Ink Is Thicker Than Water by Amy Spalding

if they want to, they won’t fire you.”
    “Shut up.” But I laugh as my phone beeps. “It’s probably Sara. I did the whole thing where I texted her so if it’s awkward she can say it’s an emergency and leave.”
    “I don’t know how you could ever doubt that you’re smart enough when you come up with good plans like that all the time.”
    I roll my eyes and then totally drop my phone when I see that the message isn’t from Sara at all, but Oliver. Good, classes are killer. You should call me.
    Call him? That’s a big step. I’m barely out of texting territory with anyone. I could just call him ? Hear his voice over the phone? And he wants that? Am I ready for this? Is this another thing I want to be ready for but I’m not? Why am I asking myself so many questions?
    “Is she all right?” Mom’s voice is immediately in Good Mom Mode. She picks up my phone, since I’d flung it in her direction, and I can’t move quickly enough to stop her. “Who’s Oliver?”
    I literally leap across the table, getting a salt shaker to the hip, and grab it from her. “No one.”
    Mom gives me this grin that’s new to be directed at me as she carefully sweeps up the spilled salt with her hands. I’ve seen it before, though, always in the context of Sara and Dexter. “Oliver McAuley?”
    “I have homework. Call me down when the pizza gets here.” I shove my phone in my pocket and run up to my room, taking the steps two at a time. Instead of following instinct number one and texting Sara again to make sure she was okay or following instinct number two and replying to Oliver—or even calling him —I get out my computer and stare at a blank Word document. There has to be at least one idea in me, doesn’t there?
    The blank page is still glaring at me when Mom calls me for dinner, and I say a little prayer as I run downstairs that she won’t bring up Oliver in front of Russell and Finn. Or, really, at all.
    “How did your newspaper meeting go?” Russell asks as I sit down.
    “I’m not sure I’m right for it, no matter what she says,” I reply with a look to Mom that I hope will ward off her knee-jerk defenses of me.
    “Don’t say things like that, Kellie.” Mom cuts some of the vegan pizza into smaller slices for Finn. Poor kid being brought up to think it is perfectly acceptable for pizza to lack cheese.
    “Buddy, I think you should take that off before you try to eat,” Russell says to Finn, but none of us can wrestle the mask off his face, which means within minutes the Spider-Man mask is covered with pizza sauce. Before Finn was born, a lot of stuff grossed me out, but having a little kid around means you get immune to all sorts of grossness at the dinner table and elsewhere.
    I sort of figure by the time we’re cleaning up from dinner (Mom and I take the kitchen duties while Russell takes Finn upstairs for a bath), Sara would be home. From the way Mom keeps peeking through the red curtains framing the window above the kitchen sink, I guess she does, too. “What do you think it’ll be like? For Sara?”
    Mom sort of shrugs as she goes on with loading the dishwasher. “Your sister’s one of the bravest people I know. If anyone could get through this without trauma…”
    “It’s true. But does it hurt your feelings?”
    Mom looks over her shoulder at me. “Why would it, Kell-belle?”
    “I don’t know…you’re her mom. Maybe it would feel weird that she has…not another mom, exactly, just…”
    “I love that you’re always looking out for all of us,” Mom tells me. “But, no. I’ve always felt so grateful I was given this opportunity to be Sara’s mom. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that way about you and Finn, too, though it’s slightly different. Obviously, I’ve always known she and Sara might reach out to each other at some point, and I wanted that for Sara if she did, too.”
    “You’re a good mom,” I say without really thinking. Of course she gets all teary-eyed and hugs me,