supernova

29

Amukta left for India.

I went back to the café for shifts from four to nine thirty and shifts at a nursing center from seven thirty to three.

They paid eighteen dollars an hour, which was really good, plus I was working at the café for twelve dollars an hour.

This summer, I was going to save a lot of money.

I was going to add to the twenty thousand.

I looked at the clock to see it was around nine. Atlas and Charlie came in.

"Hey Charlie!" I greeted and the little boy waved at me.

"Hi Arabella!" he gave me a toothy grin and I handed them their milkshakes and fries.

"Atlas, can we eat here, today?" he asked.

"Sure, go sit at a table, I'll be right there." He turned to me.

Things had been normal between us. We're friends and everything had been going good.

"You wanna sit with us?" he asked.

"Sure, just let me make myself a milkshake, and I'm almost done getting this place cleaned." I replied and he nodded and turned around.

I finished cleaning the counters and make myself a cookie dough milkshake, and sat down at their table.

"Hey Arabella, guess what?" Charlie asked looking excited.

"What?" I tried looking just as excited as him.

"I'm gonna be in fourth grade and we're gonna be doing long division!"

"That is so cool!"

"I know! I can't wait till high school,"he exclaimed.

"What are you excited about for highschool?"

"Hard stuff. I wanna do physics and chemistry and even read the harder books and write essays. I wanna read To Kill a Mockingbird, but Atlas won't let me," he pouted.

He was an ambitious kid, and I really hoped he didn't lose that ambition and sense of motivation over time.

"I didn't say I wouldn't let you read it. I just said, I want to explain somethings to you before you read it. It's good you want to read it, but you need historical context."

"Context schmontext. I know it all. People sucked and were racist because it was the thirties." He wasn't wrong.

"That is bare minimum. You need more!" Atlas argued.

"Ugh, fine. Anyways, did you know, I wanna be a biophysicist," he asked me giving a toothy grin.

We spent another ten minutes talking about different things. Charlie was a really smart kid. I had no clue where how he knew everything he knew, but it was a unique situation.

I was talking about quantum physics with a fourth grader.

"Your brother is really smart," I told Atlas when he walked in the house around eleven thirty.

"He's actually my step-brother," he said correcting me.

"Oh, okay," I responded. I didn't want to ask about it to avoid making him feel uncomfortable, but I wanted to ask about it.

"Normally, people would ask," he pointed out.

"I just didn't know if you wanted to talk about it."

"Well, ask away."

"So, is he adopted?"

"No, I am."