"You're still going to bring me a pie, after I apparently upset you?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Most people do not bake for people whose only interaction with them ended badly."

"Uh-huh," says Trouble. "So like I said, why not?"

"Okay," he says cheerfully.

"And then I suppose I can tell you what she says tomorrow, or I could call you; I assume you're in the school directory?"

"Tell me tomorrow," he suggests.

"Okay. If I ask why about that, too, will you be upset again?"

"Probably."

"Is there some kind of pattern to these things I could learn so I don't have to pick it up case-by-case?"

"Probably," he says again, "but I couldn't tell you what it is."

"Maybe I will figure it out all by myself, if you bring me enough pie."

"Maybe you will," he says, shrugging.

The bell rings; Bella folds up her mat.

"See you tomorrow," says Trouble, and he takes off.

The following day, Bella has her answer; she'll tell him after gym if he doesn't approach her at lunch.

"Hi. Renée says you can come over with pie this afternoon, or tomorrow if that works better."

"And Bella has to share," pipes up Andi.

"I will share."

Trouble laughs. "Sure, today works."

"Okay." Bella writes down the Swan family address on a corner of notebook paper and hands it over.

"Cool," says Trouble. "I'll be there when the pie's done. Maybe sixish."

"Pie for dessert," beams Andi.

"Yes. Well, probably. I've never arranged pie delivery before; maybe it's not very reliable."

"Uh-huh," says Trouble.

"Do you need to be compensated for ingredients or anything?" Bella wonders.

"Nah."

"Freeeeeee piiiiiiiie!"

"My consolation for the weirdness of this situation is that I can't think of any reason you would be likely to poison us."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's consoling as hell," snorts Trouble.

"Renée's likely to invite you to stay for dinner if you show up at six," Bella adds to Trouble.

"Fine by me," he says, shrugging.

"Tonight is bean stew, there's always leftovers of that anyway," Andi says, nodding.

Trouble smiles.

"I wonder if she will make you eat salad to get dessert if you literally made dessert and brought it to our house?" wonders Andi.

"Be kind of a dick move, wouldn't it?"

"Well, the rule stands even if one of us makes dessert. Haven't tested its application to guests, before."

"Guess we'll find out," says Trouble.

"You're gonna try and skip the salad, huh?"

"Course I will."

"Were you going to do that before we mentioned that it might be a dessert prerequisite?"

"Who knows?" says Trouble.

"You, I'd hope. That's why I'm asking."

"Come on, Bella, sometimes people just do stuff without X-raying their brains to find out why."

He shrugs. "I didn't even know there was going to be salad before, how would I have known I was gonna skip it?"

"There's always salad," groans Andi.

Bella reflects on the conversation. "But you didn't know that," she acknowledges.

"Yep," says Trouble. "So who knows if I would've skipped it anyway? Not me."

"If it was her Bella would know. She knows what she'd do if she got three wishes and what she'd do if she could fly and what she'd do if she won the lottery even though she thinks buying tickets for it is stupid."

"What would you do if you got three wishes?"

"It depends on how the wishes work, obviously. Some genies are highly untrustworthy."

"Still depends on how much I can fit into a single wish. It probably can't be an arbitrary number of things connected by 'and', or I wouldn't need three."

"She has this all written down somewhere. I think there's a flowchart," says Andi in a stage whisper.

Trouble cracks up.

"But the short version is, insofar as I was able, I'd fix the world," says Bella, spreading her hands.

"Yeah? Which parts?"

"All of the parts."

He rolls his eyes. "So what, you're gonna blow it up?"

"That is not what the word fix means."

"Curing diseases, feeding starving children, she has this one really good rant about the educational system, stopping natural disasters, name any thing that is and she wants to replace it with a version that quote-actually-works-end-quote."

"Cute," says Trouble. "So how do you know what actually works?"

"Bella?"

"I'm not omniscient, and using my first wish to become omniscient would have its own problems, but I am not made of cardboard, and therefore I can tell a difference between things that do and do not work when I look at them, and if I had the leverage I could make things that do not work more similar to things that do work. I don't think wanting to improve things is cute and I don't want to go into any more detail with someone who holds that impulse in contempt."

"If only I had guessed that my prize was a genie when I had the opportunity to collect such a prize. In practice I'm thinking medical research."

"Probably safe," says Trouble.

"Ah, I have your seal of approval. All is well."

Andi hugs her sister.

"Is this my cue to get lost?" says Trouble.

Bella shrugs. "I didn't like how you asked a question. That doesn't mean you aren't allowed within a hundred yards of me by court order, or anything. If I were really mad I'd tell you not to come over this evening."

"Okay."

Sandwich.

Andi looks her over, then tells Trouble, "She's okay."

He smiles. "Good."

"I would totally hand Bella a genie if I had one," Andi adds loyally.

