“I stayed up late reading,” Matt says to his mom. She turns her back to us to get more cookies out of the oven. When she opens the oven door, it makes the warm kitchen hot.
“The show ran long,” Matt whispers to Audrey. “I couldn’t miss the encore.”
“What are you kids plotting over there?” Mrs. McKean asks, spatula in hand.
“Nothing,” the siblings say in unison.
We munch quietly for a moment before Audrey starts harassing her brother again. She leans toward him, elbows on the table, eyes narrowed, and lips pinched.
“By the way, I know you used my phone again. Just because you’re too lazy to charge yours doesn’t mean you can steal mine whenever you please. Stop taking my stuff.”
Matt rolls his eyes at her and then looks at me with an expression that straddles the line between annoyed and amused. “Thanks a lot,” he says in a voice that could be sarcastic; I don’t know him that well. Right when I decide he’s teasing, he gets up from the table.
“Later,” he says to no one in particular.
“Bye,” I say quietly, wishing I could make him stay.
Audrey and I decide to go to a just-opened mall that she says is like shopping heaven. We okay it with her mom and with Mason, then take off in her sunshiny yellow car. While we shop, I balance my overwhelming desire to ask about Matt, Matt, and more Matt with wanting to get to know Audrey better. I don’t want Audrey to think I’m only interested in her brother, so I decide as we walk through the temperature-controlled atrium that I’m restricted to asking only three questions about Matt.
As we meander down the aisles of Von Maur, GAP, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Hot Topic, Audrey and I chat easily about anything and everything else. After only thirty minutes, I know that she got her hair colored at the salon on the first level, loves glass elevators, wants to go to Paris someday but takes Spanish at school, prefers pretzel bites to sticks or full soft pretzels, and is a closet history nerd.
“I could have rocked the Victorian era,” Audrey says as she fingers a ruffled, Victorian-inspired shirt at Anthropologie.
“I think you’re right,” I say. “But corsets? No thanks.”
“I bet they weren’t so bad after you got used to them.”
>“You should see my air cymbals,” I joke, happy to have solved the mystery. “They’re even more worthy.”
“Actually, what I liked most was the singing,” Matt says, smiling full-out this time. “The high note at the end was pure genius.” He scratches his defined jaw with the back of his index finger. It’s oddly sexy.
“Awesome, right?” I say, hoping I sound more casual than I feel.
He gives me a double thumbs-up and a totally cheesy smile. “I think you could easily get a recording contract.”
We both laugh, and when it subsides, we’re still for a few seconds.
“I’m Daisy,” I say, in case he doesn’t recognize me. “We’re in English together?”
“I know,” he says automatically. He looks down and away for a second, smiling a little to himself like he’s embarrassed for having answered so quickly. Then his narrow eyes are back on mine. “I didn’t know you were friends with my sister.”
“Our lockers are in the same hall,” I explain. “That’s how we met. She told me she has a brother. I didn’t know it was you.”
“It’s me.” Matt nods again, shoving his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans. He looks conflicted, like he wants to stay but thinks he should go.
“Audrey went to get sodas,” I say just to say something, hoping that if I keep talking, he’ll stay put. It works, at least for a minute.
“How’d you do on that quiz?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “I got an A.”
Another nod. “Me, too.”
We hold each other’s gaze for a slightly uncomfortable but still glorious moment. I feel like I did that time I had to present my science project in front of the whole freshman class: exhilarated and apprehensive at the same time.
Matt pulls an iPhone from his right pocket and steps into the room only far enough to put it in the charger on the desk. His being that much closer makes me shift in my seat.
“Don’t tell Audrey about this, okay?”