Wing Jones(55)

“You take that back!”

“What? It is true,” says LaoLao, looking smug.

Aaron makes this snorting sound that could be a laugh and turns it into a cough. It would be funny to me too, watching them go after each other like this, if it didn’t hurt my heart, and my head, so much.

“LaoLao.” I go to her and rest my hand on her back. “That wasn’t nice.”

“She wasn’t nice first!”

“You shrunk my sweater first!”

“You broke my jade bracelet!”

“That was an accident! And it was five years ago!”

“Yes, five years ago. Plenty of time to get me a new jade bracelet.” LaoLao crosses her arms.

Granny Dee throws her hands up in the air. “And tell me where I’m going to find a jade bracelet in Atlanta!”

“Exactly! Impossible! I cannot replace jade bracelet. You can replace ugly sweater.”

“It is not ugly! I’ve had that sweater for eighteen years!”

Aaron whistles and it makes both my grannies look up.

“What?” snaps Granny Dee.

“Yeah, what?” says LaoLao. She’s moved closer to Granny Dee, and the two of them are giving him matching glares.

Aaron shrugs. “That sweater is older than me. Pretty crazy to think about.”

Granny Dee rolls her eyes. “A whole lot of things are older than you! What are you? Seventeen? Do you want me to go around this whole house pointing out all the things that are older than you?”

“No, ma’am,” says Aaron politely, but I can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Unless you want to?”

LaoLao marches over to him and thrusts her sweater, the one Granny Dee said was too big for her, into Aaron’s arms. “How old you think my sweater is?”

Aaron looks at me, eyes dancing with repressed laughter. “I don’t know, LaoLao. Maybe … ten years?”

LaoLao snatches her sweater back. “Ten years! This sweater only two years old! Practically brand-new!”

Granny Dee’s eying the sweater now. “Just two years old?”

“I only wear it a few times,” LaoLao says, sounding like a used-car salesman. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

“Maybe I can alter it,” says Granny Dee, taking the blue wool sweater from LaoLao. “If you really are giving it to me?”

“Of course I’m giving it to you. I shrunk your sweater, so now I give you new one.”

“This isn’t gonna be like that time you gave me that lotion and then got angry when I used it all?”

“You said your hands were dry, so I gave you my special lotion to be nice, and what happens? Next day it is all used up!”

“I didn’t know you wanted it back!”

“Of course I wanted it back! If you were going to use whole thing, you should have asked!” LaoLao sniffs. “It would have been polite thing to do.”

“Well, you know I was sorry. And didn’t I get you a whole new bottle for Christmas that year?”

LaoLao gives a grudging nod. “You did. But that same year I give you fancy bubble bath.”

“That was a good Christmas,” says Granny Dee.

LaoLao nods again. “Maybe this year you can give me jade bracelet,” she says with a sly smile.

Granny Dee chuckles. “You stayin’ for dinner, Aaron? This one’s cookin’, so I can’t promise it’ll be any good…”

“Everything I make tastes good!”

“All right, all right.” Granny Dee holds up her palms in surrender. “You make some OK dishes. I like those spicy green beans. Are you making those?”

“Maybe,” says LaoLao, waddling into the kitchen. “But only if you cut and wash them.”

Aaron ends up staying for dinner – he doesn’t have much choice after both my grannies insist – and now we’re in the living room, pretending to watch TV. I’m in the armchair in the corner and Aaron’s on the couch. Everyone else is getting ready for bed. I keep waiting for my mom to come down and tell Aaron it’s time for him to go home, but she doesn’t. I guess, now that I think about it, she’s never told him to go home before.

“Sorry about my grandmas,” I say, tugging on a stray curl.

“Don’t worry about it. Man, your grandmothers crack me up,” Aaron says, smiling and shaking his head. “I don’t know anyone like them.”

“Nobody knows anybody like them,” I grumble, but I’m smiling too. “They fight less now, though, with Marcus being in the hospital.”

Aaron nods. “Makes sense.”

“I’m sure when he wakes up they’ll be back to arguing all the time over every little thing.”

Aaron doesn’t correct me, doesn’t tell me that there’s nothing to be sure about when it comes to Marcus. Instead, he pats the spot on the couch next to him. “Come here,” he says. “This show is about to start and you can’t see from where you’re sitting.”

I can see just fine, but I don’t tell him that. I just grin and go sit next to him.





CHAPTER 37


I never used to think about getting better at running. I just did it, I just ran, and then I got faster, and then I pushed further, and that seemed to be all there was to it. I figured that training with Coach Kerry and the rest of the team would be more of that.