I flushed. No one else paid attention.
“Have you been working at the senior center long, Nolan?” Mom asks.
I stiffen, spearing a single green bean. I press my knee against Nolan’s under the table, to signal him to be quiet. “We don’t have to talk about— ”
“A while,” he says smoothly.
“Do you like it?”
“It has its ups and downs. I used to love it, but a little . . . sameness set in, and I actually thought about quitting. Then Mallory arrived.” His knee suddenly pushes back against mine. “Now I love it again.”
Mom cocks her head. “You two must work very closely together.”
“Not nearly as much as I’d like.”
Oh my God. Oh. My. God.
“How’s Mallory at work?” Darcy asks. “Do the old people like her?”
“She has a reputation for pocketing puddings.” Everyone stares at me like I’m that Pharma bro who hiked basic meds’ prices. “And for public near-nudity.”
Mom’s eyes widen. “Mallory, this is concerning— ”
“He’s kidding.” I kick Nolan’s calf, hard. He doesn’t seem to care, but he does trap my foot between his own. “He’s known for his terrible sense of humor.” My leg is now twined with his. Cool. Cool.
“Okay.” Sabrina sets her glass down. “I’ll go ahead and ask it, since we all want to know: Are you guys having sex?”
“Oh my God.” I cover my eyes. “Oh my God.”
“Sabrina,” Mom chides, “that is really inappropriate.” She turns to me. “But yes, are you?”
“Oh my God,” I moan.
“We aren’t,” Nolan says between bites of meat loaf. Third helping.
Oh.
My.
God.
“Maybe you’ll have sex tonight?” Darcy asks. “Is that why you came over?”
My twelve-year- old sister, who sleeps with a stuffed fox, just asked the world’s number one chess player if he came over to bang me. And he just replies, matter-of-fact, “It seems unlikely. And no, it’s not why I came.”
“Did you know Mal has sex with boys and girls?” Darcy adds. “I’m not outing her— she told me I could tell anyone.”
Nolan glances at me. Lightning-quick. “I did not.”
“He doesn’t care, Darcy. And FYI, that didn’t mean ‘please go tell everyone.’ ”
“Would you like more meat loaf, Nolan?” Mom interjects, and leaves for the kitchen when Nolan nods gratefully.
“So, Nolan,” Sabrina continues, “do you also have sex with boys and girls?”
“Jesus.” An image of the entire Baudelaire family flashes in my head. “Okay, I’m going to nuke this conversation and remind you that you cannot ask people you barely know about their sexual orientation during dinner. Or at all.”
“Maybe he doesn’t mind,” Sabrina says. “Do you mind, Nolan?”
“I don’t,” he says, remarkably unperturbed.
Sabrina shoots me a triumphant smile. Sistercide. Sistercide is the only option. I’ll make Darcy help me hide the body. Or Mom. Or Goliath. “So, boys and girls?”
Nolan shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Mostly girls?”
“No.”
“Mostly boys?”
“No.”
Sabrina looks briefly confused, then delighted. “You don’t want to exclude nonbinary people!”
“So,” Darcy interjects, “when are you guys going to have sex?”
Nolan’s “Hard to tell” overlaps with my “Never!” and completely swallows it.
I face-palm.
“I bet Mallory’s really good at it. She sure practices a lot.”
Nolan gives me a long, assessing look that’s mercifully interrupted by Mom arriving with more meat loaf. “Do you have any siblings, Nolan?” she asks. I’ve never been more grateful for a change of topic.
“Two half brothers. On my father’s side.”
“How old are they?”
He squints, as if trying to remember a remote piece of information. “Somewhere in their early teens. Maybe younger.”
“You’re not sure?”
He shrugs. “I never see them.”
Mom’s brow furrows. “You must spend most holidays with your mother.”
He lets out a hushed laugh. Or maybe it’s a scoff. “I haven’t seen either of my parents in years. Usually a friend invites me over.”
“Why don’t you see your parents?” Darcy asks.
“A . . . difference of opinions. Over my career.”
“They don’t like the senior center?”
Nolan bites back a smile and nods solemnly.
“That’s kinda sad,” Darcy says. “I see my family every day of every week of every year.”
“That’s also kinda sad,” Sabrina mumbles. “Wouldn’t mind some space.”
Darcy shrugs. “I like it, that we’re always together. And we tell each other everything.”
The pointed look Nolan gives me makes me want to kick him in the gonads, but my leg is still stuck between his, so I consider drowning myself in the gravy. A slow, nutritious, tasty death.
I’m not sure how it happens, or what atrocious deeds I committed in past lives to deserve this indignity, but after dinner Nolan gets talked into staying “just a little bit longer! Pleeeeease!” and watching TV with my sisters.
“Do you like Riverdale?” Sabrina asks eagerly. She and Darcy flank him on the couch, and Goliath is in his lap. （“What a strangely familiar beast,” Nolan said when she deposited him in his hands. “I wonder if I’ve recently seen a portrait of him.” I nearly forked him in the eye.） Mom leans against the doorframe, taking in the scene with a level of enjoyment that I vastly resent. I’ve been sent to fetch ice cream sandwiches, then sent back when I brought the chocolate kind instead of strawberry.
“I’ve never seen Riverdale.”
“Oh my God. Okay, so, that’s Archie and he’s, like, the main character, but everyone likes Jughead better because hello, Cole Sprouse, and there’s this murder that . . .”
“He’s cute,” Mom whispers while I’m loading the dishwasher.
“Cole Sprouse?”
“Nolan.”
I huff. It doesn’t come out as indignant as I’d like. “No, he’s not.”
“And he seems to have great taste.”
“Because he ate a stomach-pumping amount of your meat loaf?”
“Mostly that. Only secondarily because he doesn’t seem to be able to look away from my most oblivious daughter.”
I’m 93 percent sure that he’s about to place a napalm bomb in our basement, I don’t tell her. Or maybe he wants to rob us. He’ll abscond with the family nickel jar the second we’re distracted. And with what’s left of the meat loaf.
I still have no idea why he’s here. He’s asking my sisters “Which one of the characters is Riverdale?” with his soothing NPR voice, making them giggle and slap his forearms, and I want him gone from my house. Stat.
And yet it’s over one hour before Mom reminds Darcy that she needs to finish her English homework, and Sabrina locks herself in her room to video-chat with derby friends about how Emmalee should be jammer and what’s wrong with Coach these days, anyway?