“Look who decided to wake up,” Cordelia said.
“Yeah, what were you doing up there?” Eleanor asked.
Brendan tucked into his pancakes. They were good. But they had been just as good back in their old apartment.
“Wuhting fuh uh uhmportunt puhckuge,” Brendan said with his mouth full.
“Ew! Could you chew and talk separately?” Eleanor said.
“Why? Who’s watching me?” Brendan washed down the pancakes with almond milk. “We’re not in the dining hall, are we? Is one of your new friends who owns every single American Girl doll going to see me?”
“It’s not like that,” Eleanor said. “You’re just supposed to have manners and you don’t.”
“You never cared before,” Brendan said.
“Families that are rich are supposed to be nice!”
“Okay, hold on,” Mrs Walker said. She looked at all three of her children. In many ways they appeared the same as they had before the family moved into Kristoff House: spiky-haired Brendan; Cordelia with her fringe over her eyes like a shield; Eleanor with her nose scrunched, ready to take on a challenge … but they all felt different.
“I don’t want to hear you use the r word, Eleanor. I know things have changed since your father’s settlement—”
“Where is Dad, anyway?” Cordelia asked.
“He’s out for a run,” Mrs Walker said, “and—”
“All morning? Is he training for the marathon?”
“Don’t change the subject! Now, even though we are financially in a better place, we are still the family we always were.”
The Walkers looked at one another, then at their mom. It was tough to believe her when she was standing in front of so much high-end kitchen equipment.
“That means that we respect each other, so we don’t do things like chew and talk at the same time. But it also means we’re kind to each other. If we’re offended by something, we nicely ask the other person to change what they’re doing. Is that clear?”
Cordelia and Eleanor nodded, although Cordelia was already back in her music – she had found a band from Iceland that she liked; they sounded … “Cold” is the best way to put it, Cordelia thought. They make the coldest music I’ve ever heard.
And Cordelia liked feeling cold these days. Numb. It was one of the only ways she had to deal with the craziness that had happened to her. She could never tell anyone what she’d been through – never write about it or speak about it. It would be better to forget it ever happened. But that wasn’t easy, so she tried to distract herself; for instance, she’d had a TV installed in her bedroom. At first it was to keep up with Brendan, who’d had both a TV and a beef jerky-dispensing machine installed in his attic (or as Cordelia liked to call it, his “not-quite-a-man cave”). But it had grown to be a source of comfort for her, along with music, because it allowed her to numb the swirling emotions she had about where she’d been and what she’d done. Reading used to provide that escape for Cordelia, but books were harder for her to enjoy now – books, after all, were what had gotten her into trouble in the first place! I’m changing, she thought. And I’m not so sure it’s a good thing. But she couldn’t dwell on this now, because Brendan had spotted the FedEx truck outside.
“Brendan! Where are you going?”
He was tearing out of the kitchen, rushing past the suit of armour in the hallway, under the chandelier, out of the big front doors, into the chilly San Francisco air, down the path that slalomed the gigantic oak trees on the pristine lawn, past the new driveway with his dad’s new Ferrari parked in it … all the way to Sea Cliff Avenue, where the truck was parked by a man in a blue-and-orange uniform.
“Brendan Walker?”
“That’s me!” Brendan said, signing for the package and opening it on the pavement. He pulled out what was inside … and gasped.
Cordelia and Eleanor were down the path and practically on top of their brother before he could appreciate his delivery. He held up—
“A backpack?” Cordelia asked.
“Not just a backpack,” Brendan said. “A Mastermind backpack, from Japan. You see this skull logo on the back? Real diamonds.”
“Like the crystal skull from Indiana Jones?” Eleanor asked.
“No! Cooler than that! This is one of the most exclusive backpacks in the world! There were only fifty of them ever made!”
“Where did you get it?” Cordelia asked.
“From a website,” Brendan said.
His mother was coming down the path. He gulped. He’d been rehearsing for this moment.
“Brendan! What is that?”
“Well, Mom, it’s a—”
“Diamond skull backpack from Japan that he probably spent a thousand dollars on,” Eleanor interrupted.
“Nell!”
Brendan started putting the backpack on. Maybe if his mother saw how great he looked in it, she’d let him keep it. “Mom, look … Bay Academy is a great place … I mean, it’s the best school in San Francisco. Everybody knows that.”
His mother’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she was listening. Cordelia and Eleanor shared a look of annoyance. Brendan went on.
“It’s also a really competitive place. And I don’t mean like in studying. I mean, we’re going to school with high-powered kids. Kids whose parents are bankers and CEOs and baseball players. And my wardrobe, it just … needs a status piece.”
“A status piece,” his mother repeated.
“Have you ever heard me complain about all the clothes you order from L.L.Bean? No. But they’re just normal clothes that every kid wears. I need something that I can wear when I’m walking down the halls and have people go, ‘Wow, who’s that guy?’ Because otherwise, I’m invisible. Or visible in a bad way. Like a stain.”
“Mom!” Cordelia said. “You’re not buying this, are you? He’s giving you a sob story for a thousand-dollar backpack!”
“Will you stop with the thousand dollars? It didn’t cost that much,” Brendan said.
“Well, how much did it cost?” his mother asked.
“Seven hundred.”
His mother’s forehead turned into upside-down arrows of wrinkles. “You spent seven hundred dollars on a backpack?”
“Including shipping.”
“How did you pay for it?”
“Your credit card.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“It’s all good,” Brendan said. “I wrote you a cheque to pay you back.”
Brendan pulled the cheque out of his pocket. It was one of Mrs Walker’s, made out for the exact cost of the backpack, but Brendan had crossed out Mrs Walker’s name on the upper left-hand corner and replaced it with his.
“You wrote a cheque to me from my account,”