I stuck my foot in the doorway.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “That’s not fair!”
Back in Fredtown those words and that tone of mine would have struck fear in any kid around. The kids of Fredtown knew not to mess with me.
Enu did let the door bounce back open when it hit my foot. But he also joined his sister in laughing. And she started laughing harder, doubling over with giggles.
“I’d forgotten . . . Enu, that’s how your voice used to sound!” she exclaimed. “So high and squeaky, like you’d been sucking helium. . . . Say something else, Little Enu!”
“My name is not Little Enu! I’m Edwy! And my voice is not high and squeaky!”
But for the first time ever, I noticed . . . maybe my voice was a little squeaky.
It certainly wasn’t as deep as Enu’s.
I clamped my mouth shut and glared. I was the best glarer in Fredtown. Nobody could dispute that.
I mean, I used to be, back when I lived in Fredtown.
“Aww, I think you hurt his feelings,” Enu said mockingly. He elbowed his sister. “Shut up, Kiandra!”
“Shut up, both of you,” Udans said. He shoved past me and across the threshold, into the apartment. “Your parents would want you to invite us in, so we’re not discussing any of this out in the hall.”
Enu and Kiandra stepped aside to let Udans past. I trailed after him, and Enu swung the door shut behind us.
My jaw dropped when I saw the living room before us. It was huge—and hugely messy. Discarded clothes lay draped over the couch, the chairs, and the floor. A collection of apple cores seemed to be playing hide-and-go-seek in the potato-chip bags strewn across the end tables. A shallow cardboard box lay open on the coffee table in the middle of the room, with what looked like a fossilized slice of pepperoni pizza hanging halfway out. That pizza might have been there for years.
I could tell one thing. If I lived here with Enu and Kiandra, I would never have to pick up after myself.
Sweet.
Udans shoved aside a shirt that said GO, TEAM! in huge white letters and sat down on the low, dark-colored couch. I sat down beside him, but when Enu and Kiandra kept standing, I got back up.
“We have much to discuss,” Udans said. “Everyone, sit.”
Enu and Kiandra rolled their eyes—and, though I’d never admit this out loud to anyone, they were much better at eye rolling than I’d ever been. I practically wanted to take notes. But then both of them plopped down into the nearest chairs, sprawling sideways in a manner that seemed to say, We’re just sitting down because we want to—not because you told us to. And there’s nothing you can say that will make us sit up straight and look respectful.
“You too, Edwy,” Udans said, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me down.
I would have fought against him, but . . . I didn’t want Enu and Kiandra to see me lose. I tried to imitate their style, even muttering, “Now that I think of it, I am a little tired of standing.”
Kiandra snickered, and I realized that even as I bent my knees, I’d accidentally kept my back ramrod straight and folded my hands in my lap like . . . well, like a good little Fred-trained child, raised to sit up straight and act respectful. I sprawled backward, but my neck touched something unpleasantly wet and mushy—was there another apple core hidden behind me on the couch? And had it maybe gone a little rotten?
I didn’t let myself look. I pretended I didn’t notice.
“Your father has decided that Edwy will live in your extra bedroom,” Udans informed Enu and Kiandra.
“What?” Enu protested. “We don’t have an extra bedroom!”
Udans pointed silently at a half-open door.
“That’s my video-game room!” Enu complained.
“Not anymore,” Udans said. “You can move all your gaming equipment elsewhere. A bed and dresser will be arriving for Edwy in”—he looked at his watch—“about an hour.”
Enu muttered something under his breath. Udans ignored him.
“Edwy has been enrolled in school,” Udans continued. “The two of you will need to show him how to log on and sign up for classes.”
“We’re not babysitters,” Kiandra said. “We’re busy. We’ve got better things to do.”
“What—your nails?” Udans asked, probably because Kiandra was looking down at her fingernails. For the first time, I noticed that they were painted purple and decorated with stars and swirls outlined in white.
“I resent that,” Kiandra said, glaring at him. “It’s not fair that you make it sound like a traditionally female interest might be inferior to whatever you want me to do. And that you make it sound like all I am capable of is beautifying my body, instead of—”
“Kiandra, are you trying to make this take a hundred years?” Enu interrupted, punching her playfully on the shoulder. “When I’ve got a game to get back to?”
This was when any Fred would have sent them both to their rooms. I could just hear the gentle scolding: You need to think about whether you are treating those around you with proper respect. You need to take a little time to ponder your words and actions more carefully. . . .
Ugh, ugh, ugh. How many times had I heard that particular lecture back in Fredtown?
