I finish my chug before lowering the cup and throwing my best panhandler-repelling glare.

Like me, he’s still got on his school clothes. But he’s ditched the blazer and wrapped his tie around his wrist like a layered bracelet. The cool black-and-white palette is broken up by the spots of smooth, golden tan skin where his shirtsleeves are rolled up and where his top three buttons are undone.

It’s almost impossible to hold a glare in the face of such appealing dishevelment. Almost, but I manage.

“Dinner at the Dorseys’,” he says, dripping with disdain. “You’re in for a treat.”

He looks through the glass pane of the back door to where our parents—correction, his parents and my mom—are gathered. There is something angry in Tru’s look. Almost resentful.

I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of those kinds of feelings from Tru.

No, I shouldn’t want to be on the other end of any feelings from Tru.

“I think I’ll survive,” I say, trying to lighten the tension.

His eyes sparkle as he looks back at me. “Yeah, you just might.”

For a moment our gazes hold, and I don’t want to look away. I’m not sure what it is about him that pulls at me, especially considering how many things about this situation are warning me to stay far, far away. But I can’t deny that there is some kind of connection here.

I fist my hand at my side to keep from reaching up to brush his messy hair into some kind of order.

Almost against my will—and definitely against my better judgment—my gaze drifts down to his lips. Only for an instant. A quick, impulsive glance. Barely long enough to see whether he’s smiling. But still long enough to make my heart beat faster.

If he hadn’t been watching me just as closely, he wouldn’t have noticed. But when his mouth twists up into an overconfident smirk, I know he did. He noticed, and he liked it.

Warning bells are clamoring in my mind as his grin deepens and he takes a step toward me. Back away, Sloane. Back away.

I stay rooted to the spot.

“And then she told me,” Mom is saying as the back door bursts open and the three adults file into the house, breaking my Tru-induced trance, “that if I wanted delivery it would be two weeks.”

The Dorseys laugh. Mr. Dorsey holds a platter of burned meat—and, hopefully, portobello steaks because I am famished—as he pulls the door shut behind them.

“That’s terrible,” Mrs. Dorsey says sympathetically.

Oh yes, terrible. Some great tale of furniture shopping woe.

“Come on, kids.” Mr. Dorsey holds up the platter, like some kind of TV dad from the fifties, calling the family to dinner. “Let’s eat.”

The Dorseys’ dining room is so formal it’s almost uncomfortable. A pristine walnut table, polished to a high shine. Huge matching china cabinet full of enough breakables to make anyone nervous. Six stiff-back chairs, a plush rug with a ginkgo leaf pattern, and a wall of mirrors at one end.

A kid couldn’t get away with slipping treats to the dog in this household.

Not that they have a dog.

Mr. Dorsey takes the end of the table, in front of the mirrors. Mrs. Dorsey sits at the opposite end, like some kind of joke in a movie. With Mom on one side of the table and Tru on the other, I have to make a choice.

Do I sit next to the guy who has done a better job of pushing my buttons in twenty-four hours than most people can in a year?

Or next to the woman responsible for my exile and pretty much everything that is wrong with my life right now?

No brainer.

As I pull out the chair next to Tru’s, he waggles his eyebrows at me.

I elbow him in the ribs.

“How was your first day at NextGen?” Mr. Dorsey asks.

He forks a thick steak onto his plate and then passes the platter to Mom. I nearly gag at the sight of it. For the most part, I can handle people eating meat. But the sheer in-your-face carnivorism on display is almost too much to take.

“Fine,” I answer.

“You know, David organized the fund raiser for the restoration of the lawn,” Mrs. Dorsey says, taking the platter from Mom.

“The campus is beautiful,” Mom says.

Mrs. Dorsey passes the platter to me. There are two fat portobello steaks on the platter, stacked on top of each other. The bottom one is swimming in a pool of steak juice. Luckily the top one seems uncontaminated.

I plop it onto my plate and then pass the whole thing to Tru.

“Go ahead and take both,” Mr. Dorsey says. “No one else is going to eat them.”

I flick a glance at the meat-soaked mushroom. “Uh, that’s okay,” I say, trying to be polite. “I’m not that hungry.”

“It’ll go to waste,” he says, like he’s trying to make me feel bad.

I look across the table, and Mom is scowling at me. Everyone is looking at me, expecting me to what? Just grab the beef-juiced mushroom and eat it because that’s the polite thing to do?

I can’t. I just can’t.

“Actually,” I begin, trying to come up with a non-rude, non-grounded-for-life, non-deal-breaking way to explain.

“It’s soaked in meat,” Tru says, lifting it off the plate with his fork. The juices drip off like a leaky faucet. “No wonder she doesn’t want it.”

“Truman,” his dad says with a warning tone.

“That would be like asking you to eat tofu.” Tru drops the meat-soaked mushroom onto his own plate. “Or to watch one of my student films.”

“Tru!” his mom gasps.

At the same time his dad snaps, “That is enough.”

“Sloane,” Mom says, like she can’t miss out on this chance to get mad at me. “Apologize right now.”

“No,” Mr. Dorsey says, “it’s fine. This isn’t Sloane’s fault.”

You would have to be deaf not to hear the subtext in that statement. It’s not my fault…it’s Tru’s.

All he did was defend me, defend my right not to eat something I am ethically opposed to eating. And for that he’s in trouble.

Looks like the Dorsey family is just as screwed up as the Whitakers.

“Let’s just eat,” Mr. Dorsey says, as if we’ve all been waiting for permission.

The rest of the meal is as awkward as my car rides with Mom today. While the adults make small talk, Tru and I eat our food in virtual silence. Every so often he whispers some obnoxious comment that no one but me can hear. Mimicking his dad’s pompous tone. Insisting that there’s meat juice in the lemonade. Daring me to jump up on the table and tap dance. It’s everything I can do not to burst out laughing.

I’ve been so locked in my bubble of bitterness since the announcement of the Austin plan that I don’t think I’ve really, truly laughed in weeks. Every comment he makes pushes me one step closer to losing it.

But I can’t. I have to keep my head down and myself out of trouble at all costs. If I’m ever going to have a chance of getting back to New York before I’m old enough to drink, I can’t push Mom’s buttons like this. Even if it isn’t my fault.

After what feels like a painfully long time, Mr. Dorsey dabs his napkin at the corners of his mouth and then places it on his plate. “That was delicious, Miko,” he says. “The mashed potatoes were inspired. Did you use cream?”

“Butter.” She smiles back at him. “And thank you.”

Someone kill me now. If I have to sit through another minute of Leave-it-to-Stepford-Wives small talk I am going to bash my chair against the wall of mirrors and use one of the shards to stab myself in the thigh.

Mrs. Dorsey pushes back from the table. “I’ll clear these dishes out of the way so we can get to Lizzie’s famous peach cobbler.”

Lizzie’s famous peach cobbler? Is she serious? I can’t quite stifle the choking laugh that bubbles up.

“Let me help,” Mom says, throwing me a brief glare.

Tru practically leaps up from the table. “I’ll do it.”

He sounds as desperate to escape as I feel.

“Me too,” I add, hurrying to grab Mrs. Dorsey’s stack of dishes and add it to mine. “I’ll help.”