By the time we arrive at my house, two things have become apparent:

1. I am a horrible driver.

2. Isaiah has finally figured out just how different our worlds are.

"Welcome to my beyond humble abode." I'm no longer indestructible. I'm no longer powerful. Now, I'm just me. That pitiable boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

"Is your dad really an accountant?" He asks. I know he's trying to ask why we live in this neighborhood if my dad is all that successful.

"I mean, I've never heard you ever mention your dad the whole time we've been friends. I guess I didn't really think you had a dad."

"I don't," I hand him the keys and grab my backpack from the tiny, half-person sized backseat.

I see the confusion on his face and can predict his next question.

"My parents are divorced," I explain before he can ask. "My father is an accountant; I wasn't lying. He just doesn't have anything to do with us."

At this point, it should be easier to talk about my parents, and the divorce. But it still feels like I've swallowed a baseball when I try to talk.

"He just walked out on us one day and never came back. He agreed to give my mom full custody of us in exchange for him to not have to pay child support or anything."

Isaiah's eyes grow enormous, the grey sky reflects off of his honey-colored irises.

"He traded his children for the ability to pocket his entire paycheck?" He sounds incredulous. He sounds disgusted.

And when he says it like that, I'm disgusted, too.

"He said he had a certain lifestyle to maintain," I shrug. I really don't want to talk about this anymore. And, yet, for some strange, masochistic reason, I want to keep talking about this. It's cathartic, I guess.

We don't ever talk about the divorce at home. Thomas never asks because he hardly remembers our father. And I can't talk to Mom because she either gets angry or cries. Kayla used to talk about it with me right after it happened, but people are so temporal. For her, it was out of sight, so it was out of mind.

"I try not to hate him because I know it's wrong. But I want to. We're his kids and he knows nothing about us."

I see true remorse in Isaiah's eyes. Or pity. Maybe both. He doesn't know how to process all of this, so I just smile and shake my head.

"Don't worry about it. Let's go set up your Xbox."

When we get inside, the house smells amazing. I can't remember the last time my mom baked, but the whole house smells of butter and brown sugar and chocolate and childhood.

"Mom?" I call from the front door. It's not like Isaiah's house where it's actually possible to lose somebody. Our house consists of a tiny kitchen, a tiny living room, and three tiny bedrooms. Isaiah is so tall he can probably walk the entire length of my house in three strides.

"In here!" Mom calls from the kitchen. When we walk in, she's setting a plate of cookies on the kitchen table.

It's been so long since my mom baked that I'd forgotten how good she is at it. But she's the best. And I know it's some basic instinct for everybody to think that their mom is the best at everything, but my mom truly is the best.

Her smile lights up the faded yellow, very 70's kitchen. And not in the way Isaiah's smile brightens a room. My mom's smile is like sunshine and warmth. Her smile is like the sun, itself. It's been so long since she's smiled like this. Her hair is down for the first time in months and, for the first time, I notice just how much gray has crept its way into her raven hair.

"Isaiah," Her dazzling smile turns toward him. "It's so nice to meet you. I'm Teresa Swanson."

It still takes me by surprise that my mom still uses my father's last name. Mom says that a woman only changes her name again once she's remarried. I not-so-secretly wish she'd change all of our names to Moreno, her maiden name.

"It's nice to meet you," Isaiah shakes her hand. He smiles his own warm, dazzling smile and suddenly it's like I'm staring into the sun. It's like I'm staring into multiple suns, standing between my mom's and Isaiah's smiles, and I feel like I need to rub my eyes.

"Thank you for having me over this weekend. I promise I won't be any trouble." As if Isaiah could be any trouble if he tried.

As I watch my mom and Isaiah try to out-polite each other, I dive into one of my mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies. They taste like summertime. The flavors of chocolate and cinnamon and honey wash over me in a wave that brings me back to my childhood, to a time even before Thomas.

"This is so good," I tell my mom through a mouthful of cookie.

I offer Isaiah a cookie while shoving the rest of my cookie in my mouth. I'm acutely aware that I look like a Neanderthal, but I don't care. I'd drink milk out of the carton, if not for Isaiah. Instead, I pour us each a glass of milk.

"When Thomas gets off the school bus, I'm going to take him to the park to play for a little while, so you boys can have some time to yourselves."

It's only when Mom says this that I remember it's Friday and her only evening off all week. I wish she wouldn't feel obligated to take Thomas out, but I'm also grateful to not be Thomas duty, if even only briefly. I know that my mom will be working a sixteen-hour shift at Megamart tomorrow and I'll have plenty of time to play father.

"Are you sure? It's been raining," I say, more out of obligation than genuine concern.

"You're so sweet," Mom reaches to ruffle my hair, but thinks twice about it in front of company. "But we'll be fine. I think we could both benefit from a little bit of fresh air and whatever sunlight we can get."

In this moment, I can see my mom as the society wife she used to be—charming, endearing, and captivating. She used to wear black dresses and pearls and my dad would whisk her away to nice dinners and fancy parties.

I used to stay up late, imagining what they were doing, my dad looking handsome in his suit and tie and my mom so stunning with her gleaming, raven hair. I always imagined crystal chandeliers and velvet ropes and VIP lists. I pictured my parents as celebrities, as small-town royalty. They were glamorous.

