I'd heard the heavily remixed Ariana Grande song ten times in a row, and I wasn't mad about it. When the song suddenly stopped and I heard my terrible excuse for singing, my ears went hot. Indy smirked at me from where she stood with the other dance team members. Thankfully, she was the only one who noticed.

My mom had to work, so Indy was my ride home. Which meant I had to sit through her dance team practice. I meant to use the time to start on homework, instead I filled a page of my notebook with sketches of butterflies.

I drew different types--realistic, cartoon-y, using all round shapes, using squares. None of them looked good enough to have printed on hoodie.

If only I could talk to LaterTofu. Or, I guessed, Andre. Why'd he have to reveal who he was? I liked it better when he was anonymous. When we were anonymous to each other.

He was easier to talk to when I wasn't picturing his light-brown eyes or his hands and the rings the decorated them. Now, if I said something embarrassing, I had a face to put to the person who was on the other side of the phone, probably judging me.

"How does it taste?"

I startled at my sister's voice. Her skin was shiny with sweat as she chugged half an orange Gatorade.

When I didn't answer her question, she pointed to my pen. The top was littered with my teeth marks.

"Oh." I put my pen away, along with my notebook, while Indy grabbed her duffle bag.

Indy said bye to the dance team members with hugs and air kisses and promises to meet up outside of practice. I was already outside when she finally came out.

She bumped her shoulder into mine. "Talk. You only chew up your pretty pens when you're stressing."

"I'm not stressing," I said, but the words held no weight and she knew it. "Okay, it's--" I stopped as a couple girls from the dance team walked by, saying bye to Indy for a second time.

We were in the safe confines of her car before I told her what had been bothering me about LaterTofu-slash-Andre Walker.

"Do you want to talk to him?" She asked as she pulled out of the student parking lot. "As Andre, I mean. The Andre who Shania said was flirting with you last week."

My cheeks warmed. "He wasn't flirting."

"Well, whatever you want to call it, the question still stands." She stopped for a red light and turned to me. "Do you want to be friends or lovers?" Her shoulders danced as she sang out the word "lovers".

I laughed. "Lovers? Really?"

"Yes! Those are the two options."

The light blinked green and she allowed me to think about my answer, switching the subject to her nails. By the time we made it to her house, we'd decided to get our nails done later that week and I still hadn't come up with an answer to her friends or lovers question.

I liked talking art with LaterTofu, I knew that for a fact. But I also liked talking to Andre, the gorgeous football star. He was kind of goofy and knew how to laugh at himself, which, if I had a list of what I considered to be the perfect guy, would be at the top.

But Andre the Football Star came with a fan base. Which meant people looking at me. All my years of trying to blend into the background would've been for nothing.

I was getting ahead of myself. We had one non-anonymous conversation. That didn't mean anything. He talked to lots of people. Probably lots of girls. Talking didn't mean we were running off to get eloped in Vegas. I didn't have to put a label on us after one little talk.

Telling myself that eased some of the tension from my shoulders, but it came back the second Indy said, "Good, she's gone."

We were in her room. I was sinking deeper into the beanbag chair while I tried to find my literature work in my bag. Indy had that look again. The one that meant trouble.

"Don't look at me like that!" She said, putting her hands on her hips as she looked down at me, lips in a tight line. "It's not another party."

I relaxed a little. "Then what?"

She kneeled in front of her bed, reaching under it and pulling out an old shoebox. Like, really old. It was faded and bent out of shape, an image of some platform sandals on the preview image on the side. It had to belong to her mom.

Aunt Brandy didn't have a lot of rules, but staying out of her room was a given. She even went as far as to lock it when she left the house. She'd kill Indy if she knew she not only went into her room but also took something. Then she'd kill me, so there'd be no witnesses.

Still, I was curious as Indy removed the lid.

I watched as she shuffled through the contents of the box--old movie tickets, letters, a candy bracelet still in the package. If the shoebox was what I thought it was, we were definitely being buried in the backyard.

"Is this stuff your mom saved from her ex-boyfriends?" I whispered, even though we were the only two in the house.

"Not just any boyfriend," my sister said, grinning when she found what she was looking for. "Sperm Donor Lamar."

She held up a picture that, unlike everything else in the box, wasn't as aged or damaged since it was protected in a wallet sized photo album. I took it from her, needing a closer look. The picture was of Aunt Brandy and a man I guessed was our father.

They were posed in front of a red backdrop with a swirly heart pattern. Brandy sat in a chair and the sperm donor stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. They looked so serious. Neither of them smiling.

It was the first picture I'd ever seen of him. I looked just like mom when she was my age, still I searched that man's features, wondering if I had anything of his. He had smooth, dark-skin like Indy, but I saw nothing of me in him. With that realization came unexpected disappointment.

I was quick to fix my face into a look of indifference, ready to pass the picture back, when something else caught my eye. He was wearing a Raider's sweatshirt. Just like the one my mom wore while cleaning up the house.

"That's--"

"What?" Indy asked, leaning over to see the picture. "Have you seen him before?"

My mom never wore that sweater when Indy and Aunt Brandy were over. I never paid attention to that before, but now it was glaringly obvious why.

"No," I said, handing her the picture. "I just...I never thought I'd know what he looked like."

It didn't feel right to tell her that my mom also carried around a memento from him. Especially since, according to the picture, Sperm Donor Lamar came back to my mom after he left Aunt Brandy.

My mom always told me that, after she told him she was pregnant, he left and she never spoke to him again. If that was true, how'd she end up with his sweatshirt?

