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"It was a heart attack," Jordan said. "Mom has c-cancer." His voice hitched in spite of his best efforts, and he accepted the bag of chips with his head down, looking blankly at the windowsill and trying to get himself back under control.

"I've been reading about it," Jordan said, and wiped at his eyes quickly, trying to pretend like he hadn't. "She's doing chemotherapy and stuff. The doctors say the chances are good if it doesn't meta, uh, metastasize." He tried on a slightly watery smile. "She's gonna be okay because she just has to, so she will. I'm praying too. Every night."

"That sounds cool. I'll write down my email and phone number." Jordan focused his attention on opening the chip bag, embarrassed. "What's your family like?" It was a blatant attempt to change the subject.

After a moment, Jordan came over to sit down on the blankets too. "What grade is your brother in?" he asked. "Mine's in fifth grade."

"One of my grandpas lives in town," he offered. "The other one lives in Texas so we don't see him so much. Do you have lots of cousins?"

"Andy. He's 11 and he's a pain in the butt." It was spoken in an annoyed yet affectionate tone of voice.

He listened to Mel's explanation of his family, nodding at pertinent points. "Is it cool playing in snow in winter? It looks like it'd be cool."

"Tia Rosa, that's my aunt we're staying with, she has three kids. All girls." Jordan made a face; he would have gotten in trouble for the opinion at home, but there were no adults around and Mel was a boy too, so it was safe. "They're loud. And they're kind of mad at us right now because they have to share a bedroom so we have the other bedroom to sleep in." He shrugged. "My dad's got a brother and a sister, Uncle Brian and Aunt Jen. Uncle Brian doesn't have any kids though, he just lives by himself. Aunt Jen has two kids but she lives in Tennessee so we don't see them a lot." The last time they'd seen Aunt Jen and the cousins on that side of the family was the funeral, but Jordan was carefully not thinking about that right now.

"What's ice fishing like? I mean, do you just sit around on the frozen lake and wait for the fish to bite?" It sounded sort of boring, honestly, but that was Jordan's opinion of fishing in general. It wasn't active enough to keep his attention. "Some people go up into the mountains to ski in winter, but that's like, taking a vacation sort of trip. I've never been but I kind of want to try it some day."

"Ohhh." That made more sense. Fishing, in Jordan's admittedly limited experience, was an excuse for doing absolutely nothing while pretending you were doing something, but if ice fishing fell under the category of bonding things that was different. "Just like, family stuff. Okay."

He nodded a little to the assertion that being overlooked wasn't bad. He'd been the target of a lot of uncomfortable attention recently, when he'd really rather be left alone. He'd quickly started to learn how to react in the ways the adults wanted to see to get it over with faster so they would go away. That, again, was a train of thought that led to places he didn't want to be, and fortunately Mel had another question that he could think about instead. "I like biking, and swimming. I'm gonna learn to surf," he said. "When I can get Geoff to teach me. I read a lot, too. What do you do?"

Jordan nibbled on a chip, less because he was hungry and more for something to do with his hands. "The swim team sounds cool," he said. "I hope you make it."

He ate another chip. "I like sci-fi," he said. "And old fantasy stuff, and history and mythology. And i like to read about science and stuff. How the world works. What do you read?"