Nothing Left to Burn by Patty Blount

from you, I considered seeing the movie alone, but I look forward to our spirited debates over the plot too much for that.”
    I winced. “Did you buy our tickets?”
    He hesitated a moment and then shrugged again.
    Fuck. I pulled out my wallet and handed him enough to cover his ticket and mine, to make up for my mistake. He stared at the cash for a moment and then nodded.
    Alex was between jobs again. He had a hard time staying employed. He was smarter than the average bear—a lot smarter—and found it almost impossible not to improve processes at his various places of employment, or worse, tell his bosses they were doing it all wrong. Despite his genius IQ, people were surprisingly resistant to a teenager showing them how to improve kitchen efficiencies by thirty percent or how to slash costs simply by reducing the temperature in the dining room.
    I wasn’t working either. After Matt died, there didn’t seem to be much point, since I wouldn’t be here much longer.
    “I’m really sorry.”
    Alex gave me a tight-lipped smile. “As joining the junior squad was my suggestion in the first place, it wouldn’t be logical to blame you for your forgetting your other obligations.”
    “Logical. Uh-huh.” I faked a smile because the forgetting your other obligations part stung a bit. “You’re not an obligation, Alex.”
    His eyes snapped to mine and then away. He wasn’t buying this, and I was way too tired to think of ways to convince him. So I opted for a change of subject. “How about some Netflix?”
    To my total surprise, he shook his head. “No. You look terrible. I’ll leave.” But instead of heading for the door, he crouched down to Tucker’s level and continued scratching my dog’s head.
    I sat back down, wincing at the muscle pain. “So aside from waiting for me, what did you do today?”
    Alex took out his ever-present tablet, swiped the screen, and nodded. “Ah. I finished my app, submitted an idea for a research paper to Dr. Bronson, and won six chess games.”
    My eyes popped. “Six? Jesus, Alex, shouldn’t you pace yourself or something?” The chess club was ready to vote him off their island.
    He laughed. “It was great, really. I’m still experimenting with mating patterns, so I got to test my top picks.”
    “Which are?”
    He laughed louder and shook his head. “Nice try. If I tell you, you’ll read all that’s printed on each and be able to defend against them.”
    I squirmed. “Um, sure.” I wasn’t sure, but I thought Alex just called me a cheater.
    “So how did J squad go today?”
    I settled deeper into the sofa and wondered how to answer that. I decided not to tell him about the kiss. “I’m really not sure. Aside from the usual tense moments with my dad, we played dodgeball in full turnout gear—”
    “Why?”
    “It helps us learn tank conservation.”
    “Why dodgeball, specifically?”
    I shifted again. Sometimes, Alex’s giant brain made him annoying. “It’s one way of simulating the kind of physical exertion needed to fight a real fire.”
    He cocked his head and then shook it a moment later. “No, it’s not. Firefighters have few, if any, reasons to throw objects. It would have been better to play tug-of-war, to mimic hose-lifting. Why not simply practice hauling people up and down ladders?”
    I shut my eyes for a second. “Because we work with very limited resources. We had only a half hour to practice, so tossing around a ball was an easy impromptu exercise the entire squad could perform with minimal setup.”
    Alex still wasn’t convinced but let the matter drop, thank God. “How did you do?”
    “I ran out of air after eleven minutes.”
    “Is that bad?”
    I nodded. “Yeah. The tanks are rated for thirty minutes, but nobody ever gets that long. But eleven was pretty bad. I have a goal to reach sixteen minutes by the end of the month.”
    “A five-minute gain would be a forty-five percent improvement,” he said, impressed. “You have about