Tuesday, Aiden’s name is crossed off of the roster next to mine and moved to the concession stand. Apparently smelling like greasy burgers and risking a breakout is preferable to interacting with me. I hope he can’t get the smell out of his hair. Wednesday I don’t have to work, and spend the morning googling my potential new high school and planning how I can make Aiden do all the safety demonstrations from now on. I’m not sure why I’m so upset. Maybe because this whole thing didn’t seem like that big of a deal until he made it one. And he kissed me. How am I the one being avoided in this situation?

When I finally emerge from my bedroom, I find my mom in the kitchen. She’s sitting at the breakfast table, a coffee mug cradled in her hands. “Good morning,” she says, as I pad across the tile in my bare feet.

“Morning,” I mutter, as I groggily open the refrigerator. My mother and I haven’t had to see each other much since she moved in last week. I leave early for work, and she seems to come home late. I don’t know what she’s even doing while she’s in town. I pull a two-liter of pop out of the refrigerator door and set it on the counter. I open the cabinet and fish out my favorite glass, covered in pink and yellow polka dots. It’s more suited to orange juice, but we’re out.

“Oh, Olivia,” my mother says dramatically.

“What?” I set the glass next to the bottle.

“Pop at nine in the morning?” She shakes her head as she takes another sip from her mug. “That’s unholy.”

“I don’t like coffee,” I say, though I’m not sure why my mother has decided that my drink choice is a good place to make her first stand as a responsible adult. “And I need caffeine.” I start pouring a glass, slowly so it doesn’t fizz over the top. My mother gets up from the table and joins me across the island, and as I’m twisting the cap onto the bottle my mother dumps the glass into the sink next to me with a satisfied look on her face.

“No,” she says. “There are better options. You’ll ruin your kidneys.”

I roll my eyes and let out a disgruntled sigh.

“Here,” she says, setting a mug in front of me. She opens a cabinet over the refrigerator that I didn’t know had anything in it, and plucks out three silver cylinders. “Try one of these,” she says, as she sets them in front of me.

I twist the cap off of the first and it comes off with a little pop. The smell of berries fills my nose. It looks like potpourri. “What is this?”