My Year of Epic Rock by Andrea Pyros

the introduction.” Mom was clearly excited—she was talking with her hands as much as her mouth. “This is a big deal. She’s quite a well-known name in the allergy community, and—”
    â€œMom, really, she has to come over for dinner? Tonight? Is she going to want to give me a check-up or something while she’s here?”
    â€œDon’t be silly. She’s coming to eat. So she can try some of my food and we can talk about what she’ll be writing.”
    â€œThat’s weird. No one else’s doctor comes over to hang out. Doesn’t she have better things to do?”
    â€œNina, I explained this. And I thought you liked Dr. Mehta.” Mom sounded like she was only half listening to me.
    â€œShe’s fine, Mom. But that doesn’t mean I want to spend my free time with her. Sheesh!”
    Dr. Mehta is nice and all, even though she used to be obsessed with whether I was eating enough and gaining enough weight and upping my protein intake and blah blah blah. Her office would make my parents bring me in twice a year to step on the scale. She may be a genius when it comes to allergies, but that was completely annoying. I’m scrawny. And short. So sue me!
    Also she once suggested to my parents that they serve me mini meatballs on toothpicks to fatten me up, so I swear we used to have that for dinner five nights a week. If I never see a meatball again, it will be too soon. Memo to parents everywhere: Just because you cook something teeny-tiny does not mean it’s any more appealing. Your child knows it’s still a boring old meatball, doll-sized or not!
    It wasn’t the guest that was the problem, anyway, it was my mother. Every time she promotes one of her cookbooks, I get trotted out like a specimen. She’s talked about me in interviews. I’ve been in photos on the back of her book, looking enthusiastic while I pretended to eat something. I even had to be her sous chef the time our local TV station had her come on for their morning show and make her special soy blondies (aka her “SoLongy SoBlondies”—don’t ask about the name, it’s the worst).
    Mom got so overly enthusiastic that while she was serving the blondies to the news anchor and the weather guy, she described them as “Amazeballs.” Twice. I almost died. But instead I valiantly pretended I thought the whole thing was, yep, amazeballs!
    This time, I didn’t feel like pretending that having food allergies was so great. Let Jackson hang out with Dr. Mehta. He’s the one who’s obsessed with all things medical anyway, not me.
    â€œI don’t feel that well, actually,” I said, trying to make a coughing noise. “Something is going around school. A virus. I better go lie down. And I have all that homework.” I looked hopefully at Mom.
    Mom gave me a not at all sympathetic look.
    Of course she wasn’t going to let me off the hook for her precious cookbook.
    Great. Just great.

Chapter 9
    Dinner was fine. But I couldn’t bring myself to be the life of the party, or even polite.
    After Jackson and I cleared the table, we were excused and I went to go sit in my giant beanbag chair and wait for my parents to come in to lecture me about my admittedly not-so-fabulous behavior. I felt too guilty and distracted to start on my homework. Instead, I turned up my music loud enough to drown out any footsteps coming down the hall and took a Does He Like You Back or What? quiz in a magazine I’d bought over the summer and forgotten about.
    I thought about Ethan while I was answering each quiz question, like “What did he do on your birthday?” (Nada.) and “When’s the last time he complimented you?” (Seven years ago, when he told me my Dora pj’s were colorful.)
    I added up my score. The quiz results said, “He’s Intrigued.”
    That sounded like a big “denied” to me, because the other two results you