"Bet you would," Trouble agrees.

The twins eat their lunches.

Trouble eats his, which appears to have been brought from home.

"Trade you my fruit cocktail cup thing for your kiwi."

"Sure," says Trouble. He hands her the kiwi.

Andi completes the trade and consumes the kiwi. Nom!

Trouble consumes the fruit cocktail cup thing. Everyone is happy!

"Hi," says Trouble. "Sorry I made you mad at lunch."

"It's not a big deal. If you ever find a bottled genie give me another shot at earning your approval for genie-use, yeah? It's moot otherwise."

He shrugs. "Sure thing."

"Aww, I'm sorry," says Trouble. "I didn't know. That really sucks."

"Yeah. Renée is still normal about it and we live with her most of the time," shrugs Bella.

"I think it's nice that you want to do something important," he says. "Like it's nice that you get along with your sister."

"You just aren't convinced I know the difference between curing cancer and military dictatorship, or something."

"It's not always that easy."

"Do you have an example in mind or are you just cynical beyond your years?"

"I am so fucking cynical, you don't even know," says Trouble. "I could win world fucking championships of cynical."

"You are probably not cynical enough if you think you could beat seven billion people at cynicism."

He laughs.

"It's a very large number, you see."

"Sure it is," he says. "But somebody's gonna come out on top."

"Do you play the lottery, too?"

He snorts. "No."

"The competition is way fewer than seven billion, there, and the prize is better. At least, I'm pretty sure if you think the prize for a cynicism competition is going to be any good you automatically lose."

Trouble giggles.

"Why are you so prematurely cynical, anyhow?"

"Figure it out," he suggests jokingly. "I'll give you a lottery ticket."

Trouble laughs. He doesn't even look at the notebook. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I write lots of things down. So I don't forget them. If I'm trying to solve a puzzle I may as well collect my clues in an organized fashion."

"I'm a puzzle now?"

"Did you not just declare yourself one?"

"Guess I did," he says. "So what have you got on me so far?"

"If I tell you are you going to be more careful about dropping hints?"

"Why would I?" he laughs. "Lottery tickets are cheap."

"Not much. But tentatively it might have to do with the way you shut down when I ask certain questions. I don't have a pattern on which questions yet."

"Why, just 'cause that's the only other weird thing you know about me? There's plenty more where those came from."

"Interconnected weird things are more likely than multiple independent weird things, or the things wouldn't be very weird."

"Yeah," says Trouble. "The thing all my weird stuff has in common is me."

"I don't think I would deserve a lottery ticket for figuring that out."

He giggles.

She puts her notebook away. "Well, me and Andi walk home, I guess I will see you at dinnertime with pie."

"See you then," he agrees.

And off Bella goes.

Bella answers the door. "Hi, Trouble. Come on in."

"Mmm, pie." She steps aside to let in him and the pie. "Mom, Andi, Trouble's here!"

"That's such a peculiar nickname," remarks Renée, peering into the hall. "Hello, Trouble, I'm Bella and Andi's mom, Renée. Do you want to stay for dinner?"

"Sure," says Trouble.

"Excellent. Would that pie be better warm, should I pop it in the oven?"

"Nah, you have to let it cool or you get pie soup," he says. "It's still pretty snuggly, actually."

"All right then." She puts a trivet on the counter and gestures at it. "It can cool there, then, I'm afraid between the air conditioning and the width of the windowsills there's no traditional pie-cooling to be had in this house. Sit down, sit down."

Andi is setting out spoons.

Bella is tipping ice from a tray into a water pitcher.

Trouble sets the pie down on the trivet and unfolds the towel off of it. The entire thing looks amazing. He finds somewhere to sit.

Eventually everyone has sat down and starts taking turns ladling themselves bean stew. (Salad has been predistributed.)

Okay. Trouble helps himself to some stew.

The stew is beany and spicy!

"Trouble, I don't know if the girls told you; in our house everyone waits for dessert till they've eaten their vegetables," Renée says mildly, taking a second helping of stew. "If you're allergic to something in the salad there are some baby carrots around."

Trouble shrugs.

The girls eat their salad.

(Andi drowns hers in ranch.)

Trouble does not go for his salad. Or for any baby carrots.

Eventually everyone has finished eating. Renée gets up and puts the leftover bean stew in a Tupperware. "We also have vinaigrette if you'd rather that than ranch," she tells Trouble.

"Nah," says Trouble.

"When she says everyone that is what she means," Andi whispers across the table, "like, she won't cut the pie until everyone is ready for dessert, because that wouldn't be fair."

...Trouble raises his eyebrows incredulously.

"Not everyone eats as quickly as you do, Andi," says Renée. "If you're bored you don't have to sit at the table, I'll call you when it's time for dessert."

The phone rings.

Trouble watches this whole process curiously.

"Are you going to eat your salad?" Andi asks Trouble.

