Free Year of Mistaken Discoveries by Eileen Cook

about asking what he’d heard about Colton and me, but maybe not knowing how the rest of Northside’s student body was dissecting my social life was a good thing. “We were planning to do an analysis on school reform.” Brody raised a single eyebrow, and I felt a flush of irritation. “It’s very topical. There’s all sorts of stuff in the news about it.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “I’m applying to Duke. I need to have an impressive project.” Northside required everyone to do a senior project, from those who were college bound, to seniors who were already majoring in smoking weed and underperforming. Because everyone had to do them, some of the projects were fairly lame. As long as you picked a topic, did at least some research, and stood up and talked about what you learned for the requiredten minutes, you passed. “Nora told me you guys were looking for her mom for your project.”
    “Her idea.”
    “That doesn’t surprise me. Looking for her mom has been a project of Nora’s for a long time.” I realized what I’d said. “Had been a project.”
    “She’s a hard person to think about in the past tense.”
    Both of us were quiet for a moment. I finished my cookie. “How were you helping her? In addition to your Batman crime-solving skills, do you also hunt down missing persons?”
    “Batman was always more than mere brawn,” Brody pointed out. “Nora did most of the investigating. She wrote everything down in this notebook. It was like she was preparing for battle. I was more of a sounding board. I was taking pictures as we went. Sort of documentary style. Stuff that would hopefully show different kinds of families. Something we could show for the talk in case we didn’t find her mom.”
    “She must have been over the moon when she thought she had.” I tried to imagine how happy she must have been before it all went downhill.
    “I knew something about the whole thing was off. I’m the one who convinced her it could be a con and to check it out before things went any further. I knew it would upset her, but I didn’t think—” He didn’t finish his sentence.
    “How did you figure it out? That Carla was a con, I mean.”
    He tossed his milk carton into the trash can across the hall.It went in with a swoosh. “I never thought we’d find her mom. There wasn’t enough to go on. She didn’t have a name or anything. There wasn’t any formal paperwork that had any clues. She didn’t even know her exact birthday. The convent that took her in as a baby guessed she was a couple of weeks old and just picked a date. They picked May thirtieth because it was Joan of Arc’s feast day.” He shook his head. “Then when this woman showed up, Carla, it all fit together too neat. I didn’t buy it.”
    “If you knew you wouldn’t find her mom, why did you agree to do the project?”
    “Nora wanted to,” Brody said simply.
    I took a deep breath. “So, looking for her mom is out, and I’m guessing Colton’s going to want to keep the education topic to himself, so that’s a non-option. What do you think we should do?”
    “Screw Colton. He doesn’t get to choose. Do you want to do education as our project?”
    I flushed. I liked the way he pushed Colton’s wants out of the picture without even worrying about it. “Do you ?”
    He looked appalled. “God, no. Nothing personal, but it sounds boring as shit.”
    I laughed. “It was kind of boring.”
    Brody broke into a smile. “Perfect. Education reform is out. Opens up all sorts of ideas.”
    “Like?”
    “Zombies. History of Batman.” His eyes sparkled. “Wecould toss in Wonder Woman too, but if you want my opinion, there are more interesting superheroes to choose from. Iron Man is very trendy at the moment. Aquaman is vastly overlooked—one of the founders of the Justice League, you know.”
    “Can’t say I did. Nothing against Aquaman, but I’m not sure Duke would be impressed. They already turned me down once, so I need to make this