The You I Never Knew by Susan Wiggs

interested?”
    “We’re only staying until you get through with your recovery period.” Even that was too long for Cody. Worse, he had to enroll in the local high school here in Noplace, Montana. He had stormed for weeks in rebellion, but his mom was adamant. He got a minor reprieve this week—it was winter break in Noplace. But pretty soon he was going to have to be the new kid. A fate worse than death. “Mom says a few weeks or so. Then we’re out of here.”
    Gavin’s grin stayed fixed in place. But the movie-star gleam in his eyes dimmed as if Cody’s words were a light switch that suddenly turned it off. “Let’s go see if supper’s ready.”
    Cody felt kind of shitty as he followed his grandfather into a big dining room with fancy crystal and china laid out. What did the old man expect? Instant bonding, like on those long-distance phone commercials? He and Gavin Slade were complete strangers. After this transplant thing was over, they probably wouldn’t ever see each other again.
    Grandfathers made friends with grandsons when they were little and cute, not when they were sixteen, wearing a ponytail and combat boots. Not that Cody wanted to cozy up to the old man, anyway. It was gross, thinking about his illness. He had some kind of fluid bag attached to a tube going inside him, doing the work his kidneys were supposed to do. The very idea of it made Cody want to hurl.
    His mom joined them in the dining room. She was smiling in a nervous way. Her gaze kept darting from her father to Cody. “Hi, guys,” she said.
    Gavin held a chair for her. It was corny but kind of nice seeing the old guy do that. Once, Cody had tried holding a chair out for Claudia. “What, like it’s going to get away from me?” she’d asked, then cracked up. Cody had laughed, too.
    Dinner was about the best thing that had happened since his mom loaded him into the car at the crack of dawn yesterday. Prepared by an Asian nutrition expert named Tadao, it consisted of pasta with fancy sauce, fresh bread, a bunch of grilled veggies, and a big salad of exotic fruit.
    After shoveling away about nineteen pounds of food, Cody glanced up to see both his mother and his grandfather watching him. Neither of them had eaten much. Gavin was on some sort of low-protein diet. He couldn’t eat things that made his kidneys work hard because they didn’t function at all anymore.
    “You must’ve worked up an appetite out at Lonepine today,” Gavin commented.
    “It’s good,” he said, and sucked down a whole glass of milk.
    “Be sure you tell Tadao you enjoyed it,” his mom said.
    Shit. She was always doing that. No matter what it was—having a good meal, talking on the phone, whatever, she had to add her own little goody-goody twist on it. Her own little adjustment or correction. This morning he’d expected her to totally humiliate him in front of that girl, Molly. But for once his mom had shown mercy.
    She’d seemed kind of flustered around Sam McPhee, like she couldn’t quite decide what to make of him. Cody wasn’t sure what to make of the guy either. He was okay, but Cody thought it was totally bogus of him to make him pay off the trailer damage with slave labor.
    He helped himself to more milk from a cut-glass pitcher, feeling a slight sting from the blisters on his hand.
Blisters,
for chrissakes. He was pretty sure he’d never given himself blisters before. Especially not by shoveling horseshit.
    He got the idea from that Bliss guy that Lonepine was some kind of hotshot horse breeding and training ranch. It was cool, working in a barn where a mare was about to give birth any minute. When it was time to go today, Cody had felt a twinge of disappointment. He wouldn’t have minded seeing the horse being born. It would have given him a good story to tell Claudia.
    Maybe the manure story was funny enough. But honestly, he hadn’t felt much like laughing. There had been a moment, when he was alone in the barn, with the smells around him