to objectâandhead down to the basement. The pool table is neatly racked up and waiting for a new game. Kelly always leaves it like that when she finishes playing.
I put the laundry in and go back up to find something to eat. Kelly is sitting at the kitchen table, doing the crossword that comes in the paper. She looks up. âThought you might want some company.â
I am suddenly acutely aware of the seven chest hairs I was so proud of until this very moment. I shuffle into a chair, wishing Iâd put on a T-shirt.
âI have a plan.â Kelly sets aside the paper and lays her hands on the table. âWe can go hang out downtown until you have to be at the station. I can get us into the movie theater for free.â
âSo long as it doesnât involve either of us giving anyone a blow job, Iâm in.â And then I realize what Iâve just said, and that if it involved her giving
me
a blow job, I wouldnât mind at all. Of course, my cheeks go very, very red. I leap up from the table and fling open the fridge and stick my head in there, pretending to look for something to eat until it passes.
âNo.â Kelly is suddenly beside me at the fridge. She puts a hand on my bare back. I swear that single touch is sending hot flashes to every available synapse, and it takes everything Iâve got not to shove her to the floor and get on with what I was dreaming about half the night. âNo blow jobs. Whatâre you looking for?â
âSomething for breakfast.â
âNever mind Marshallâs whole wheat toast and natural peanut butter.â She pats my back and then straightens. âIâll take you out for breakfast.â
I am all too eager to get out of the house and into the safety of the day. We get on the bus and take two seats side by side, which I can honestly say I havenât done since I was a kid and my mom made me sit beside her. We donât talk much on the bus. Weâve never hung out outside of Harbor House, so maybe sheâs as weirded out about it as I am. In the heart of the Downtown Eastside, with the downtown core and its high-rise gloss and efficient bustle only ten blocks away, she pulls the cord for the bus to stop.
âWhatâs here?â I say with venom.
She grabs my hand and pulls me out of the seat. âOnly the best breakfast in the city.â
We cross the street against traffic in the middle of the block, like everyone else does down here, and walk another half a block until weâre standing in front of the Ovaltine Café. Iâm not sure what weâre doing is a date or just two wards of the state killing time, but because it might be a date, I donât want to be a freak and tell her I donât go to the Ovaltine. Not anymore. In fact, I havenât set foot in it since that day ten years ago.
Chapter Thirteen
âWhere your mom?â the grandmotherly Chinese lady who runs the Ovaltine asks me. She had just rushed out onto the street and stopped me, clamping her hand on my bare shoulder. âWhy you alone? Where Ella?â Iâm in my pajamas... the ones with the fire trucks and Dalmatian dogs. This lady always scares me. Sheâs nice to me, always telling me to call her Popo, but she has long red nails and arching penciled eyebrows and a wart that makes her look like a witch. My momâs name is not Ella. She only calls herself that onthe street, after Ella Fitzgerald. âFitzgerald was going to be your middle name,â she sometimes tells me when weâre listening to her singing. âOr Ella, if you were a girl.â Sometimes the songs are cheerful, but sometimes they are sad. The Chinese lady shakes my shoulder. âYou too young to be out by yourself. You come in. I give you hot chocolate, okay?â
âEthan?â Kelly is pumping my hand like weâre a couple of businessmen meeting for the first time. âHey!â
âYeah?â
âYou totally