I laugh. “I don’t know how you handled it, being in the hospital with her there all the time. Did she ever leave?”

“Not often,” Tori says. “I tried to get her to go to the cafeteria when I knew you were coming, but she decided she wasn’t hungry.” She rolls her eyes. “But,” she adds, with a kinder smile, “I’m pretty much all she has. My dad died when I was a baby, so . . .” She shrugs. “I cut her some slack on the smothering.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It’s okay. I don’t remember him.”

“Well, I’m glad today worked out.”

“Me too. Because if my mother finds out what you said about getting hurt while you’re trying to save people, she’d stop everything.” She emits a hollow laugh. “I guess since you and Sawyer didn’t get shot, we figured you had some mystical protection or a guardian angel watching over you or something. It just doesn’t seem fair otherwise.”

I flash a grim smile. “No, it doesn’t.”

There is nothing more to say. I wave and wind my way out of her house to the car, where the others wait. I look at Ben and Trey and Ro, and I wonder how the hell I got so lucky to have people actually sign up for this.

Thirty

On Sunday, everybody’s got major stuff to study for, so we decide to abandon the hive-mind approach and instead come up with ideas individually, thinking that we might even be more effective problem solvers without being steered in one group direction. We plan to meet up at Sawyer’s on Monday night since he and Kate have wireless Internet.

Through it all, we hardly see my parents. They are seemingly making business work with the big truck o’ balls. They’ve got a calendar of events stuck to the refrigerator, showing the various food truck lunches and market/food truck tie-in events, which seem to be a thing now that we’re heading toward the summer months. People buy local homemade goodies, spices, and fresh produce, and then support the local food truck vendors too. And Mom and Dad have managed to book a couple of private party events in the community, which they probably wouldn’t have gotten if the restaurant hadn’t burned down. That last bit was Mom’s look-on-the-bright-side take, actually, not mine. They’re gone almost every day. And so far, since the fire, my father hasn’t spent a single day in bed.

We don’t quite know what to make of it, but Mom looks like she’s ten years younger. So Monday morning, while I wait for Trey and Rowan for school, she happens to get up early, and I tell her that.

She smiles her beautiful smile. “Well, thanks. It helps having Dad around more,” she admits, and then confides, “You know, he really likes the customer interaction through the service window. If I’d known that would give him some spunk, I’d have had him waiting tables years ago.”

I laugh. “Spunk.”

“What? That word’s no good anymore? I can’t keep up with your lingo.”

“It’s totally a good word. It’s cute, Mom. I’m going to start using it.”

“Stop teasing me.” She kisses my cheek when we hear Trey and Rowan stampeding through the living room. I grab my backpack as they drag me to the not-delivery car.

“You guys are so spunky today!” I say, loud enough for Mom to hear.

“I mean it,” she calls after me.

I grin and wave.

“You’re weird,” Rowan says.

• • •

After school we head over to Sawyer’s and arrive just as Kate is leaving for her shift at Angotti’s Trattoria. She’s probably the cutest person I’ve ever seen, with this funky short bleached-blond hair and cool piercings and gorgeous tattoos. She’s kind of like a rock star to me, I guess. She’s twenty-one and goes to college and has, like, a life, you know? Plus she took Sawyer in. So that makes her a hero, too.

I met Kate before, though I don’t remember it. It was after I crashed the meatball truck into that snowplow in the Angotti’s parking lot. I remember the seconds before the crash, how she was standing outside having a cigarette and our eyes locked for just a second while I screamed through the closed window at her to run.

After the crash happened, she called 911 and came running over and apparently stayed and talked to me and Trey while we waited for help to come. I don’t remember that, but Trey does.

And I guess she came by the hospital to see me once, but my dad wouldn’t let her in because she’s an Angotti, so Trey and Rowan hung out with her in the waiting room.

So now Trey and Rowan say hey to Kate like it’s no big deal to see her again. But I get all nervous. I guess . . . I guess since I’ll never talk to Sawyer’s parents, I want her to like me. To have someone in Sawyer’s family approve of me.

“Hey,” I say. “Thanks for the bags of stuff after the fire. We all really appreciated it.”

“No sweat,” she says, and she gives me a hug. “Nice to see you.”

I think I’m in supercrush mode with this girl. Not really, but yeah.

Sawyer introduces Ben to her, and then she’s out the door, yelling behind her, “Don’t eat the prosciutto or salami, I need them for a charcuterie plate!”

And that does it. Because nobody should get between a girl and her pork. I’m in love.

But there is a time for crushes, and that time is not now. And maybe not ever, if we don’t figure out how to survive this sinking ferry.

Thirty-One