This shows that Lucas's mother is protective. Her instinctive action of hitting the brakes and using her hand to shield Lucas demonstrates her concern for his safety.
The deadbolt clunked into place as his mother locked their apartment door. Lucas reached for the keys, but she dropped them into the pocket of her purple Goodwill coat. Theoretically, she was teaching him to drive, however she could almost always think of a reason to postpone a lesson—rush hour, darkness, road construction, or a statistical chance of some kind of non-ideal weather.
The brown indoor-outdoor carpet in the hallway felt spongy under his boots. Mildewy with muddy snow tracked in by the six families who lived on this floor of the building, it would be damp till May but ugly forever. A plane roared over, rattling the apartment doors in their frames. They lived a mile and a half from the airport, which would be convenient if they ever went anywhere.
His mother eased open the outside door, but when he tried to slide past her, she blocked his way and reminded him that it had snowed last night. That meant the Great-Uncle Protocol was in effect—they'd have to stand inside while she counted to ten because after a blizzard in, like, 1985, Uncle Somebody had thrown open a door and a chunk of icy snow broke loose and slid off the four-story roof, nailing him on the head and knocking him out cold. Lucas could picture the scene illustrated in the panels of a graphic novel:
Bang! Crrrraaack! Swishhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Conk! "Ow!" Zzzzzzzzz.
A lot of his mom's stories were like that—funny and terrifying at the same time.
He looked out at the small front yard, its grubbiness invisible under fresh snow. As of this morning, Lucas was on page 493 of The Three Musketeers and had spent so many hours with the words of Alexandre Dumas in his head that he was starting to sort of narrate things in real life, including the scene through the doorway, where the pristine snow, as yet innocent of any footprint, seemed to him a dazzling white parchment on which to pen a tale of adventure.
"Five-Mississippi, six-Mississippi," his mom was saying. "What did you pack in your lunch?"
"Three Twinkies and a Mountain Dew," he said, which was his gentle(ish) way of telling her to mind her own business and keep counting. He was not looking forward to their meeting with the school principal, but he definitely didn't want to be late for it.
*
Annie's head thrummed with fatigue—the planes had woken her up at five o'clock. She stared out past the stoop to the small yard, where a skeletal tree's branches were lined with icicles, sharp and shining, angled like a predator's teeth. A tow truck rolled down the street slowly, looking suspiciously similar to one she'd seen yesterday. She waited until it disappeared around the corner before pronouncing her tenth Mississippi.
Her son stepped out into the maw of the February morning, chartreuse tangles sticking out under the edge of his wool beanie, narrow shoulders dwarfed by an overstuffed backpack. He looked like a gangly, green-haired hermit crab. The dye job—now three weeks old and unfortunately showing no signs of fading—was against his high school's dress code, so she hadn't been too surprised to get an email from the principal, but it turned out that what Dr. Prescott wanted to discuss was the name issue. Last month, Lucas had announced his intention to throw off the bonds of his father's surname because, he argued, imposing names on people was outdated and patriarchal. "Kiddo," she had said, "do you see any patriarchs here?" "Do you see how that supports my point?" he answered, and she had to admit his logic was pretty sound—there was something a bit ridiculous about the two of them carrying around the name of a man they hadn't heard from in eleven years.
The news that Lucas was putting this plan into action at school, however, had come as an unpleasant surprise, especially considering his chosen replacement was Sphinx, an invitation to bullying and abuse from his classmates if there ever was one. She was aware that a level of geekiness was now tolerated—kids could collect comic books or play Dungeons & Dragons without getting tormented—but surely naming yourself after a mythological, riddle-spewing beast crossed some kind of line.
Annie started down the icy steps. "They don't make Twinkies anymore." She remembered hearing that somewhere.
His hands were in his coat pockets, like he'd never heard of the advantages of railings. "They started making them again."
Had she heard that, too? It was impossible to keep up.
"You can buy them at Family Dollar," he said.
"Those are the old ones that never sold," she improvised. "They have a shelf life of 173 years because they are made of sugar and polyester and formaldehyde."
He gave her a grin. "I didn't bring any Twinkies or Mountain Dew," he said, without elaborating. He stopped at the sidewalk. "Left or right?"
"Left." Although their apartment had an assigned parking space in the lot, she rented out the spot to a neighbor, an arrangement that brought in some extra cash, as well as making it harder for repo agents to locate her car, which she squirreled away somewhere different every night. "It's at Troy and 65th."
"That was yesterday," he said.
"Right you are, just testing." When he was little, it had been easy to shield Lucas from the reality of their precarious existence. When the electricity got turned off, they camped out in the living room with sleeping bags and flashlights for a week, and he never caught on. Once he could see through such ruses, she delivered uncomfortable truths with cheery banter and wisecracks and tap dancing—no, not really, there was no actual tap dancing, just the vague sense that she conducted their family life like the emcee of a tawdry amateur talent show.
"Today it's…on 63rd, in front of Family Dollar." She remembered now—she had stopped in to buy milk before walking home. Nelson, the kind, quiet night manager, had discreetly slipped a four-pack of barely bruised apples and a loaf of bread a day past its expiration into the bag.
*
After knocking snow off the windshield while his mother warmed up the engine, Lucas climbed into the passenger seat. He carefully observed the takeoff routine—step on brake, shift into drive, check mirrors, flip on turn signal, steer away from curb, accelerate.
"Damon is going to take that SAT prep class after school," he said. He'd seen her looking at the flyer that came in the mail.
"Good for him." She nudged him with her elbow. "He needs it, am I right?"
"Should I take it, too?" His mother was obsessed with the idea of him going to some big-name college that would miraculously catapult him to a higher plane of existence. She had checked out a bunch of SAT prep books from the library and stacked them on his nightstand, like they might seep erudition into the air for him to inhale while sleeping.
Her jaw tightened and she blinked like a baby deer, which was weird because this was the face she made when she was dead set against something but wanted to look like she was hearing him out, like he was supposed to think her mind couldn't possibly be closed if her eyes were that open. "They guarantee a 150-point score increase," he said.
She nodded, feigning contemplation. "It finishes at seven-thirty, though, and that's the night I work till eight."
"I could ride the bus home."
"At that hour?" she exclaimed. "It's dark by then."
"Oh, sure, seven-thirty is the new midnight. You know you sound like a crazy person, right?"
"I sure do." She pinched his cheek. "But seriously, no way."
QUESTION 5
5 / 8
The story says:
His mother hit the brakes hard, flinging a hand across his chest, as if her short arm would keep Lucas's five-foot, eleven-inch frame from flying through the windshield.
This shows that Lucas's mother is __________.
irresponsible
suspicious
optimistic
protective
1 answer