Free Kiss by Francine Pascal Page B

single thing brought them right back into the danger zone. A casual question from Heather’s mother about what they’d done the previous night, an innocent reference to chess, a song on the radio about a girl with blond hair. Not being in the same room with Heather or talking about anything at all seemed the safest bet.
    But Sam now understood that making mashed potatoes belonged in a category with particle physics, only harder. Before you mashed them, you had to cook them to make them soft, it turned out. How were you supposed to do that? First he’d thrown the whole pile in the oven, but what was the right temperature, and how long would it take? Then he took a cue from the one meal he’d ever made successfully — spaghetti. You made hard noodles soft by boiling them. So he boiled up the potatoes. It seemed to take hours before they were soft.
    Now he was beating the crap out of those poor, boiled potatoes, working up a sweat. On the table was a whole tool kit of discarded instruments. The dinner fork was too small, obviously. The plastic whisk was wimpy. The metal slotted spoon made a tremendous racket. At last Mr. Gannis had acquainted him with a tool called a masher. A masher! A holiday miracle. Who could have guessed there’d be an implement built for this exact purpose?
    Now he was madly mashing. Only the potatoes still didn’t look right. Mashed potatoes were supposed to be smooth and pale yellow in color. These were lumpy and riddled with brown skin. Oh. Something occurred to him. You were supposed to take the skin off first, weren’t you? He tried to fish out the bigger pieces of skin. It was hopeless.
    Well, maybe they tasted good. He took a taste.
    They tasted slightly more flavorful than air. All right, well, that’s what salt was for. He shook in a small blizzard of salt.
    He cast an eye at the fridge. Hmmm. He took out a box of butter. He remembered his mom once saying that her motto for cooking was, When in doubt, add butter. He threw in a stick. He threw in another stick. He was still in doubt. He threw in a third.
    He stirred, hoping his mother hadn’t just been being witty.

Disappointment
    â€œSO, GAIA, HOW LONG HAVE YOU lived in New York?”
    Now Gaia remembered the problem with meeting strangers, particularly the parents-of-friends variety of strangers. They asked you things.
    Gaia chewed a piece of turkey breast and tried to look agreeably at Mary’s mother. She swallowed it with effort. “Well, I guess I — ”
    â€œNo questions,” Mary interrupted, coming to Gaia’s rescue yet again. “No interrogating Mary’s new friend, Mom.”
    Mary’s mom laughed, which Gaia thought was pretty sporting of her. She gave Gaia a conspiratorial look. “My daughter is very bossy. You may have noticed this.”
    Gaia liked Mary’s mom so far. She had dark red hair, sort of like Mary’s but far better behaved. She wore cropped black wool pants and a bright orange velvet button-down shirt that clashed mightily with her hair. It wasn’t standard middle-aged mom apparel, but it wasn’t a grown-up person trying too hard to be cool, either.
    The family’s cook, Olga, appeared at Gaia’s elbow with a steaming silver serving dish of baby vegetables. They were tidy and beautiful, not the creamed vegetable slop that usually showed up on Thanksgiving. Gaia guessed from Olga’s accent that she was Russian and that she hadn’t been speaking English for long. “Thank you,” she murmured, trying to serve herself without bouncing baby potatoes into her lap. Or Mary’s dress’s lap.
    â€œThe food’s fantastic,” Mary’s brother said to Olga.
    Was he Paul or Brendan? Gaia couldn’t remember. He was the cuter one, though, with light blue eyes and a quarter-inch of stubble on his chin.
    â€œAbsolutely,” Mary’s father agreed. He raised his glass for at least the fourth time