Page 3 of The Surprise

“You’re a little older than my Izzy,” Mom says.

That’s promising.

“But I hope you’ll keep an eye out for her, and for Amanda’s two daughters as well.” Mom acts like they’re headed for inner city Chicago instead of a tiny town where their biggest threat is a bully taking their Cheetos. I guess you can take the mom out of Houston, but you can’t take the Houston out of the mom.

“Sure,” Beth says. “I’m sure they won’t need help finding anything. Manila High School’s not exactly large.”

Ha. She had the same thought as me.

“I could hardly believe it when I found out they had the six upper-level grades at the same school,” Mom says. “But Izzy’s happy that she and Emery will be at the same place with Whitney joining them next year.”

“You have three kids?” Beth asks. “Is that right?”

Three kids? This feels like an auspicious time to make my entrance. I stroll through the doorway. “Four.” I finally see the face that matches the voice I’ve been listening to like a dehydrated castaway on a desert island.

I can’t decide whether she’s really as beautiful as she looks, or whether I’m just starved for teenage attention.

Her hair’s just a little bit curly, right at the ends, and it frames a heart shaped face with huge, almost anime-like eyes. They’re a dark, soft brown, and the blonde tips of her hair make them look even warmer, like the summer sunshine on a hay field.

Oh, no. I’m worried my brain’s shutting down. I need to say something quickly, or she’ll think I’m a half-wit.

“I’m Ethan,” I say. Good. My name. I remembered my own name. It’s a start. “I’m the black sheep of my family.”

Black sheep? Can I only speak in farm cliches, now? And why black? Where did that come from? I’m not a bad boy. Although, I did fight with Mom over attending her version of college. Maybe that’s what my brain meant.

“More like a black ox,” Mom says.

Ah, she’s saying I’m big. That makes me look good. Girls like big guys, right? And now I’m preening like an idiot. I need to make a joke. “But I know what noise a sheep makes,” I say. Then I baa. Like I think I’m Old MacDonald. My utter lack of social interaction with people my age has broken my brain. “What sound would an ox make?”

Beth should be cringing.

She should be looking at me with a scrunched nose and a dangling mouth, wondering how stupid this new kid really is.

Only, she’s not, and I realize something.

She’s stuck on the same desert as me.

There can’t be many teenage guys here, and that means I’m a tall glass of water in the middle of nothing. That’s the only explanation for her expression. She’s giggling.

“Oxen complain about everything and break stuff all the time,” Izzy says from the kitchen. “And they don’t go to college like they should.”

“Hey.” Sisters suck. Why would she out me like that, seconds after I meet someone new? “I’m taking online classes.”

“We all know. You haven’t gone a single day without whining about them,” Mom says.

It’s like they’ve all had meetings where they planned to make me look idiotic the second a teenage girl shows up.

“I can’t wait for college,” Beth says. “Like, I’m literally counting down the days.”

“You don’t say.” Mom’s beaming now. “Well, come right in, Beth. How do you feel about handsome oxen?”

Oh, no. I’m going to kill her. My very own mother—I can practically see my face splashed across the front of the local paper.Big City Boy Snaps and Murders Lawyer Mom.

Except, Beth giggles again. “Can’t say that I’ve met an ox before now.” She just agreed that I’m handsome. I love my mother. She’s brilliant. “Mostly here, we just grow pigs.”

And now I’m laughing.

“Pigs aren’t as bad as I thought they were,” I say. “Our next door neighbor, Miss Saddler, has a pretty cute one.”

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