I used to wait for their headlights to filter in through my window before I'd close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. After they sent my babysitter home, mom would come in, smelling like a mixture of whatever restaurant they had gone to and Chanel No. 5. And she'd lean over my red race car bed and kiss my forehead and ruffle my hair. She'd whisper goodnight in my ear and I'd have to fight my smile until she left the room. And then I'd fall asleep knowing that I had the best parents on Earth.

This is the woman I see right now when I look at my mom today.

The front door opens, and Thomas's loud singing draws me from my memories. He always sings loudly when he's happy. Today's song is "Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles, and I mentally pat my own back on helping to shape his awesome taste in music.

When he sees me, Thomas's eyes light up and he sprints to give me a hug.

"I made a hundred on my spelling test!" He digs through his backpack and hands me a crumpled piece of notebook paper with a big gold star and a ruby red 100 written on it.

"Proud of you, buddy," I smile and turn to hang his test on the fridge. Behind me, I hear a loud gasp and I can imagine Thomas's eyes popping out of his head.

"Bub! Who's the giant? Is this your friend?"

The kitchen explodes into laughter and I turn to see a wide-eyed seven-year-old staring up at Isaiah as if he has just met Santa Claus.

Isaiah bends down to get eye-level with Thomas, and when he does, it looks like he's folded in on himself.

"I'm Isaiah," he smiles, extending his gargantuan hand to take my little brother's tiny one, and shakes it.

"How tall are you?"

"6'9"."

"Do you ever hit your head on things?"

"All the time."

"Did you come from the top of a beanstalk?"

My mom's laughter ends the conversation.

"That's enough, Thomas," she laughs. "Put your things in your room; we're going to the park. We're going to give Isaiah and Cade some time to play their games and have some fun."

She barely has time to finish her sentence before Thomas takes off at a sprint to his room.

"You mean, I get to play in the mud?" He seems so excited, I can't help but smile. For Thomas, it's easy. A kid can have fun in anything. The idea of playing in the mud is like Disney World for him.

When Mom and Thomas finally leave, I realize just how strange it is to be alone with him, with no escape route. What if he hates it here? What if he hates me here?

At school, bonds are built through mutual hatred for the same teacher and lunch room trades. In my house, will these alliances hold? Or will he turn tail and run at the first opportunity?

Isaiah grabs his bag and Xbox and looks around our citrus-colored kitchen.

"So, where can I set this up?"

Well, he's not abandoning ship, yet. That's promising.

I signal for him to follow me to my room. Only now, with Isaiah in tow, do I realize how disgusting our carpet is. It was beige once; you can tell near the baseboards. But now it's a putrid, grunge color.

"Watch it. There's a hole in the floor." I point to a sunken-in spot on the floor. "The landlord is supposed to be out to fix it." He's been "coming soon to fix it" for six months. But I don't say that. I don't want pity.

My room is tiny, I realize as I show Isaiah in. I have a little TV on a little dresser next to a little bed. It's like my room is the opening setting of a fairy tale or nursery rhyme.

On the tiny desk in the corner by the tiny closet, Isaiah eyes my latest project—a pencil drawing of Thomas asleep in his bed. I've been trying my hardest to make it realistic, like a black-and-white photograph, but I've been having trouble getting the folds in the blankets and the shadows look right.

"Are you doing this for the art show? It's really good. You're so talented." He shakes his head like he's in awe.

"Yeah," I nod. "Thomas was just so cute, sprawled out with one leg out of the covers like that."

"Thomas," Isaiah sounds pensive. "Such a grownup name for a little boy. He doesn't prefer Tom or Tommy?"

I've never thought about this before, but it is unusual that Thomas goes by Thomas all the time. I've never tried to call him anything else. I don't even know if he would answer to anything else.

"I don't think so," I shrug, taking a seat on my bed. "He's kind of grown up for a second-grader. But he is small." I catch myself smiling. Sometimes I think I forget that Thomas isn't my own child. We're supposed to fight and stuff, right? I'm supposed to resent him for taking away my only-child status. But I never have.

"Here, let me hook up my Xbox. Do you have a preference of game? Any preferred genre?" Isaiah wakes me from my thoughts.

I don't have a preference. I've never really played any video games. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, that panicky feeling that comes when I'm embarrassingly indecisive. Isaiah must have seen it on my face because he just smiles and hands me a controller.

"We're going to shoot some zombies."

What he really means by this, apparently, is that he's going to shoot zombies while I fumble around with the concept of two joysticks and ultimately meet my demise in the first few seconds because I hit the wrong button and instead of using my knife, I jump. Right onto an approaching zombie.

Isaiah laughs so hard I think he's going to cry or wet himself. Or both. Surprisingly, though, he manages to take out all of the enemies and my character is revived for exactly thirteen seconds before I die again.

This time, it's my turn to laugh until tears roll down my face.

"I'm sorry," I say once I've caught my breath. "I apparently should not be allowed to touch this." I set my controller on the bed beside me as if it's made of delicate glass.

"It's cool. You just need to practice." Isaiah makes it look effortless. He's destroying droves of zombies and still manages to talk with me. "Maybe we can do this more often. Maybe by graduation, you'll be able to get to round two without dying."