You Have a Match
Emma Lord
For Evan and Maddie and Lily, the stone-cold pack of dweebs I am grateful to be part of every day of my human life
one
It starts with a bet.
“Abby, I’m one hundred percent more Irish than you are,” begins said bet, when Connie—who, admittedly, is about as ginger as they come—challenges me at the lunch table.
“Having red hair is not the be-all end-all of Irish-ness,” I point out through a mouthful of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. “And my grandparents on my dad’s side were like, so Irish they bled potatoes.”
“Yet between you and all three of the gremlins you call little brothers, not one ginger,” Connie points out, narrowly avoiding slopping her chili on the mountain of study guides she has propped on the lunch table.
“Dodged a bullet there, huh?” I tease her.
Connie lightly kicks my foot. I’d feel worse about it if she weren’t so staggeringly beautiful that she has been mistaken for the actress who plays Sansa Stark more times than I can count on one hand, an especially impressive feat considering we live in a suburb of Seattle some bajillion miles away from any famous person who isn’t Bill Gates.
“Not that I support this Anglo-Saxon nonsense—”
I flinch, and then Connie’s chili is on Connie’s pile of study guides. It is a testament to how committed she is to pretending things aren’t awkward between me and Leo that she wipes the beans off the one loudly titled “AP FUCKING GOV! IS! YOUR! BITCH!!” without one threat to murder me.
“—but I’m doing one of those send-away DNA test things,” Leo finishes in a mumble, planting himself and his lunchbox down next to Connie.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, leaning across the table and making deliberate eye contact with him.
Leo, the anchor of our trio, has known us both since we were little—me because we live in the same neighborhood, Connie through youth soccer. So we’ve both known him long enough to understand that this is kind of a big deal. Leo and his sister were both adopted from the Philippines and know next to nothing about their birth parents or their backgrounds, and up until now, he didn’t seem to have any interest in looking into it.
But we’re all taking Honors Anthropology and are right in the thick of a project where we’re learning the proper way to track and denote lineage in our family trees. Hence, the Irish-off that Connie and I are currently engaged in, and probably Leo’s new curiosity about tracing his roots.
Leo shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, I guess I’m more curious about the health stuff it’ll tell you than anything else.”
We both know that’s only a half truth, but Connie pokes at it so I don’t have to. “Health stuff?”
“It can also connect you to other biological family members if they’ve taken the test,” Leo says quickly, more to his massive Tupperware of jambalaya than to us. Before we can ask any follow-up questions, he adds quickly, “Anyway, there’s a discount if you buy more than one. If you’re in, I can buy yours with mine and you guys can pay me back.”
Connie moves Mount Study Guides off the table to make room for the rest of Leo’s lunch, a bunch of delicious mismatched leftovers from his weekend culinary adventures. “You know what, I’ve got some money saved up from the ice-cream shop.”
I wrinkle my nose. We all know I have money saved from babysitting aforementioned “gremlin” brothers during my parents’ Friday date nights, but I also have my eye on a new lens for Kitty, my camera, that I’m obsessively tracking the price of online.
Except Leo’s eyes find mine and linger in this way they haven’t really in the last few months. At least, not since the Big Embarrassing Incident—more colloquially known as the BEI—I am still actively trying to scrub from my brain. Whatever it is in his gaze cuts right past it, and I understand at once that it isn’t about the discount.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.”
Connie grins. “Loser has to make the other one soda bread.”
Leo, the only one of us who can actually cook, perks up at this. “I’ll help the loser.”
Connie and I shake on it, and Leo starts talking about some soda bread fusion with cherries and chocolate and cinnamon, and the bet is finalized by the time the bell rings to end lunch.
To be honest, hours after we all spit into tubes and send off our kits, I forget about the whole thing. There are perilously low grades to juggle, endless tutoring sessions to endure, and worried but well-meaning parents to dodge. Plus with Leo focused on graduation and Connie focused on more extracurriculars than I have fingers and toes to count on, all three of us are basically spun out onto different planets.
But there it is, a month later: an email in my inbox, directing me to a website that apparently knows more about me than my sixteen years of knowing myself.
I scroll down, morbidly fascinated by the details. It tells me I’m most likely brunette (check), have curly hair (aggressive check), and am prone to getting a unibrow (rude, but also check). It tells me I’m probably not lactose intolerant and probably don’t have issues with sleep, and that I am more likely than others to flush when drinking alcohol (noted, for future college endeavors). It also tells me I’m 35.6 percent Irish, a fact I immediately tuck away to rub in Connie’s face when the time comes.