She laughs then. “I love it so much I don’t even know how to tell you how much I love it. I have this amazing professor who started her career clerking for Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall!” she repeats, like she can’t even believe her luck. “She’s amazing. And another one of my professors won most of the major environmental cases of the eighties and nineties against corporations. The stories are insane.”
“I can imagine. I’m glad you like it.”
“I do. I really do.”
“And Ethan?” I ask as I make my way out of my room and down the hall to Tori’s. If she’s awake, maybe I can hand the phone over now and put Chloe out of her misery.
“He’s doing great. You know, same old Ethan. Working, taking care of the baby, taking care of me…”
“Yeah? Things still good on that front?”
“They’re fine, Miles. Better than fine. And you know it.”
“Hey, I’m your big brother. It’s my job to ask. To make sure you’re happy.” For a second, the past hangs between us. The fact that, for so long, I didn’t do my job. Didn’t take care of her. Didn’t make sure she was happy. And suddenly I want to kick myself. Despite her worry about Tori, Chloe sounds good, really good. The last thing she needs is me dragging up the past in a pathetic effort to make myself feel better.
I wait for her to call me on it, but she wouldn’t be my sister if she did that. Instead she just says, “I’m deliriously happy. Everything is going perfectly—Ethan makes sure of it. So stop worrying about me and worry about yourself instead.”
“Why do I need to worry about myself?” I demand as I knock lightly on Tori’s door. “I’m doing great.”
“Oh yeah? So when’s the last time you went on a date? Or did something that didn’t involve working in your lab all night, every night?”
There’s no answer, so I knock a little harder. “Excuse me, but I went to a party just last night.”
She snorts. “How many times do I tell you that a gathering of engineering nerds where you all sit around talking about totally obscure stuff and how it will make your current inventions better is so not a party.”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that,” I tell her. “But I will have you know, this wasn’t that kind of party.”
“No?” She sounds skeptical.
“No. I promise. I even danced with a beautiful woman and talked to people who aren’t engineers.”
“Yeah, well, just so you know, robots don’t actually count as people. Or beautiful women.”
“I’m hanging up now,” I say, echoing her words from earlier when I was giving her a hard time.
“Okay, okay.” She laughs for a second, then grows serious. “Have Tori call me as soon as she can, okay? I’m going to be worried until I hear her voice.”
“I will. And you keep taking the world of Stanford Law by storm.”
“I think you’ve got that reversed. Currently, it’s taking me by storm.” She sounds like she’s loving every second of it.
“Yeah, well, all the best graduate programs do.” Tori still hasn’t answered my knock and it’s making me more nervous than it should. But with Chloe’s words about how vulnerable she is fresh in my mind, I can’t help worrying. Not that I think Tori would do anything to hurt herself, but still, I’ll feel better once I can talk to her. See her face-to-face. “Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Okay. Take care of Tori for me. And make sure she calls me!”
“I will,” I promise for the second time in as many minutes. “Bye, sis.”
“Bye, bro.”
“You are such a brat.”
“Takes one to know one,” she answers with a bright giggle right before she cuts the connection.
I’m left staring at Tori’s closed door, with a bunch of increasingly upsetting scenarios running through my head. What if she fell and hit her head in the shower? What if she took too many sleeping pills by accident and is passed out on the bed? What if she deliberately tried to hurt herself because she couldn’t take all the shit currently going on in her life?
It’s this thought that has me knocking harder, has me calling out her name. And when she still doesn’t answer, it’s this thought that has me pushing her door open, expecting the worst but praying for the best.
Turns out, all my worry is for nothing because Tori isn’t in there. Her bag is open next to the bed, though, and Chloe’s fuzzy pink slippers are nowhere in sight, both of which I take as good signs.