In the morning, the buzzer buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed again.
When Milo finally opened the front door, there was JJ on the stoop with a king-size package of Twizzlers in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. He looked like a Swedish lumberjack—all shoulders and flushed cheeks and blond, floppy hair. The sun was barely up, but JJ looked ready to scale a redwood tree. Milo was still in his sweatpants. He was barely conscious.
“Happy New Year, man.” JJ grinned.
Milo blinked. “It’s January second.”
“It’s still new. And I come bearing gifts.” JJ shoved the bag into Milo’s chest. “To replenish your mom’s stash.”
“What is this?” Milo pulled out a clear glass bottle and then quickly shoved it back in. “Vodka?” He was glad he’d made it to the door first. Frankie was in the kitchen making breakfast. She would blow a gasket if she saw this.
“Not just any vodka. High Roller. Some movie producer gave it to my dad.” JJ winked. “Top of the line.”
“The stuff I took was Grey Goose. This isn’t even—”
“Mi?”
“Crap.” Milo shoved the bag down the leg of his sweatpants just as Frankie poked her head into the front hall.
JJ raised one arm of his buffalo plaid jacket in greeting. “Happy New Year, Mrs. Robinson-Clark!”
Ms. Clark, Milo thought. But he said nothing.
Frankie’s brow furrowed. “Come in if you’re coming in. It’s twenty degrees out. We’re losing heat.”
“Sure thing,” JJ said, taking one giant step forward and closing the door with a thud.
Frankie frowned from JJ to Milo. “A little early for visitors, isn’t it, Mi?” Clearly she thought they were conducting a drug deal. She was scanning the crime scene for evidence.
“I was in the neighborhood,” JJ said cheerfully. “I brought you something.” He took another two steps forward to deliver the Twizzlers. “A peace offering. Sorry about the weed … is that banana bread I smell?”
“Muffins,” Milo said, shifting his stance so the vodka bottle wouldn’t plummet to the floor. “Frankie makes great muffins.”
“I bet she does.”
Frankie huffed as JJ ambled past her into the kitchen. Milo could hear her muttering. “By all means, make yourself at home.” She turned to Milo. “Really?”
“What? He just showed up.”
She frowned. “We have guests.”
“I know.”
“They’re asleep in the living room.”
“What do you want me to do, throw him out?”
She sighed deeply. “Just take him to your room.”
“Okay,” Milo said.
“But if that boy has marijuana on him, so help me…”
“He doesn’t.”
“He’d better not.”
“Ma,” Milo said. He squeezed the vodka between his thighs. He looked at his mother steadily. “He doesn’t. Trust me.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust,” Frankie said.
“Point taken.”
Milo waited until she’d returned to the kitchen. Then he opened the door to the hall closet, shoved the bag into one of Suzanne’s rain boots, and buried the boot under a pile of beach towels—like a criminal. It’s not as if it was his alcohol. It’s not as if he was planning to drink it. This is what he would tell Suzanne if she busted him. But Suzanne would never bust him. Frankie would bust him. Milo wouldn’t be sneaking around like this if Frankie had minded her own business in the first place. Because, come on. What kind of mother takes her son’s friend’s private property out of his backpack and flushes it down the toilet?
“Dude.”
Milo slammed the closet door so quickly, his finger got slammed with it.
“These muffins are the bomb—”
“Ow!” The pain was searing. “Fffffffrick!”
“You okay?” JJ’s mouth was full.
Milo couldn’t answer. All he could do was bounce up and down, holding his finger and swearing.
“What happened?” Frankie came flying through the doorway. “Who’s hurt?”
JJ gestured to Milo. “Slammed his finger in the door.”
“I’ll go get ice.”
“And a muffin!” JJ called after her as she ran back to the kitchen. “He could use a muffin!”
“Fricking ow,” Milo said weakly, holding his finger.
“You’re gonna lose that nail.”
Milo looked up, and there was Hollis, peering through the doorway. “I did the same thing once,” she said, stepping into the hall. “Slammed my finger in a drawer. The nail turned black and fell off. It took months to grow back.” She leaned against the banister leading to the upstairs apartment, and Milo found himself staring not at her zebra-striped leggings or her Intellectual Badass T-shirt, but at her hair, which looked like it had been whipped with an eggbeater.
JJ’s eyes widened, probably because Hollis was busting out of that shirt. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“Huh?” Milo stared back at his throbbing finger.
“Who is this vision I see before me? Is this your woman?”
Milo’s head snapped up. “No!” he and Hollis said in unison.
“She’s my sister,” Milo said.
“Since when do you have a sister?”
“Half sister,” Hollis clarified.
“Since when do you have a half sister?”
“We only met once,” Milo said by way of explanation.
JJ raised his eyebrows.
Milo tried again. “We have the same sperm donor.”
“No shit?” JJ said.
“No shit.”
“You never told me you had a sperm donor.”
