Free Beautiful Darkness by Kami García, Margaret Stohl

was it consonance? I was screwed.
    This was day five of supersized breakfasts. We'd had finals all week, and Amma believed there was a direct correlation between how much I ate and how well I would do. I had eaten my weight in bacon and eggs since Monday. No wonder my stomach was killing me and I was having nightmares. Or at least, that's what I tried to tell myself.
    I poked at the fried eggs with my fork. “More eggs?”
    Amma squinted at me suspiciously. “I don't know what you're up to, but I'm in no mood for it.” She slid another egg onto my plate. “Don't try my patience today, Ethan Wate.”
    I wasn't about to argue with her. I had enough problems of my own.
    My dad wandered into the kitchen and opened the cupboard, searching for his Shredded Wheat. “Don't tease Amma. You know she doesn't like it.” He looked up at her, shaking his spoon. “That boy of mine is downright S. C. A. B. R. O. U. S. As in …”
    Amma glared at him, slamming the cupboard doors shut. “Mitchell Wate, I'll give you a scab or two all your own if you don't stop messin’ with my pantry.” He laughed, and a second later I could have sworn she was smiling, and I watched as my own crazy father started turning Amma back into Amma again. The moment vanished, popping like a soap bubble, but I knew what I'd seen. Things were changing.
    I still wasn't used to the sight of my dad walking around during the day, pouring cereal and making small talk. It seemed unbelievable that four months ago my aunt had checked himinto Blue Horizons. Although he wasn't exactly a new man, as Aunt Caroline professed, I had to admit I barely recognized him. He wasn't making me chicken salad sandwiches, but these days he was out of the study more and more, and sometimes even out of the house. Marian scored my dad a position at the University of Charleston as a guest lecturer in the English department. Even though the bus ride turned a forty-minute commute into two hours, there was no letting my dad operate heavy machinery, not yet. He seemed almost happy. I mean, relatively speaking, for a guy who was previously holed up in his study for months scribbling like a madman. The bar was pretty low.
    If things could change that much for my dad, if Amma was smiling, maybe they could change for Lena, too.
    Couldn't they?
    But the moment was over. Amma was back on the warpath. I could see it in her face. My dad sat down next to me and poured milk over his cereal. Amma wiped her hands on her tool apron. “Mitchell, you best have some a those eggs. Cereal isn't any kind a breakfast.”
    “Good morning to you, too, Amma.” He smiled at her, the way I bet he did when he was a kid.
    She squinted at him and slammed a glass of chocolate milk next to my plate, even though I barely drank it anymore.
    “Doesn't look so good to me.” She sniffed and started pushing a massive amount of bacon onto my plate. To Amma, I would always be six years old. “You look like the livin’ dead. What you need is some brain food, to pass those examinations a yours.”
    “Yes, ma'am.” I chugged the glass of water Amma had poured for my dad. She held up her infamous wooden spoon with the hole in the middle, the One-Eyed Menace — that's what I calledit. When I was a kid, she used to chase me around the house with it if I sassed her, even though she never actually hit me with it. I ducked, to play along.
    “And you better pass every single one. I won't have you hangin’ around that school all summer like the Pettys’ kids. You're gonna get a job, like you said you would.” She sniffed, waving the spoon. “Free time means free trouble, and you got heaps of that already.”
    My dad smiled and stifled a laugh. I bet Amma had said exactly the same thing to him when he was my age.
    “Yes, ma'am.”
    I heard a car honk, and the sound of way too much Beater bass, and grabbed my backpack. All I saw was the blur of the spoon behind me.
    I slid into the Beater and rolled down the window. Gramma had