“Sure. Have a good time. I’ll spend some time with you afterward. That is, if you have your homework done,” he added almost sarcastically, which was a real change for him. Something was bothering him, I thought.
“I’ll have it done,” I said, then added, “Don’t be a worrywart,” which was another one of his favorite expressions.
“Okay. Gotta go,” he said. “My torturer is getting impatient.”
“Everything all right?” Kane asked as soon as I hung up.
“Yes. Just some of the usual complications involved in building a house,” I said, as if I really knew.
He nodded and returned to his homework. I dug in to mine, and nearly an hour later, I heard him slap his history book closed.
“I’m starving,” he said.
“Okay. I can handle what I have left later. Let me freshen up a bit first,” I said, and went into the bathroom. While I was brushing my hair, I heard him on the phone talking to his mother.
I had yet to spend any real time with his parents. He really hadn’t spent any quality time with my father, either. It wasn’t as if we were on the verge of getting engaged or anything, but some of the parents of my friends made a big thing about meeting people they dated and getting to know them better. It was important to my father but so far not a big thing for Kane’s parents. Parents wanting to get to know people you went out with seemed to be truer for girls than for boys. If some of them only knew how their daughters could be a lot worse.
It wasn’t my intention to eavesdrop on Kane, but something his mother had said seemed to have irritated him, and he raised his voice.
“Yes, I’m at her house. I plan on being here a lot. Don’t worry about it,” he said sharply. It got quiet, so I imagined he had ended the call, but when I stepped out, he was still on my phone, listening. “You’re lucky she’s even coming home,” he finally said, and ended the call.
“Everything all right at home?”
“Just the usual turmoil. I have to hear my mother rant about my sister, Darlena, because my father refuses to listen to any of it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Darlena wants to bring her boyfriend home for Thanksgiving.”
“And your mother doesn’t like him?”
“Let’s just say she’s reluctant about it. He has a bit of Hispanic heritage.”
“What? What’s a bit?”
“His mother is from Chile,” he said with a smile.
“And that matters?”
“She’ll never come out and say it. My mother was brought up to be a princess. My parents met on some billionaire’s yacht, you know. Anyway,” he said, smiling, “you should hear how fluently Darlena speaks Spanish now. I think she does it just to drive my mother nuts.”
“What’s your father say about it?”
“If he can make a lot of money, it won’t matter if he’s half Eskimo. My father is an equal opportunity capitalist.”
“Sometimes you sound like you don’t like your parents, Kane,” I said. I was back to peeling that onion again. We were both uncovering more and more about ourselves, and I couldn’t help being more interested in him after seeing how he reacted to what Christopher had written in his diary.
He looked at me. “Probably so.”
“What?” I was shocked at his candor.
“We can love them, but we don’t have to like them,” he said. “Don’t look so surprised. Lots of kids, maybe even most, don’t want to be replicas of their parents.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t like them.”
“They don’t like enough of them, and they want to be different, right?”
“I guess so. But not for me,” I added quickly.