Motion(Laws of Physics #1)(9)

“Okay, first of all”—she lifted a finger between us—“you can’t speak like that.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t use words like deduce or relevant.” Gabby over-pronounced the offending words, obviously attempting an impression of me.

“Fine.” A flutter of disquiet hit my stomach, which I hid. “Maybe I won’t speak at all.”

“That works. Don’t speak. Or, just give one-word answers. For example: no, yes, what, who, when, whatever. If in doubt, saying whatever usually works.” Gabby turned back to the sidewalk and we both began walking again.

While interacting with people about non-academic topics, I’d experienced my fair share of difficulty knowing how to segue into a new subject, or how to end a conversation, or knowing what to say when people over-shared. When I was fifteen, I stumbled across a list of phrases that mostly worked for any occasion, and I’d put them into practice with varying levels of success.

Phrases like But at what cost?

Or In this economy?

Or So . . . it has come to this.

Or So let it be written, so let it be done.

Or my personal favorite for when I didn’t know how to end a sentence or complete a thought . . . And then the wolves came.

These phrases seemed to work best when attempting to diffuse a tense situation or confuse the other person long enough for me to make my escape. Regardless, in the same spirit, I appreciated Gabby’s tip. I could default to saying whatever. That would be fine.

“Just don’t say anything obviously Mona-like,” she continued. “You look so much like Lisa, I don’t think the possibility that you’re Mona will even occur to him.”

“But he’s met Lisa.”

“Yes, but for like five minutes. He doesn’t really know her. Lisa only met him the one time, when we crashed one of your brother’s parties.” She paused here, sighing wistfully, as though remembering the encounter, and then added, “And even though they barely interacted, he was kind of a dick to Lisa.”

He’d been “a dick” to her? That triggered the ingrained protective-sister sonar. Regardless of how close (or not) we were, sister-sonar meant I would automatically dislike anyone who’d been “a dick” to Lisa, no matter how much hoo-hah happiness he inspired. Hoo-hah happiness was irrelevant.

“What did he say to her?”

“They didn’t really, uh, talk.”

Even with my paltry conversation-nuance detection skills, I picked up on the weird way she said talk. “Expand on that, please.”

Gabby waved her hand in the air, dismissing my question. “Whatever, it’s not important. Getting back to your original question, Abram might be smart, I don’t know. But he doesn’t know Lisa well enough to tell the difference between the two of you as long as you don’t go around telling physics jokes and asking him to deduce or expand on things.”

“Fine.” I turned and continued walking toward the house, wondering if Gabby would fly off the handle again if I asked about Lisa’s arrest. Not wanting to inspire another round of insults, I tried a different—but related—topic. “So, why Abram? Why did my parents choose Abram to keep an eye on Lisa?”

“Uh, I don’t really know. According to Lisa, when I talked to her yesterday on the phone and we discussed the plan, she made it sound like he just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.”

“Was she okay? When you talked to her?”

Gabby sent me a sharp, irritated glare. “How do you think she was?”

Okay, fine. Don’t ask Gabby about Lisa. Got it.

“Anyway—” Gabby flipped her braids, her tone growing lofty “—Lisa said that your brother was supposed to be at the house this summer, but that he went down to Florida for a thing.”

“I think he has work in Miami.” The last time I spoke to Leo, he’d mentioned spending part of the summer in south Florida, playing a few clubs.

“Yeah, something like that. So, I guess your guardian lady was supposed to step in and watch the house. What’s her name?”

“You mean Dr. Steward? She can’t, I think she’s in China.” I was nineteen now, but the day after I’d turned eighteen, Dr. Steward had taken off to travel the world. She’d been planning the trip for as long as I’d known her.

“That’s right. So, until Dr. Steward comes back, your brother suggested Abram keep an eye on the house. I think he’s being paid to house-sit. So when your parents issued the ultimatum that Lisa had to go home and wait for their return, they asked Leo to ask Abram to keep an eye on her.”

“Do they even know Abram? Why do they trust him?” I felt like I already knew my parents well enough to know the answers to these questions. But I also felt like they needed to be asked, just in case this would be the one time my parents surprised me.

“I don’t know.” Gabby shrugged. “I guess they figure, if your brother trusts the guy . . .”

I released an irritated puff of a breath, shaking my head, now absorbed in secondhand anger on my sister’s behalf. “That’s great.”

So, not surprised.

It had been the same way with Dr. Steward. The woman was a friend of a friend, an adjunct professor at a college in the Northeast. They hadn’t even interviewed her in person before sending me to the Northeast to live with her full time as a teenager. She’d been . . . fine. Strict and considerably more interested in the money she was banking than in me as a person, but fine.