eugene, and leave him there.

A wave of pain crashes through me at the thought, making me go weak.

I don’t want my brother to know what it feels like to be abandoned.

Sam

On Thursday I eat lunch with Kitty, Carlos, and Caroline, and only because Will swindles me into it with an evening invitation to play a new co-op RPG that I’ve been dying to try. Or rather, the three of them eat while I nervously fiddle with the paper clips securing the top of my lunch bag. Hanging out with Will’s friends without him is weird. I hate that he has a different lunch period, especially today. The other problem is that even surrounded by other people, all I can think about is Zoe. Jonah moves out tomorrow.

It’s a sunny fall day, warm for mid-October. Most of the school seems to be eating outside in spite of the stiff breeze shaking hidden raindrops free of the bright fall leaves. I’m perched awkwardly at one end of the picnic table, hoodie snug, ass slightly damp from the places where water lurked under the peeling green paint before I sat down. Across from me, Caroline and Kitty have laid out all their food on the table and are engaging in a complicated food swap that leaves Kitty with items that I swear are all phallic.

“Are you guys doing both days of Planet Quest Con?” Kitty asks. She finishes the question by unhinging her jaw and ramming half a banana into her tiny gullet, defying multiple laws of physics. With her tawny complexion and the splash of freckles over her petite nose, she’s annoyingly cute, as is the thermal she’s wearing that says SELF-RESCUING PRINCESS on the front.