Page 35 of No Way Home
I huffed out a laugh. “Hippity dippity time.”
Magnolia laughed and I momentarily forgot what we were talking about.
“How do you think you got here?” Mom asked Sophie. Then she looked at Dad. “These kids. We had the birds and the bees talk with them, right? Or is my menopausal brain making me forget things?”
“Yes. We did. With all four of them,” Dad said, like he wasthe one who’d been tortured. “Sophie swore she was traumatized for life.”
“I was,” Sophie snickered.
I raised my hand. “Me too. One minute, I’m this naïve fifth grader excited about getting his first locker, and the next, Dad’s saying things like ‘when a man loves a woman…’ I couldn’t eat for three days.”
Magnolia hiccuped through a laugh.
I grinned, feeling like a champion.
“That’s how they started your ‘lesson?’” Sophie used air quotes. “Mom gave me a play-by-play of my delivery. Play. By. Play.” She clapped. “Every cutesy nickname she’d been using for body parts flew straight out the window. Then she admitted that the banging I sometimes heard at night wasn’t from the rattle-y AC unit outside.” She wrapped her hands around her throat and made a gagging sound.
“Wow.” Mom glared at Sophie. “Traitor.”
“You guys don’t know how good you had it,” Magnolia said. “I never got the birds and the bees talk. I learned everything I know in the halls of a junior high in Frankfurt. Nothing like learning about your changing body when everything sounds like a threat. Das ei bewegt sich durch den eileiter!” she barked.
I chuckled.
Sophie guffawed. “What does it mean?”
Like she was explaining quantum physics to a toddler, Magnolia slowly said, “The egg travels through the fallopian tube.”
Mom dropped her forehead to Dad’s shoulder, wheezing with laughter.
Sophie wiped her eyes. “I think you’re the lucky one. Be grateful your parents didn’t make you suffer through the lecture.”
Magnolia’s laughter died. “It didn’t even occur to them. That’s right when the diagnosis came.”
Everyone went quiet.
“Oh.” Sophie squeezed Magnolia’s hand. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Magnolia sighed. “Such is life, I guess.” But there was a sadness in her eyes that appeared whenever she talked about her mom.
Sophie cleared her throat loudly. When I looked at her, she tipped her head toward Magnolia.Say something, she mouthed.She’s your race partner. But anything I said might be used against me as evidence in court—and Griffin was judge, jury, and executioner. So I clamped my mouth shut. Under the table, Sophie kicked me in the shin, jaw clenched, eyes blazing fiercer than her red hair.
I glowered and rubbed my leg.
“So, Maggie,” Sophie said, taking out her frustration on a defenseless piece of lettuce. “Tell us one of your favorite things about your time at UVA.” It came out stiff and formal, like a news interview. “No, your very favorite thing.”
Magnolia sat there, thinking for a moment.
“Bodo’s Bagels?” I asked, hoping my meager sacrifice would calm Mount Sophie before she went full lava mode.
Magnolia’s forehead furrowed. “I mean, yes, everybody loves Bodo’s, but it wasn’t my favorite thing.”
“The football games?” Dad asked.
Magnolia’s cheeks flared. “Um, I only ever went to one and it wasn’t…a good time.”
It was a punch to the sternum, but she was being generous, not throwing me under the bus. I would’ve deserved it. If it had been Sophie, I’d have been roadkill. She would’ve run me over, then thrown it in reverse just to hear the crunch.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Mom said. “Those are Bowen’s favorite.”
