The Grown Ups by Robin Antalek Page A

slum.”
    Sam did as Michael suggested and peeled the sweater off and added it to his pile. Under the sweater he was wearing the Smelly Eddie’s T-shirt that was so old it was nearly transparent. Smelly Eddie’s had been a bar that their parents had frequented during college. When their parents had been together they liked to tell the story about how Hunt won this T-shirt in a game of quarters the night he met Elizabeth. Sam had rescued the shirt from the bottom of a pile of laundry his mother had left to mold in the basement. When his dad saw him wearing it he averted his eyes but said nothing. Michael, however, narrowed his eyes and raised an eyebrow at Sam, as if to say, seriously?
    Sam crossed his arms over his torso and waited for the tour to continue. Kitchen, bathroom, and three bedrooms. Michael’s was farthest down the hall with its own separate entrance. The light in the room was dim, with one small window placed high to the left, like it was trying to escape. The only thing illuminatedwas the desk, which was just as well, considering the floor was ankle deep in everything else. The surface of Michael’s desk was covered in textbooks and notepads split open with edges curled, stacked one atop the other in winding piles, pencils and pens cradled in the cracks. Tacked to the wall above his desk were multicolored index cards, at least fifty of them, maybe more, each covered in scrawl that already looked like a doctor’s handwriting.
    Michael flopped down on his mattress. The sheets were bunched up in a ball at the end of the bed. There were stains all over the exposed mattress like tiny archipelagoes. Sam waded through clothes and books to the desk chair and sat down, continuing to look around. Several large, abstract paintings hung on the wall opposite the bed, along with a pencil sketch of what looked like Michael’s profile. Michael’s bike leaned against the back door.
    â€œI signed you up for a tour of campus tomorrow,” Michael said.
    â€œOh,” Sam said. “I guess I thought you were showing me around.”
    â€œI have a heavy load all day tomorrow. Fridays are my worst day, I told Dad that. But we’ll hang out tomorrow night. Okay?”
    Sam nodded. Hang out? Them?
    Michael sat up and leaned back on his elbows. “Do you want to go to Brown?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Sam shifted in the chair. “This was Dad’s idea. He wanted me to get started.”
    â€œGet started? You should be making the decisions now on what colleges you want to apply to . . . get started?” Michael shook his head.
    â€œHey, don’t blame me. Dad’s been a little preoccupied, okay?” Sam and Michael had never talked directly about their mother leaving, about Mr. Epstein and the pictures of their mother, anddefinitely not about Suzy Epstein. Michael had been at Johns Hopkins that entire summer and then he went right to college. Sam had no idea how or when he found out about everything that happened, and he never thought to ask.
    Michael sighed and looked across the room at the paintings. He looked like their mother, the same coloring, the same eyes and cheekbones. Slowly he turned his head to look at Sam. “Your grades? Are they good?”
    His grades barely landed Sam in solid B territory. “I guess.”
    â€œSo that’s a no. What about your guidance counselor? What does he say?”
    â€œ She says that the CUNY and the SUNY schools are great.”
    â€œAh,” Michael said.
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with a state school,” Sam said defensively. Truthfully, he had no vested interest in the CUNY or SUNY schools, but Michael’s sounding like a self-important junior at an Ivy League college was starting to annoy him.
    Michael shrugged and rubbed at his eyes. “You can still take the tour.”
    â€œYou mean I don’t have ‘state school’ written all over my face?”
    Michael ignored him