The A-Word by Joy Preble

parents’ impending breakup which I wasn’t even sure was actually happening. I had managed to both lie and tell the truth. This made me feel worse.
    “You can tell me whatever you want,” Mags said, scuffing her foot on the driveway like she was trying to erase something. “You don’t have to keep it inside.”
    “I know.”
    “Promise?”
    “Promise,” I lied.
    But I was not surprised when she announced she would walk home with her egg rolls rather than taking Casey up on his offer of a ride.

A fter that, my mother, brother, and I ate lukewarm moo shu pork and shrimp-fried rice. We shoveled food in our mouths while Mom told us more about the cancer kids and their swallowing issues. I stole glances at Casey. If I solved Amber’s murder, maybe Management would promote her and leave my brother the hell alone. He’d be upset, but he’d work through it. He was a tough guy. He could pal around with Bo! Probably a bad idea, given Bo’s desire to fling himself off balconies, guzzle Jack, and look at me like he saw every single secret inside including this one.
    If Bo took a stance on the matter of Amber’s murder, I suspected it would be for his own self-interest. But I was doing the same thing, wasn’t I? The A-word community had gone to all that trouble to bring my brother back, spruce him up, and assign him to guard me. As I was still alive and a minor and without an actual driver’s license, it made no sense for him to move on. Was it weird that I felt like Bo and I had things in common? Maybe. But I couldn’t stop thinkingabout it. That picture of a lady he’d painted—the one on the far wall by his bed. What had she been to him?
    Easier to solve Amber’s death than dig into the secrets of Bo Shivers.
    Especially when all I really wanted to think about was Ryan Sloboda’s lips and how they felt on mine. I wasn’t one of those simpering types, but I wanted to linger on it for a while. More than a while. I deserved as much, didn’t I? Because that is what normal people did with wonderful things. They memorized the shape of them, the taste and sound of them. That’s what got you through the tough times. That’s what kicked your heart up and made you feel that anything was possible. But I was only a normal girl part of the time. The rest of the time, I was stuck in A-word land.
    I picked up a fortune cookie from the pile Casey had scattered on the table, cracked it open, and pulled out the little white slip.
    One man’s lie is another man’s truth
.
    I would have called Casey on it—pressed to see if he’d used angel mojo to give me some crap fortune. But it was at that exact moment that his cell rang like a five-alarm fire warning. He grimaced. Eyeballed the screen while I craned my neck trying to read the text or whatever it was. Then he shoved away from the table, chopsticks clattering to his plate, one landing on my last bite of moo shu.
    “Gotta go,” he said.
    Mom gaped at him. So did I.
    “BJ’s. Bryce. Sorry. Three people called in sick.” He was at the door while I was still processing.
    Hey. I was going to tell him my genius plan. The door slammed.
    I leapt to my feet.
    “I’m going with him,” I told Mom. I had no idea what I could say by way of explanation, so I didn’t even try.
    “It’s Sunday night,” Mom said. Her chopsticks—crisscrossed over a fat shrimp—were pointed at her mouth, frozen right where they’d been when Casey’s cell had gone off. “Family night.”
    We hadn’t been a real family in a very long time. But the look on her face made me sad. Not sad enough to stop walking.
    “We’ll hang out later,” I said. “Maybe watch a cable movie. You can leave the food. I’ll clean it up when I get home.”
    I heard her chair scrape and knew she was following me so I hustled faster. Out the door. Down the driveway like the house was on fire. Casey was already backing up the Merc. “Wait!” I hollered. “Casey. Wait!” I raced forward, catching up with him,