IT WAS A Sunday night and we were sitting around the kitchen table, eating Thai egg noodles with tofu for dinner. Since Mom had started doing the whole Bikram yoga thing, she’d begun experimenting more with our food. She’d been out at the yurt last night on something called “Mmmmeditation”, which Sid had come up with and was about eating the right food to free up your mind. Or something like that. Anyway, food and yoga.

Don’t get me wrong, I was all for changing up the Khatchadorian chow (especially on those nights Grandma Dotty was doing her “special” meat loaf) and had absolutely no problem with noodles, but tofu was a step too far.

Have you ever eaten tofu? You’d know if you had, believe me. The stuff is basically chewy wood and tastes of NOTHING.

I had carefully picked every brick of the stuff out of my dinner and was steadily constructing a Great Wall of Tofu on the side of my plate.

Naturally, Mom, who’d spent time actually cooking the tofu, didn’t see things the same way. I noticed her eyeing the Great Wall suspiciously and kept my fingers crossed she wasn’t going to make me eat it. The only thing I could think of that would be worse than tofu was cold tofu. Still, Mom had put a lot of effort into this meal. I owed her for a ton of stuff she’d done for me and now it was payback time.

I braced myself and sucked down a noodle. I’m so brave. I just wish Mom knew the sacrifices I was making.

“So you’re defo in?” Kasey said. After I’d told her about Sid getting The People onto the KRMY Best Band bill, she kept coming back to the subject. “Just like that, no audition, no nothing?”

“Yep, Sid says we’re in,” I replied casually. “He says they think we’re great.”

“So they haven’t heard you, then?” Georgia sniggered.

Mom shot her a warning look, then turned back to me, smiling. “Honestly, I think you guys are starting to sound pretty good. I heard you rehearsing in the garage the other night and I think I recognized one of the songs.”

I didn’t say anything. Although Mom generally knew the right thing to say, my hipster cool wouldn’t let me let her know I was happy she thought the band was sounding good. Mom wasn’t off the hook yet, but she didn’t seem to have noticed my extra-cool lack of response. She was just smiling at me.

I turned back to Kasey, who was still banging on about Sid. “So he just called up someone at the radio station and got you in?”

What was her problem? Hadn’t I explained all this already? “Yeah,” I said in a tone that also said “end of discussion”.

Kasey and Georgia exchanged SGs—aka “significant glances”. I couldn’t read what the SGs meant, but that was nothing new. I could think of a million times when I’d be in one conversation and there’d be this other, totally silent one going on between Mom and Georgia. Was that secret language a girl thing, an adult thing, or did everyone on the planet get it except me?

Mom was still looking at me weird—all kind of spaced out and dreamy, like the time I’d seen her in hospital just after an operation to fix her broken ankle. I decided to check in later with Kasey about those SGs.

“Sorry I was making jokes about the band earlier, Rafe,” Mom said, smiling serenely. She closed her eyes and placed the palms of her hands together in front of her face. “Namaste,” she said.

Namaste? MAYDAY! MAYDAY! This yoga-experimentation thing was getting completely out of control!

I looked at Kasey and Georgia, but they didn’t seem to have noticed.

Noodles and tofu were one thing, but namaste was getting dangerously close to Mom turning into a full-blown hippy.

My social status in Hills Village was already at dangerously low levels. I might have been mutating into a hipster, but I could not afford Mom becoming a hippy. It was only a matter of time before she changed my name to Butterfly and moved us all to a commune in New Mexico. I didn’t want to be called Butterfly! I lowered my head to take a forkful of noodles and hunkered down behind The Great Wall of Tofu, my good mood at hearing the news about the KRMY comp fading fast. It was, after all, still Sunday night … which meant one thing: Monday morning and SCHOOL was coming right at me like a stampeding rhino.