“I told you I had two moms.”
JJ grinned. “Cool.” He strode toward Hollis, holding out a hand big enough to palm a watermelon. “Rabinowitz. JJ Rabinowitz.”
Hollis smirked.
“And you are…”
“Hollis Darby.”
Milo noted the omission of “Barnes,” but before he could comment, Frankie arrived with a bag of frozen peas, which she proceeded to wrap around his finger.
“You gonna shake my hand, Hollis Darby?”
“Sit,” Frankie commanded.
Milo sat.
“I don’t know,” Hollis said. “You gonna tell me what the J’s stand for, JJ Rabinowitz?”
Frankie raised Milo’s elbow. “Elevate.”
Milo elevated.
Glancing over her shoulder, Frankie said, “Good morning, Hollis.”
“Good morning.”
“You really want to know?” JJ said.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t,” Hollis said.
It occurred to Milo, as the oven timer dinged and Frankie rushed back into the kitchen, that JJ had never volunteered his real name, and that Milo had never thought to ask.
“Jonah Jedediah.”
Hollis snorted. “Jonah Jedediah Rabinowitz?”
“In the flesh.”
“You don’t look Jewish.”
“How do I look?”
“Like you should be shucking corn on a football field in Nebraska.”
JJ chuckled. “Very perceptive, Hollis Darby.” Then, after a beat, “I’m adopted.”
Hollis nodded. “Well, that explains it.”
“Yup,” JJ said.
Milo sat there holding his frozen peas and waiting for JJ to elaborate, but JJ appeared to have said all he planned to say on the subject. Hollis leaned against the banister, nodding. Icing, elevating, nodding, standing. The conversation died a slow death.
“Why don’t we get some breakfast?” Milo said.
“Now you’re talking,” JJ said.
“Hollis?”
Hollis shrugged. “I could eat.”
* * *
“Oh my God.” Hollis leaned over and spat furiously into Milo’s trash can, then swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “What is that thing?”
“That,” Milo said, “is a wheat-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, nut-free banana muffin.”
Hollis stood up, shaking her head. “How do you survive? Seriously, what do you eat?”
“A lot of salads,” Milo said. “Meat. Rice. Apples and pears. Beets.”
“Beets?”
“I can vouch for that,” JJ said from the comfort of Milo’s bed, where he was lounging beside Pete, stuffing his face with muffins.
Hollis turned to JJ. “Do you ever come up for air?”
“I’m a growing boy,” JJ said, spewing crumbs onto his shirt. “I need sustenance.”
By Milo’s count, JJ had plowed his way through at least four muffins. Also a bowl of Frankie’s homemade granola with blueberries and a pig’s worth of bacon. He ate like a trash compactor.
“Don’t your parents feed you?” Hollis said.
JJ shrugged. “They travel a lot.”
What he didn’t say was that his mom was a movie actress and his dad was a movie director and he lived in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone filled with so much art it could be a museum, and had a Sub-Zero refrigerator so stocked it could feed every person in the five boroughs of New York for a week.
“Only child?” Hollis said.
“Yup.”
“Me too.”
“Hey,” Milo said. “Where’s the love?”
Hollis shrugged. “It’s not like we grew up together.”
“Yeah, but you’re not exactly an ‘only child’ either.”
“I am for all practical purposes.”
“Okay, but for impractical purposes you have me and three other siblings.”
“Whoa,” JJ said. He sat up straight, sending crumbs flying everywhere. “Hold the phone.”
Hollis shook her head. “I don’t consider them siblings.”
“What do you consider them?” Milo said.
“I don’t consider them at all.”
“Um,” JJ said. “Can we back up, please?”
But Milo wasn’t ready to back up. “What do you consider me?”
“You’re different,” Hollis said.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up the Rubik’s Cube from Milo’s desk, turned it a few rotations. “We met a long time ago.”
“So if you’d met them a long time ago you would consider them siblings?”
“No.” Hollis shook her head, put the Rubik’s Cube down. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
This wasn’t going very well.
“Yo,” JJ said.
“Aren’t you even curious?” Milo said.
“I’m curious!” JJ leapt off the bed, throwing his arms out, startling Pete off the bed, too. “Tell me what the frick you’re talking about!”
Milo would have thought—after he finished explaining to JJ about the TGFB1 gene and the Donor Progeny Project and the information he’d plugged in to the site from JJ’s computer on New Year’s Eve—that JJ would think this was all nuts and he’d find some excuse to blow out of there.
But he didn’t.
He studied Milo’s face intently for a second. Then he nodded. “So, what do we do now?”
“What do we do now?” Milo glanced across the room at Hollis, who had been pacing around the whole time he was talking and had finally landed on his beanbag chair with a book.
“Don’t ask me.” Hollis held Milo’s gaze, almost defiantly. “It’s your quest.”
“Do we log on?”
“Hell yeah,” JJ said. “We log on.”