Aidan nods vigorously. “I smelled them way off. Thought I’d play with your mind.”
“Liar,” Seth whispers.
Aidan is silent, like he didn’t hear Seth.
I smile. I would have accepted, even believed, Aidan’s explanation if Seth hadn’t commented. I hand Aidan a bill from my pocket. How much have we spent? But I have more than enough to pay back whatever we have borrowed from the glove box—and then some. Mr. Gardian is always timely and generous with my allowances. I credit him for that because it is not something Mother and Father would remember.
“Get one for us all,” I tell him.
“And soda too,” Seth adds.
“It’s not even lunchtime yet,” Mira reminds us.
“We’re living dangerously, remember?” Seth says.
“Then we really should have dessert first,” she replies.
Aidan pays for four hot dogs, and we load them with condiments. I have never eaten with classmates before except across from them at a table at Hedgebrook, where there is predictable space and routine. I watch Aidan. Three pumps of ketchup. One of mustard. Two heaping spoonfuls of relish. He looks at Mira and then back at the onions. He hesitates, then passes on the onions. Mira mimics him from pump to spoonful, to dutifully passing on the offending vegetable. Seth only adds one artistically squiggled line of mustard down the middle. He doesn’t hesitate at the onions, adding three spoonfuls.
It is not just the new setting that makes this eating experience different from Hedgebrook. The structure that holds us together is not school but one of our own making. Even the air feels different. I notice every distance between us—or the lack of it. Seth watches me as I follow behind him, decorating my hot dog with a wide line of mustard and ketchup. I am surprised how the aroma of the hot dogs has aroused my appetite to monstrous proportions. My stomach rumbles. “Pardon me,” I say, patting my midsection.
“And it’s not even lunchtime,” Seth says in Mira’s warning voice.
I sprinkle on two spoonfuls of onions. That should certainly create some predictable distance. Mira settles herself on a nearby bus bench to eat her prelunch, and we follow her lead. “Tell us another one, Des,” she says between mouthfuls.
“Another what?”
“One of those strange stories you have about coincidences.”
“What makes you think I have more?”
Aidan sighs. “Oh, you do.”
I smile at Mira, long and deliberately so Aidan can experience the full effect. “What kind do you want to—”
“I know one.”
I look at Seth in surprise.
“Let’s hear it!” Mira says.
“It’s a presidential one like Des’s. When I was in fifth grade, my mom brought me back to the states to learn a little American history firsthand. We had a personal tour of the Capitol, and I pointed to a huge painting where one man was stepping on another man’s foot. The tour guide told us that was John Adams stepping on Thomas Jefferson. It was the artist having a little fun over the long rivalry between the two men, which included seeing who would outlive the other. The rivalry went on for years, each one betting he would live the longest.”
“Who won?” Mira asks.
Seth shakes his head. “Neither. They both ended up dying on the very same day.”
“Unbelievable!” Mira says.
“Exactly,” Aidan mumbles.
“Even weirder, they died July 4, 1826, which was the fifty-year anniversary of their signing of the Declaration of Independence.”
“You sure somebody didn’t slip them both something? Like an arsenic cocktail? On a special day, of course.”
“Aidan!” Mira says.
Aidan shrugs.