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only for one hour. I can do this.”
    â€œHis blinkie’s in the dryer,” she continues. “Make sure he washes his hands. Don’t cut his sandwich in half or he won’t eat it.”
    â€œMom!”
    â€œI just want to make sure—”
    â€œGo!” I say. “You’ll be late for your meeting.”
    She rolls her eyes and adjusts the blouse under her suit jacket so that the collar comes out over the lapels. I’d bet anything that shirt still has yesterday’s mustard stain on it, and that she’s covered it up by buttoning her jacket. My mom, the scientist, whose clients think she’s neat, tall, smart, and professional.
    Well, she is smart, professional, and tall. But neat—ha! She’s never worn anything neat in her life, except to meetings, because she has to. Her home and everywhere-else uniform is gloomy gray sweats in the winter, and ankle-length cotton shifts with no waist in the summer. Accessorized with clunky tennis shoes and a fanny pack slung low on one hip. She looks like a tourist.
    Comfort is the fashion creed at my house.
    The way I see it, Mom and Dad were born at the wrong time. They should definitely have grown up in the sixties, when they would’ve had so many more creative outlets for their hippie genes. They were totally made for flower power, war protests, and living in communes.
    Instead, they were teenagers in the eighties, when the best they could do was follow The Dead. The Grateful Dead, that is. That’s how they met. Love at first sight, over a VW bus. My mom spotting my dad, a body-pierced soul mate selling green-and-yellow tie-dyed T-shirts.
    And then there’s the part that came later, when they got married and named their kids Destiny and Denver.
    If I could’ve had my choice, would I rather have been tagged with a town in Colorado, or the touchy-feely drama-noun that I got stuck with?
    I don’t know.
    Either way, it’s embarrassing.
    Did I mention that my father wears shirts that look like pajama tops and quotes poetry in the middle of conversations?
    Which is why I don’t understand Jil at all. She has an incredible mom, an incredible dad, an incredible everything. And now she wants to go round up some woman who is a total stranger so that she can have … have what? Two mothers? A spare? Just the new mom? Can I have her old mom?
    As the kitchen door closes behind my mother, I pick up a sponge that looks as if it cleaned up World War I and toss it into our garbage can. I open a new pack and wipe the kitchen counter where Mom spilled jelly while she was starting to make Denver’s sandwich.
    â€œJil,” I say as I pull out a clean knife and spread peanut butter on a piece of bread, “why do you want another mom?”
    â€œIt’s on the wrong half,” says Denver.
    Huh?
    I look down at the slice of white bread on the counter. The one I just spread with peanut butter. The piece next to it, the one that Mom prepared, is covered with grape jelly.
    â€œThe jelly goes on the other one.”
    â€œIt’s important,” says Jil.
    â€œThat the jelly goes on the other one?!” I exclaim.
    â€œNo,” she says. “That I find my mom.”
    â€œOh.” I slap the two halves together.
    â€œDon’t cut it!” yells Denver.
    â€œDon’t worry,” I tell him, plopping the sandwich on a chipped plate and sliding it across the island to where Denver sits perched at the bar counter, his feet dangling two feet off the floor. He’s still wearing his snow boots, and there’s a puddle of water where the ice he dragged in has melted onto our scarred fake-tile floor.
    â€œI thought there was a law,” I say to Jil. “I thought you couldn’t find out the identity of your birth parents until you’re eighteen.”
    â€œWhat are birth parents?” asks Denver, staring suspiciously at his sandwich as if he’s trying to decide if his