"Right?" She put the picture back in the box, burying it under everything. "My mom looked like she wanted to slap me the last time I asked her about him."

She slid the box back under her bed then, stood, dusting off her leggings. "I'm going to find him."

My eyes darted up to her. "What? Why?"

"I have questions," she said all matter-of-fact. "I know you do too."

"I don't." For my mom, maybe, but definitely not for him. "He left our mothers alone while they were pregnant. That tells me everything I need to know about that man.

Indy shrugged her shoulders up to her ears. "I want to talk to him. I'm going to track him down with or without your help."

I stared up at her. What answers could she possibly need from him? He was out of our lives before we took our first breaths. Before we even developed lungs. Sperm Donor Lamar was trash, something I though we agreed on years ago.

"You might not get it, Day," she started, reading me like a children's book. "But I need to talk to him. To get some answers about why he really left."

The idea still sounded pointless to me, but the desperation in her voice made me hold off on telling her that. I nodded. "But I'm not interested in finding him."

"That's fine," she said, a smirk on her face. "You suck at internet stalking, anyway."

I smiled, glad there weren't any hurt feelings between us. Indy could get scary when people didn't take part in her plans.

"Anyways." She dropped down on the beanbag with me, the force nearly knocking me to the floor. "I thought he'd be cuter."

I gave her a look. "Ew."

"Not like that!" She actually knocked me off the beanbag that time. "I just meant, he managed to get with both our gorgeous mothers and he's so...average. I always pictured him as Idris Elba or Denzel. Not an Anthony Mackie knock off."

I laughed at how true that was. "I knew he looked familiar."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

She pulled me back up on the beanbag, then crossed her arms over her stomach as she stared up at her ceiling. "Who'd you picture him as?"

As far back as I could remember, it was me and mom. She loved me enough for two parents and I never felt like anything--or anyone--was missing. "I didn't."

Indy watched me for a moment before turning back to ceiling. "I wish I could do that--be happy with what's in front of me and never wondering if there could be more. But I'm way too nosey for that."

● ● ●

"Mother, I'm home!"

As I kicked my shoes off by the front door, I noticed another pair of shoes neatly placed on the shoe rack--something I never had the patience to do with my own shoes.

My mom came down the hall carrying a giant silver mug, a huge grin on her face. She shook the mug, her smile growing at the clinking sound it made. "I put ice in here two days ago," she said, excitement in each word. "And you hear that? The ice hasn't melted!"

I let out a dramatic gasp and pointed at the mug. "Witchcraft!"

"Oh, hush," she said, that smile not leaving her face. "Jerome's in your room."

I gave my mom a quick hug, then headed down the hall to my room. My door was opened. Romeo's back faced me as he looked at my cork board. It was full of small photos of me and my friends and Indy. He'd seen it a million times, yet he was still fascinated by it.

"Get out of my underwear drawer!"

Romeo jumped so high that if the basketball coach saw it, he'd be added to the team immediately. I laughed so hard that no sound came out when he turned to me, eyes narrowed. But the corners of his mouth twitched like he was holding in his own laugh.

"Daya, what's going on in there?" My mom's voice came from down the hall.

"It was a joke," I yelled back, dodging the pillow Romeo threw at me.

"Keep that door open, okay?"

"Okay," I said, whacking Romeo with the pillow.

He managed to take the pillow from me, tossing it back on my bed. "Are you trying to get me beat up by your mom?"

"That would be some entertaining content," I said, tossing my bag on the floor. I turned to him as I leaned against the desk. "What are you doing here?"

He shrugged, falling backwards on my bed, folding an arm under his head. "You summoned me."

It'd been nearly a week and those feelings I had still refused to stay buried. He was making it a lot harder when he so casually looked like...that. He wasn't afraid to wear color. That day he wore a sea foam green hoodie with black graffiti style writing on the front. The colors always popped against his dark skin.

I was adding sea foam green to my list of favorite things. Right under lavender and mint.

"First, how did I summon you?" I said, counting it off on my fingers. "Second, how long have you been here? Third... answer the questions." I didn't have a third point, but things always sounded better in threes.

He propped himself up on his elbows. "I've been here long enough to know way more about your mom's magic cup than I needed to."

I winced, knowing how talkative my mom could get when she was excited about something. "You poor thing."

"Yeah," he agreed, sitting up all the way. "And you called me here through our best friend telepathy." He tapped his temple.

My eyes rolled as I sat on the bed with him, pulling my leg under me. "You're not my best friend," I said, brushing off the fact that my mind had been reeling since I saw that picture of Sperm Donor Lamar wear my mom's favorite piece of clothing. Maybe I did send out a distress signal.

"I think the whole best-non-blood-related-friend is overkill," he said, shifting to look at me. "Indy already gets to call you her sister."

If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was jealous. "Do you want to call me your sister?" I teased, poking his leg with my sock covered toe.

He grabbed my ankle. "Absolutely not." His actions, mixed with the unexpected seriousness of his words, made me dizzy.

The moment passed all too quickly. He changed the subjects by grabbing my other ankle and I almost fell backwards. "Why don't your socks match?"

"They do."

"One has a monkey on it and the other has rabbits," he said, lifting each of my feet to show me.

"Exactly, they're both animals."

His lips quirked up as he shook his head at me. "I can't argue with that logic." He let my feet go and sighed. "I need a hot chocolate." There was only one thing that could bring on that level of gloom in his voice. Rashad.

I hopped up out of bed, pulling him with me by the sleeve of his hoodie. "I'll buy."