"Juniper." I could hear myself. I sounded like my own mother. "That phone is for your sensor. That phone is the whole reason — that's eight hundred dollars, honey, that's not a toy. That's so your alarm works. So what happened on the sixth doesn't happen again."
"I know," she said. "That's why."
"That's why what?"
She looked at me. She had her father's grin, I've told you that, but she didn't have it now. What she had was something I'd never seen on her face before, though I'd seen it on my own in the mirror many times: the expression of a person who has been carrying something heavy for a long time and has just decided to put it down, whatever it breaks.
"I've got the receiver," she said. "The receiver's loud. It works. Abeyta said it works. My phone only has to wake up me." She pointed across the table at the phone in the blue sock, propped against the toaster, its single red sliver glowing. "His has to wake up him."
I didn't understand her. I want to be exact about this, because later Steph asked me, "Didn't you know right then?" and the answer is no. I heard the words and they went into me and sat there like stones at the bottom of a glass of water, and I could see them, but I couldn't make them mean anything.
"What do you mean, wake him up?" I said. "Wake him up for what? For school?"
"She doesn't mean anything," Kellan said. "She's just — Juni, come on. Eat your tacos."
"I'm not hungry."
"You bolused for grapes, you have to eat something."
"I'll eat after."
"After what?" I said. "Somebody tell me what's going on. Right now. Both of you."