Something I Don't Know

10: poltergeists are about as bad as they seem in that movie

"You do realize you have to add water, don't you?" I say, examining the carnage that is Jamie's mac-and-cheese cup. There's a hole right through the plastic, and something's burned into the bottom of it, something brown and sticky and gross that was probably once edible but is now far from it. I don't even want to look at the microwave; I'm stressed enough as it is.

Jamie, beside me, leans over to look inside the cup, which I deposit once again into his hands. He stands there like a child being scolded, shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. "How was I supposed to know that?"

"What did you think? You just sprinkle the cheese over the top, add some heat, and voila, there's dinner?" I say, then point to the directions on the side of the cup. "It says to add water, Jamie. Right there. In bold."

He sighs and tosses the cup into the trash, then looks up at me. It took a while for me to get used to those eyes of his; if you're not, they're quite jarring—one a nearly perfect amber hue, like the orange part of a flame, the other a blue so pale it probably shouldn't exist.

"Should we get pizza?" he asks.

I show him the Order placed! Delivery is on the way screen on my phone. "Ordered it as soon as I smelled the burnt stuff."

Jamie sighs again. "I really tried."

"I know, kid. I know."

I rummage in the hall closet a while until I find a vanilla room spray, then I spritz it all over the kitchen to get rid of the burnt plastic smell, which, you know, is pungent, to say the least. Jamie's nose starts to twitch like crazy, and then he's complaining that the spray is making all his crazy wolf senses act up, and then I'm shooting back: "Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to set a cup of easy mac on fire!"

After that, he gets quiet, but he seems to cheer up when the pizza arrives.

Instead of eating at the kitchen table, which I bought from IKEA maybe three weeks ago but haven't finished setting up (I don't know, man, there were more pressing matters at hand, and besides, it just got me all frustrated), we sit on the floor between the island and the living room. The pizza box sits on the wood flooring between our crossed legs, the box thrown wide open and the pizza already halfway eaten. One thing that has not changed about Jamie since I met him is his appetite. His first priority was food on the night we pulled him from the fighting ring, and his first priority is still food now.

As he chomps through his third slice of sausage pizza, he asks, "So?"

I look up at him, my eyebrows risen. "So?"

"Your uncle," he says, though with the whole pizza situation, it sounds more like yerumfel. "Did you like him?"

I shrug, tearing again into the pizza, my four fangs making hair-thin shreds of the cheese. "Yes. No. I guess."

"Yes. No. You guess?"

"He seems like a cool guy," I elaborate, narrowing my eyes at Jamie, who would be the last person I'd expect to order me to be more specific. "And my dad cares for him, so does Sybil. He's family, after all."

"Family," repeats Jamie, solemnly.

Shoving what's left of the crust into my mouth, I dust off my hands and sit back on them, figuring now is as good a time as any. I've tiptoed around the subject for as long as I have known this kid. I have tiptoed enough. "Jamie," I say, and he looks up with half a wince, like he knows where this is headed. "What do you remember?"

"What do I..."

"Before you were a fighter. When you had a family, a pack. What do you remember?"