Chapter 10

After exiting their bedroom, Jonah and Sandy take the stairs down to the first floor.

Jonah’s mother sees him on the middle of the steps and calls up from the living room, “Jonah, go find your father. Tell him he has to go with us. It’s a holiday, and we all have to have dinner together. Duty calls. He’s not getting out of it.” She has a flashlight in her right hand, shines the beam of light into Sandy’s eyes (he squints and turns his face to the right, away from the blinding light), and she barks, “You, Simon, move the case of wine you brought. Someone’s going to trip over it. I don’t want a lawsuit from my own family and their friends. That’s the last thing I need.”

“His name is Sandy, mom,” Jonah says, rolling his eyes, irritated. “And stop blinding us with your flashlight.”

She drops the flashlight’s glowing-white beam to the living room’s floor. “If he were Sandy, he’d have a vagina and breasts, which he doesn’t. So that makes him Simon. Case closed.”