Dinner with my dad is just as easy. Landon is a little on the quiet side, but polite and shockingly charming.
My mom confides that very night, when everyone else is asleep, that she thinks he was meant to end up in our house.
“I would have never signed on for a boy your age, Evie, but now that we have him, I think this could be wonderful.”
I nod, even as my stomach flips. “I think so too.”
“So you have homeroom together?”
I nod, and we talk about getting him some school supplies. My mom’s off work tomorrow afternoon.
“Maybe we’ll leave school early. Do a little shopping,” she suggests. “The four of us. How does that sound?”
My mom is awesome. To the core. I don’t know how someone like Landon ended up in foster care when I won the lottery, but I’m forever grateful.
We do just that, and in days, it feels like he has always been here. He sits endlessly in the family room while Emmaline reads him Holes by Louis Sachar. He helps my mom with dishes, even though she always says he doesn’t need to. In the mornings over breakfast, he reads the paper with my dad.
With me, he’s not as warm—and not as polished. Sometimes, he gives me looks just like he did the first day that I met him, looks that seem to tell me something private, like at dinner one night while my parents and Em are getting seconds, he gives me a tired smile-smirk. When they get back to the table, he’s back “on,” talking and joking.
I learn that his wit is dry, his politics sincere, his reading taste geeky, and his pop culture repertoire vast. One night shortly after he arrives, I go down to the kitchen after bedtime to get grape juice, and I find him at the kitchen table, hunched over another book by Richard Feynman, the affable physicist/author.
“That’s not the same book, is it?” I ask, peering at the cover, striped by his long fingers holding it.
He doesn’t look up. “Nope.”
“You’re going through those things like comic books.”
“Easy reading,” he says, still not looking up.
“For after midnight?”
He shrugs.
Every night right after dinner, he goes downstairs, and he doesn’t come back up. “Why’d you leave your room to read?”
He blinks up at me. “What?”
“Never mind.”
He doesn’t ask again, just keeps on reading, so I leave the dimly lit kitchen with just “goodnight.”
The next morning, our ride to school is the same as the previous few days: Landon playing some game on his new phone, only pausing to rub his palm over the knee of his jeans or cast his eagle eyes up at the road.
“What? I’m a great driver,” I say, flipping my hair.
His brows arch up. “You’re not smooth.”
“I’m adventurous.”
“You’re making me car sick.”
“You drive, then.” We’re driving past a strip mall parking lot, so I pull over.
He blinks at me then casts his gaze back at his phone. “Don’t drive.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t drive.”
“At all?”
“At all,” he tells me.
“Can I ask why?”
“Can you?” Is there an edge to his words? I can’t tell.
“Why?” I ask him pointedly.
“Because I never learned.”
“Do you have a permit?”
“No.”
“Wow, really?”
“Society existed for millennia without motorized vehicles, Evie.”
“So what? They’re central to society now.” I give him my skeptical face. Landon gives me his.
“Like…no one taught you?”
“I didn’t ask to be taught,” he says.
Okay, that’s definitely an edge there in his voice. I swallow and pull back onto our route. “I’m sure you’d suck at it,” I say a little later.
He laughs, an unexpected, hoarse burst. “Is that right?” His words are low and rich, his mouth curved upward. He looks radiant with his new haircut, in his nice, new clothes, a Polo shirt stretching across his wide shoulders.
“Yep. You’ll probably never learn because you know I’d show you up so badly.”
He laughs, lowering his phone for once.
“That’s what you think?”
“It’s what I know.” I give him my best poker face.
“Pull over.”
I do.
“Get out.”
“You think I’ll just let you drive my Betty?”
“Betty Ford?” He tilts his head back, laughing.
“I didn’t name her; Makayla did. I don’t think she knew that Betty Ford had suffered with addiction problems.”
He gets out, and comes to my side of the car. I open the door and peer up at him.
“C’mon. Let a man show you how to do it.”
I gasp, but I stand up.
Landon’s hand curves over my shoulder. His face tightens. “Are you serious?” he asks—and his tone sounds like he is.
“What?” I sound defensive.
“You were going to let me drive?”
I gape at him. “Are you trying to be a jerk right now?”
“Are you trying to get us killed?”
“What are you talking about? You asked to drive.”
“And it’s your car, Evie. I told you I don’t even have my permit.”
“But…you…”
“Irresponsible,” he chides.
“I think I just might have to slap you, Landon.”
He lifts his chin slightly.
“Ugh. Get in the car.”
I’m annoyed the next few miles. That—and confused. “Why did you do that? I don’t like…” What do I call what he did? “Games. It’s rude,” I add, grappling with my feelings.
“I don’t like you endangering yourself.”
“You asked. I trust you, Landon. You seem smart.”
“So did Ted Bundy.”
“Ew. Are you Ted Bundy?”
His gray eyes are more shrewd than I’ve ever seen them. “No, Evie. But I’m not joking about the permit.”
“How do you not have it? I know you can read and take a test.” He doesn’t know this, but our calculus teacher—who has Landon second period and me fourth—bragged on him the other day, the new guy in second period who had done his homework for the entire year.
“It’s not free.”
“It can’t be much.”
“To you,” he says gruffly.
“You have to take it, then. I’ll give you money. You can learn in Mom’s car!”
That night at the dinner table, I mention it to my parents. Landon kicks me under the table, but it’s worth it. Mom and Dad agree that Landon needs an allowance, since he’s doing chores just like Emmaline and me. They also urge him to sign up for something extracurricular.
“Clubs are good,” my dad puts in, “but colleges like to see variety, so maybe a sport, too. If you have the interest.”
Landon shoots me an exaggerated glare. I smile innocently.
“He’ll play soccer,” Emmaline says. “Like Evie.”