"Luke! Luke, come down now! Your summer journal!"
Luke's voice came from inside, muffled by distance: "I'm almost done!"
Phil turned to Claire, who was in the doorway with her arms crossed and an expression that oscillated between exasperation and resignation.
"How long has he been at it?" Claire asked, her voice tense.
"According to him, since June 21st," Phil replied, his tone so cheerful he seemed not to grasp the gravity of the situation. "He wrote 'I found a stick' and then... nothing."
"Nothing?"
"It was a really cool stick," Luke interjected from inside.
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. "Phil, are you going to do something, or am I going to have to..."
"I've got it!" Phil straightened his back, adopting a posture he clearly believed was authoritative. "Luke Eric Dunphy, come down right now or... or...!"
"Or what, Dad?"
Phil went blank. Claire rolled her eyes. From my position, I couldn't help but smile.
It was then that Alex came out of the house.
Not like Haley, who had left twenty minutes earlier with her too-short skirt and her phone glued to her ear. Not like Luke, who was still hiding somewhere inside. Alex came out with her red backpack strapped on, her hair pulled back in her usual ponytail, and an expression that combined annoyance with barely contained tenderness.
"Dad, if you keep yelling, the neighbors are going to call the police," she said, walking past Phil without stopping.
"But your brother didn't do his journal!"
"That's not news. Luke never does anything. The surprising thing would be if he actually did it."
Phil looked at her, confused. "Is that... a compliment?"
"It's an observation," Alex replied, and kept walking toward the bus stop.
She saw me. For a moment, her steps hesitated, as if she were considering whether to sit far from me or beside me. Then she let herself drop onto the wooden bench next to me with a sigh that seemed to weigh more than her eleven years.
"First day," she said, her gaze fixed on her house.
"First day," I repeated.
"Today's going to be historic," she continued, and her tone was so dry it took me a second to realize she was joking. "Dad's going to do something incredibly stupid with Luke's new bike. Haley's going to have her first driving lesson and she's probably going to crash into something. And Mom's going to spend the whole day pretending she doesn't care about anything while actually caring about everything."
"And you?"
"I'm going to go to school, get straight A's in all my subjects, and come home to find everything in flames. As always."
The bus arrived. We got on, sat together, and she didn't take out a book. Instead, she stared out the window, her fingers drumming on the strap of her backpack.
"Leo," she said suddenly, without looking at me. "Why do people do stupid things?"
"You mean your dad with the bike?"
"I mean everyone. My dad trying to be cool. My mom pretending she doesn't care. Luke... being Luke. Haley thinking having a seventeen-year-old boyfriend makes her more interesting." She paused. "Me for thinking that if I got better grades, maybe my mom would look at me the same way she looks at Haley."
The bus stopped at a red light. The sun came through the window, illuminating her profile, and for a moment I saw the girl hiding behind the armor of sarcasm and intellectual superiority.
"Your mom does look at you," I said. "It's just... sometimes it's hard to see it when you're expecting her to look at you a certain way."
Alex turned her head toward me. "And you? How does your mom look at you?"
"Like I'm normal," I replied. "And sometimes that's the best thing she can do."
She nodded slowly and turned back to the window, but this time her fingers stopped drumming.
4:15 PM - The Return
The afternoon bus arrived ten minutes late. When I got off, the street was in an unusual state of agitation. Luke's new bike—a red and silver one I had seen Phil carry from his truck that morning—was leaning against the Dunphy house's mailbox. But Phil wasn't there. Luke wasn't there. Claire wasn't there.
Only Alex, sitting on the porch steps, arms crossed over her knees, with the expression of someone who has seen too much.
"What happened?" I asked, approaching.
"Dad lost the bike," she said, her voice flat. "Or it was stolen. He's not sure. But now he's out there, trying to find an identical one so Mom won't find out."
"And what are you doing here?"
"Waiting for him to come back with a bike that's not the original, for Mom to discover the lie, for everything to explode." She paused. "It's like watching an accident in slow motion."
I sat on the steps beside her. Not too close, but close enough for her to know she wouldn't be alone watching the disaster.
"Do you want me to stay?" I asked.
"No," she replied. Then, after a second: "Yes. I don't know."
I stayed.
Half an hour later
Phil appeared around the corner with a bike that was clearly not the original. It was older, smaller, with a torn seat and a crooked handlebar. But it was the same shade of red, and from a distance, perhaps, it could pass for the other one.
Luke walked beside him, his expression not one of disappointment, but fascination. "Dad, why does the bike have a My Little Pony sticker?"
"It's a special edition!" Phil replied, with forced cheerfulness that betrayed his panic. "Horses are in!"
Claire came out of the house at that moment. I saw her eyes scan the bike, her expression shift from confusion to suspicion, and then to a cold, contained fury.
"Phil. What is that?"
"It's Luke's new bike! With customized upgrades!"
"Customized upgrades?"
"Yes, I changed the seat and the handlebar. And... the wheels. Everything to make it more aerodynamic."
Claire stared at him. Phil smiled. Luke, with that brutal honesty only ten-year-olds can possess, said: "Mom, that's not my bike. My bike had spokes on the wheels. This one has unicorn stickers."
The silence that followed was so thick it could be cut with a knife.
Alex, beside me, whispered: "Now. The slow-motion accident reaches impact."
And then, Earl arrived.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil lost Luke's bike. Then he bought a stolen one. Then he got caught.
Luke wrote in his summer journal: "found a stick."
Alex predicted the disaster with scientific precision.
And Leo sat on the steps, waiting for the slow-motion crash to hit.
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