But it was weird. My stomach felt funny, and I thought maybe it was because Udans wasn’t sending Enu and Kiandra to their rooms.
Maybe they were too old to be sent to their rooms. Could that happen? Even with kids who hadn’t outgrown behaving like they needed to be sent to their rooms?
My stomach felt funnier than ever. I told myself it was just because of all that fizzy grape soda pop I’d drunk in Udans’ truck.
“I don’t need a babysitter anyway,” I told Kiandra and Enu. “I can take care of myself!”
“So it’s settled,” Udans said, like he was pretending he hadn’t seen or heard Kiandra and Enu do anything wrong. Or, um, me, either. The Freds wouldn’t have liked my tone.
“I just need someone to tell me where the school is,” I said, “and—”
Enu and Kiandra started laughing at me again.
“He thinks school is a place!” Kiandra moaned between giggles. “Don’t you know anything?”
Was that a trick question? How could a school not be a place?
“Dude, you just log on to the computer, click the box that says, ‘Homework completed for the day,’ and that’s it. You’re done with school,” Enu said.
I couldn’t help myself. I turned to Udans. “But my dad said—” I began.
“Let me guess—did he lay it on thick, about what a prestigious boarding school you’d be attending?” Kiandra, still giggling, rolled her eyes even more dramatically than ever.
“Don’t you tell him any different!” Enu shook a fist at me. Was that supposed to be a threat? “It’s better for everyone if our parents think they’re paying for intense, hard-core boarding school, but our grades are really coming from an easy-scam online school.”
“It’s not like they’re ever going to be able to come here and check up on us,” Kiandra said, shrugging. “Or like they’d believe you instead of us.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “How much of a mini-Enu are you? Will you have trouble remembering to do the daily fake homework check?”
“I—”
She didn’t seem to expect an answer. She didn’t even listen.
“Even that is no big deal,” she went on. “Let’s say you forget for a whole week—even a whole grading period—and you’re a little panicked about that. Well, then, a certain sister is capable of hacking into the site and making it look like you did all your homework—or at least did the one little minimal chore the school requires to pretend like you’re doing homework . . .” Kiandra faked a cough and cleared her throat in an obnoxious way. “Not that anyone here might have needed that help.” She muttered under her breath, “Stupid Enu. How much have you had to pay me?”
I glanced again at Udans, who just sat there, stony-faced.
Enu and Kiandra had to be joking, right? And was Udans in on the joke? I knew what school was. It was sitting in a classroom, and the teacher talking on and on and on—blah, blah, blah—about citizenship or life’s purpose or something else boring. And then Rosi and I—it was always the two of us together, because we were the only twelve-year-olds in Fredtown—we’d have to do some project about the shape of fruit flies’ eyes, or the rhyme scheme in poetry, or how democracy works. And Rosi would take the project seriously, and she’d worry because I just wanted to make the assignment sheet into a paper airplane and see if I could fly it into the teacher’s hair. And Rosi—
I really couldn’t think about Rosi right now.
Enu laughed louder.
“The kid actually looks worried,” he chortled. “Like he thinks any of this matters!”
“It matters a lot to your parents,” Udans said sternly. “It makes them so happy to think you are at a good school. ‘Preparing the leaders of tomorrow’—isn’t that what the website says? Your parents love getting the school’s reports about how well you’re doing.”
“All the more reason to keep lying to them!” Enu crowed.
Udans dropped his head. Was he peering down at the crumbs in the carpet or . . . was he really, really sad?
None of this made any sense.
Kiandra sat up and put her hands on her hips.
“How do we know you’re not just snowing us, Udans?” she asked. “How do we even know this boy is our brother? What if he’s some relative of yours, or . . . or just someone whose family is bribing you to—”
“Would you like to talk to your parents about this matter?” Udans asked. “We can make a phone call right now.”
Kiandra’s eyes darted from side to side.
“No, that’s okay,” she said quickly. “I believe you.”
What was that about? Why wouldn’t Kiandra want to talk to our parents?
I could hear my Fred-parents’ voices in my head, saying, A child’s love is the most important thing to any parent. Just spending time with you is what makes us happiest.
And the thing is, my Fred-parents drove me crazy. I thought they were crazy. And weird. And secretive. But they really seemed to mean it when they said that stupid little guilt-inducing line.
Didn’t Kiandra want to make our real parents happy? Didn’t she feel a teeny bit sad that she hadn’t seen them in twelve years? Didn’t she want to see them?
What did Kiandra and Enu want?