on such short notice." Aria shut her eyes. She missed Ezra's shabby little apartment, with its bathtub and thousands of books and map of the New York City subway system shower curtain. There were no roaches there, either--real or fake. "Honey?" Meredith's voice rang out from the kitchen. "Dinner's ready." Byron gave Aria a tight smile and turned for the kitchen. Aria figured she should follow. In the kitchen, Meredith was setting bowls at each of their plates. Thankfully, dinner wasn't gruel, but innocent-looking chicken soup. "I thought this would be best for my stomach," she admitted. "Meredith's been having some stomach issues," Byron explained. Aria turned to the window and smiled. Maybe she'd get lucky and Meredith would have somehow contracted the bubonic plague. "It's low-salt." Meredith punched Byron in the arm. "So it's good for you, too." Aria looked at her father curiously. Byron used to salt every single bite while it was on the fork. "Since when do you eat low-salt stuff?" "I have high blood pressure," Byron said, pointing to his heart. Aria wrinkled her nose. "No, you don't." "Yes, I do." Byron tucked his napkin into his collar. "I have for a while now." "But...but you've never eaten low-salt stuff before." "I'm a slave driver," Meredith insisted, scraping back a seat and sitting down. Meredith had positioned Aria at the head of the Wicked Witch cutout. Aria slid her bowl over to cover the witch's pea-green visage. "I keep him on a regimen," Meredith went on. "I make him take vitamins, too." Aria slumped, dread welling in her stomach. Meredith was already acting like Byron's wife, and he'd only lived with her for a month. Meredith pointed to Aria's hand. "Whatcha got there?" Aria stared down at her lap, realizing she was still holding the Shakespeare bobblehead Ezra had given her. "Oh. It's just...something from a friend."

"A friend who likes literature, I guess." Meredith reached out and made Shakespeare's head bob up and down. There was a tiny glint in her eye. Aria froze. Could Meredith know about Ezra? She glanced at Byron. Her father slurped his soup, oblivious. He wasn't reading at the table, something he constantly did at home. Had Byron seriously been unhappy at home? Did he honestly enjoy bug-painting, taxidermy-loving Meredith more than he loved Aria's sweet, kind, loving mother, Ella? And what made Byron think Aria could just sit idly by and accept this? "Oh, Meredith has a surprise for you," Byron piped up. "Every semester, she gets to take a class at Hollis for free. She says you can use this semester's credit to take a class instead." "That's right." Meredith passed the Hollis College continuing education course book to Aria. "Maybe you'd like to take one of the art classes I'm teaching?" Aria bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. She'd rather have shards of glass permanently lodged in her throat than spend a single additional moment with Meredith. "Come on, pick a class," Byron urged. "You know you want to." So they were forcing her to do this? Aria whipped open the book. Maybe she could take something in German filmmaking, or microbiology, or Special Topics in Neglected Children and Maladjusted Family Behavior. Then something caught her eye. Mindless Art: Create uniquely crafted masterpieces in tune with your soul's needs, wants, and desires. Through sculpture and touch, students learn to depend less on their eyes and more on their inner selves. Aria circled the class with the gray ROCKS ROCK! Hollis geology department pencil she'd found wedged in the course book. The class definitely sounded kooky. It might even end up being like one of those Icelandic yoga classes where instead of stretching, Aria and the rest of the students danced with their eyes closed, making hawk noises. But she needed a little mindlessness right now. Plus, it was one of the few art classes that Meredith wasn't teaching. Which pretty much made it perfect.