A Mystery Revealed, Maybe

We were sitting at the table tonight and I was trying to choke down a bowl of lentil soup (which is just plain wrong, but you don't really argue diet with my mother) when my dad spoke up.

"Allie called this afternoon."

I almost spat my soup across the table and both parents turned their puzzled faces toward me. I mumbled something about a lentil in my going down the wrong pipe and ending up in my sinuses and tried to look nonchalant as I continued eating, face to the bowl but eyes up.

Stanley just kept silently poking around in his bowl.

Allie had picked a good day to speak with them. Dad had just signed up for a pottery class and was riding high on the promise of the beautiful works of art he was sure he'd be creating in no time at all.

"She just sent me an e-mail this afternoon at work," said Mom. "She was wearing that sweater I gave her at Christmas. You know, the one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers."

I can say this for Allie: she does her homework and covers the bases.

"What did she have to say?" Mom continued.

Dad put his spoon down into the bowl. "Not an awful lot. Asked how things were going, whether Stanley was still doing the New Edisons, and whatnot. She wanted permission to go on an exchange for a week."

"An exchange?"

My eyebrows were up by this point.

"Some sort of exchange, just for two weeks, between Pennington's and Hirschfeld College." Hirschfeld college was another private girls' school about three hours further down the highway from Pennington. "Something new they're trying this year. I said you and I would talk about it tomorrow."

"Why so soon?" my mother asked, still unfazed.

"I guess the deadline for applying's the end of the week." That explained Allie's direct approach today. "She faxed through some information. It's upstairs. Seems good to me."

"Fine with me," Mom said, standing and collecting our bowls. She reached for Stanley's but he put out a hand. The rim of his bowl was ringed with neatly arranged lentils.

"Hold on," he said. "I'm working on Fibonacci numbers."

Mom shrugged and took my bowl. "Martin, you barely ate any of your soup."

I'd been to fixated on trying to figure out Allie's angle.

I didn't point out that Stanley hadn't eaten any more than I had.