‘Wait, you can do that on purpose?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can I have fudgey?’
‘Yeah. It’s easy. You just need more egg.’
Aggie gasped and slapped her forehead with her palm. Then she walked to the fridge and took out a carton of eggs.
‘I forgot to put these in.’
She groaned and knocked her head against my shoulder. It felt nice.
I pulled up my sleeves and mixed the batter. I spilled some on the bench and on my wrist.
‘Hey, holy shit, nice watch,’ Aggie said.
I just shrugged and poured the batter onto a greased tray. I put the tray in the oven and we went back to her room.
‘So what’s the deal with you and Vic? Is he your grandfather?’
I shook my head.
‘Oh, so he’s like a family friend or something?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Are you living with him?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘Oh. That’s a shame. It was good you were there. I’ve never seen anyone visit him. He seems a bit lonely.’
‘His wife passed away.’
‘I know. It’s so sad.’
‘Do you know how she died?’
Aggie shook her head.
‘All I know is that she went in her sleep. I think it might have been an aneurysm or something?’
Aggie started talking about something else, but I wasn’t really listening. I kept thinking about Vic waking up and turning over to say good morning to Edie. I imagined him trying to wake her up, and realising that she had died right next to him. I almost started to cry, but then the oven timer went off.
Aggie bounced off the bed and clapped.
‘Brownies!’
I followed her to the kitchen. I pulled the tray out of the oven and tested the brownies with a knife. They came out really well.
Aggie reached for the knife to cut into them.
‘You have to leave them for another ten minutes at least,’ I said.
‘But they smell so good!’
‘They still cook while they’re cooling down. If you eat one now it’ll be a bit underdone.’
‘I’m learning so much. Can I enshrine your creation on Instagram?’
‘Okay.’
Aggie took a photo with her phone.
‘Hey, I’ll tag you.’
‘I don’t have an account or anything,’ I said.
‘Seriously?’
I shrugged.
‘Of course you don’t,’ she said. ‘Because for you, baking brownies while looking ridiculously fashionable isn’t some cynical excuse to draw attention to yourself on the internet, it’s just who you are every damn day.’
‘That’s not it,’ I said.
‘It totally is. Anyway, I’m not as modest as you, so I’m going to show you off to my dozens of followers, half of which are seedy men from Mumbai. But if you ever want to see how famous you get, my Instagram is “memedoomer”, except, like, meem is spelled like meme and duma is spelled like doom-er, because, as you know, I’m a very lame person. Can I eat it now? Please?’
I smiled.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Okay. How about just this piece that fell off?’
Aggie raised one eyebrow and cut a piece off the end. She blew on it and put it in her mouth and I got nervous.
Her eyes went wide as she chewed.
‘Holy fucking shit! Sam! This tastes amazing! How did you do that?’
‘They’re pretty easy,’ I said. I was relieved and happy that she liked them.
Aggie’s brother walked into the kitchen. He was in his late teens and he looked like he had just woken up. He was tall and chubby and wore glasses. I stepped closer to Aggie as he opened the fridge door.
‘This is my new friend Sam,’ Aggie said. ‘Look, he made brownies.’
‘Hey,’ he said without looking at me. He drank from a bottle of orange juice then walked back out.
‘He has no interpersonal skills. I’ve diagnosed him with, like, six behavioural disorders, but he refuses to see anyone about them.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Aggie,’ he called out from another room.
‘See?’ Aggie laughed quietly, and I smiled because she had called me her friend. Nobody had ever said that about me before.
When they were cool, Aggie cut six brownies and put them on a plate. I started cleaning up, but Aggie made me stop. We went back to her room. I felt bad about leaving the kitchen a mess, but Aggie didn’t seem worried.
‘Hey, you know Mrs Boyd knocked on our door yesterday.’
‘Mrs Boyd?’
‘The woman who accosted you on the street. She came to warn my parents about this young troublemaker she saw coming out of Vic’s place.’
‘Really?’
Aggie laughed.
‘I told you. She’s a menace.’
‘Do you think she’ll call the police or something?’
‘For what? Occupying space in the universe?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I doubt she wants anything to do with the police anyway.’
‘Because of her husband?’
‘Do you want to know why he went to jail?’
‘Okay.’
Aggie sat forwards and dusted crumbs off her lap.
‘You might have actually heard the story. It made the news everywhere. It’s crazy. So, their house got burgled a few years ago while they were still home. I mean, it must have been genuinely frightening. Like, I’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t so irritating. Anyway, it essentially turned Mrs Boyd into a hyper-vigilant ball of paranoia. She got sensor lights and cameras installed everywhere, deadbolts and security windows, the whole thing. Then Mr Boyd goes a step further. I don’t know if he was like, totally emasculated or just embarrassed by having his stuff taken and not being able to intervene, but he adopts this rescue dog called Marvin, which was a ridgeback or something and insanely aggressive. Marvin barked constantly, and they couldn’t take him to the park because he tried to eat anything that moved. The only creature Marvin didn’t want to straight up assassinate was Mr Boyd, so he had to take Marvin out for walks late at night while there was nobody else around. Anyway, late one night he’s walking Marvin through the neighbourhood, like, six blocks away from here, and he hears a woman calling out in distress from inside a house. She’s like, ‘Stop, please, God no, stop, please!’ So Mr Boyd figures it’s probably the same burglars from his place, right, and this time he’s going to stop them. He tries the front door, but it’s locked, so he opens the side gate and runs to the back of the house with Marvin. He shoulder-charges the back door and goes through the house. He bursts into a bedroom and finds an older woman tied to bed, her clothes all ripped, and there’s an older man standing over her. So Mr Boyd pushes this guy, hard. And Marvin goes fucking crazy and starts attacking him, like, really savage. The woman on the bed starts screaming, and the man is begging for help, trying to fend off Marvin. Then Mr Boyd looks around and sees, like, these sex accessories or whatever on the bed and realises he has completely misinterpreted the situation and he’s just barged in on a married couple who just like it spicy and are in the middle of some fetish roleplay. So he tears Marvin off this man, who is panicking so much that he can’t breathe. The woman is still tied to the bed and she’s, like, shrieking. Mr Boyd locks Marvin in a bathroom and calls an ambulance, and here’s the thing: the man has a massive coronary infarction and dies on the way to the hospital. And even though Mr Boyd explained that he went in there to save this woman who he thought was being attacked, he’s charged and convicted with trespass and manslaughter. Seriously. He got three years. Not only that, the woman sued him in a civil trial and got this huge payout.’