Sometimes, even now, I wake up to a sound in the house, or even my dorm, and think it’s her. It’s hard to get back to sleep after that.

“¡Mamá!” I lean back in my desk chair, tipping back onto two legs. I quickly correct myself, lowering the legs so I am sitting in a way that I won’t ‘caerme y romperme el cuello,’ although it’s not as though, from a country away, she can see how I am sitting.

“You sound tired. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“Sí,” I lie. “I’ve just been very busy lately, with the app launching to more schools and everything. We went to ten more this week.”

Back-to-back launches were brutal, but, as I was told by Braden, necessary, to keep our momentum.

“Lo se!” Her voice goes an octave higher. “I read that article you sent me. The Huffington Post, very nice, baby, esto es grande.”

I smile. “Gracias. My friend Braden has been doing all the press stuff.”

“Eh, this boy is your friend now? I thought we hated him.”

“We never hated him... I just didn’t like him that much at first, when it was mostly coding, but he’s doing more work now. He’s not too bad.” I pick up a pencil from my desk. I rub the eraser with my thumb.

“Hmmm.” The line is silent for a moment, so I brace myself for what is next. “¿Que tal la chica?”

Oh, great, here we go again. I shake my head. Dad must have told her.

“Sara? What about her?”

“How does she feel about this Braden boy? Are they still at each other’s throats all the time?”

“Not exactly...”

Actually, it has kind of been the opposite lately. I’d started to notice little things at first—she would bring coffee for us and not “forget” his; he would let it slide when she said something incredibly nerdy. He would tease her, and she would smile and look down instead of scrunching her nose.

I don’t know what happened that day, when I got in the car and she went after him. But their relationship changed from tormenting each other to playful teasing. Or not being mean at all.

And then, just the other day... They arrived together at her quad for a meeting, late, laughing and talking loudly about some inside joke as they walked up.

“Sorry, we were just at lunch,” Sara said, still trying to catch her breath from laughing.

“We would have invited you but it was so last minute,” Braden said.

“Yeah.” Sara looked at him, and he looked back at her. “We were actually just texting, and I mentioned this sandwich place.”

“And the next thing you know—” he hops into the story “—she was like, ‘when did I get so hungry.’”