But before I get a chance to tell her about Olivia or Hannah or Penelope Rose, Mike swears and brings his fist down on the table and makes all the coffee cups jump and the spoons rattle. A glass falls off the table. Something on his phone made him mad, but Grimshaw doesn’t ask what happened. This hard look of irritation shoots through her eyes. She’s not afraid of him, I can see that. In fact, she’s sick of him. I make the mistake of looking from her to Mike and then back to her right then, and he sees that I see it. I wonder if she even knows about Rack’s baby. An idea occurs to me. I wonder if she would come back with me.

“Also they broke up,” I finish.

She shrugs. “No surprises. Can’t you do something, though?” she asks. “You’re good at math.”

Leaning close together so we don’t bother Mike, we go through all the people we know in Colchis—who’s dating, who doesn’t come to school anymore, who the new cheerleaders are. When we get to Rack, Grimshaw doesn’t seem to know about the pregnancy, and I don’t tell her.

From the one side of the conversations on the phone, I have no idea what he does except pretend to be a big Hollywood producer. He shouts into the phone about “talent” and “product.” The one time the phone rings for him, though, it’s all “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” and “I understand how you feel, sir.”

“So what’s the book about?” Grimshaw asks when Mike looks over at us.

“A whale.” We both explode laughing, put our foreheads on the table and our shoulders shake, just like the laughing attacks we’d have when she came to church with us

When Mike goes to the bathroom, he leaves the door open and positions himself so that he can watch us in the mirror while he takes a piss. When he comes out, he tells Grimshaw to get ready for work. They have to go in early today, he says.

Grimshaw disagrees. “We have a whole hour before we have to go in. Anyway, it’s Monday. We can go in late if we want to.”

“I got things I gotta do,” he says.

“Well, fine, then. I need time to put my makeup on, though.”

“Do it at work,” he says, staring at me. “We gotta go.”

She opens her eyes wide at me. “Fine,” she says. She doubles over laughing again and has a hard time walking across the kitchen.

While she’s in the bedroom changing, Mike stays where he is, still on his phone, posted by the door. He doesn’t take his eyes off me.