T w e n t y S i d e d

Lottie’s BookNook is a modest success. It’s not lines down the block or somewhere people drive to go see, but completely empty afternoons are rarer than full ones. Kids 12 to 16 come in and pool their money together to rent the Wii for a few hours to play Super Smash Brothers. They’ve gotten requests to sell manga and anime art books, and fulfilling that request gives them another little bump in activity. Manga isn’t yet the easiest thing to get in their area of the world, it will be soon, but for now the couple is jumping through some hoops to get it. Kitchen Princess, Naruto, and Bleach are their main sells, because they’re some of the easier to stock, but they start to get kids asking about renting the books instead. Manga is expensive and the current main demographic for it isn’t old enough to have money to buy. The library doesn’t have manga yet, and it’s leaving the BookNook as the only outlet to get it. They begin a rental system. For $3 the kids can rent any book for a week, with a surcharge if they get damaged in any way.

Years tick by lighting fast, and Logan is suddenly 16. Twelve and sixteen are a huge difference age-wise, but only four years apart. Logan is starting to look damn near grown, and Kelly and Michael feel yet again, somehow blindsided. Four more years and Logan will be 20, and neither parent is ready for that math.  Kelly gets some museum passes for the family when summer hits, and she and Michael commit to spending more time with their son. When they present Logan with this, he gets visibly exited, which is a surprise to his parents. Until he asks if the passes can cover one more person. He’s made a friend over the school year, and they’ve quickly become inseparable.

Kelly looks like she’s going to cry at being asked this. She got the tickets to spend more time with her son before he was all grown up, but he’s hit the age of having a social life outside of them. She opens her mouth, and what comes out is a snapping remark about not being good enough for him. Michael puts a hand on his wife’s arm, and gives her the look. They’ve grown a lot as a couple, and Kelly knows what the look means; she’s given it to him enough times to know it. She’s not in a place to be making decisions about this, and he’s reminding her to process, then respond. Her reaction has nothing to do with feeling inferior to Logan’s friend, and everything to do with feeling like time with her son is slipping through her fingers. She takes a step back, and a deep breath. Somehow, without meaning too, she’d exactly emulated something her own mother had said to her as a teenager. She’d hated being on the receiving end of that remark, and many others, and it meant that her relationship with her mom suffered until much later, when she didn’t have much time with her left.

“David…can come with us…” She nods slowly, considering it. Her son is at a new stage of life, and she can either embrace it and get to be a part of it, or she can reject it and ensure he spends even less time with them. “But it would hurt my feelings if the two of you ran off entirely to hang out, instead of going as a group. We got these tickets to spend time with you.”

Logan thinks about it, looking between his parents like they might be space aliens. From his perspective that whole interaction was very odd. He asked what he thought would be a reasonable question, and then got snapped at, and then his parents spoke…telepathically? and were cool about it? “Uhh…Yeah? I think we can do that?” On second thought though, he also wants to spend time with his friend one-on-one. It’s the summer, he’s about to see his parents way more than he will see David. “Can we sit at a separate table if we get lunch, though? David goes to his dad’s house in the city over the summer and I won’t get to see him unless we’re like, doing something.”

Kelly had been thinking about the situation as though David was walking distance from them, like he had been during the school year. She hadn’t realized that Logan was dealing with thinking he wouldn’t see his best friend for three months. The museum is an hour’s drive away, in the city where David apparently spends his summer. It suddenly makes total sense that Logan would have jumped at the opportunity.

She’s quick to agree to the compromise, but Michael does interject one more stipulation. “I think we can do that…” He nods. “But if you’re gonna have a ‘cool kids’ table we can’t sit at, you’re gonna get your lunch on your own dime.”

Logan tries to argue, getting defensive, so Michael rephrases. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Not a cool kids table.” Michael laughs, shaking his head and trying to defuse what he suddenly realizes might have felt like a dig. “Look, I’m happy to take you two out to the museums with your mother and I. I’m not trying to punish you for that. But if you want to have lunch just the two of you, I think it would be a good step for you to pay for it. Heck, this summer, I’ll drive you up there and take the two of you to the mall or something too. You’re going to get to see your friend, I promise.”

Logan relaxes, and agrees with the plan. He even looks up the museum’s food-court prices so he knows what he has to hold back for the trip. This leads to Kelly and Michael bursting into laughter as their son comes into the room fuming over seeing that a salad is nine dollars. Welcome to the ‘real world’, Logan, that ‘no outside food or drink’ sign is a red flag and nachos are seven dollars.

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them