"Nope," says Trouble.

"Why not?" asks Renée.

"Don't feel like it," says Trouble.

"It's nutritionally important to eat a well-balanced diet," says Renée. "If you only take care of yourself when you happen to feel like it, you'll get sick. You're not my child, so I can't make you eat what you're served, but I think you should."

Trouble shrugs. "And I don't feel like it."

Renée picks up his bowl of salad, puts plastic wrap over it, sticks it in the fridge, and touches the side of the pie plate to see if it's cool.

It's just barely still warm.

She starts cutting slices. The twins get the first two, Trouble gets one, and then she sits down with a sliver of her own.

"This is very good. Thanks for making it," Bella says.

"You're welcome," says Trouble.

"I'd like a copy of your recipe," agrees Renée.

"What recipe?"

"For the pie."

"Yeah, like I said. What recipe?"

"You just play it by ear?"

"Works out pretty well, don't it?"

"Apparently!"

He giggles.

"No way, whenever I make stuff up when I bake I get glop."

"I," says Trouble, "have practice."

"So you got a lot of glop first?"

He shrugs. "Some, yeah. Sometimes I used recipes. I didn't reinvent pie from scratch or anything."

"Inventing pie would be quite an achievement. Mom, can I have seconds?"

"Just a small one, but sure."

Bella hops up and collects a small second slice of pie.

...Trouble watches this interchange.

"It's really good pie but I'm actually kind of in a chocolate mood, is there any of our birthday cake left?"

"Should be, I had the second-to-last slice yesterday. All yours."

Andi gets a slice of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and 15 written on it in blue icing out of the fridge and has it in lieu of a second slice of pie.

Trouble eyes the remaining pie speculatively.

"If one of us gets seconds we can all have seconds," Andi informs him.

"I'm deciding if I want any."

Bella steals a bite of Andi's slice of birthday cake.

Andi snorts and steals a bite of Bella's second slice of pie.

Trouble giggles.

"That's a sisters privilege," says Andi, pointing her fork at Trouble, "if you had any designs on my cake."

"Yeah, I figured," he says.

"Long as that's clear," says Andi contently.

Bella's pie is all gone. She leans back in her chair, smiling.

Renée wanders out of the room - she pats Andi on the head once as she goes, since she's right there.

"What does your evening look like?" Bella inquires of Trouble.

"Beats me," he laughs. "Guess I'll hang around for a while, then go somewhere else."

"Should we be entertaining you?" asks Andi vaguely. "There are, um... board games?"

"We can play board games if you wanna play board games," says Trouble. "If they're fun. Or we could play, I dunno, poker."

"I only know Texas Hold 'Em."

"And we don't have any chips."

"Does that mean you don't wanna play poker?"

"It means there exist practical obstacles to playing poker. I am largely indifferent to the choice of specific activity."

"We could go raid the change drawer, it's full of pennies," says Andi. "We have to put it all back after so Mom can put it through the machine at the grocery store but that's not a big deal."

"Sounds good to me," says Trouble.

Andi goes and gets a little dish full of pennies, which she distributes.

Bella finds a deck of cards near the phone.

"I'll deal," offers Trouble.

Bella hands over the cards and arranges her pennies into stacks.

Each twin can always tell when her sister is bluffing. But neither has much practice at poker in general, or with reading Trouble.

Trouble is completely readable. That's not the problem. He has emotions, but most of them are laughter and they don't seem to correlate with the state of his cards in any meaningful way.

Then he will not have much trouble collecting the girls' pennies.

The girls start ganging up on him.

That is also fun!

However, they are still not very good at poker. Trouble wins.

"That was fun," he says, giggling. "Was that fun? I think it was fun."

"It was all right. I think poker is maybe better with more than three people."

"Yeah." Andi collects up all the pennies to put back where she got them.

"So do you mind if I ask what was with that phone call?"

"Dad calls sometimes," shrugs Andi. "Mom calls us when we're staying with him over summers, too, they get along, they just didn't want to be married anymore. A while ago he started volunteering for this Scouting-like thing called the Sharing and he wants us to check it out but I think it looks boring and Bella thinks it looks creepy."

"That's a slight exaggeration. I think their recruitment habits are creepy; the organization itself seems to just be barbecues and volunteer work. I just don't know why Charlie's so into it."

"Okay, what's creepy about their recruiting habits?"

"The fact that Charlie will not shut up about it? He's not this evangelistic about things, usually. We went fishing with him a couple times, it was boring, we never had to come along again. But for some reason he feels really strongly that we should go eat corn on the cob on the beach with a bunch of people he met through this group and make friends there and do stuff with them."

"...Yeah, that's a little weird," says Trouble.

"Yeah."

"Maybe it's a cult. But all their press says they're secular and nondenominational 'except insofar as indviduals among us feel moved to act for the common good by their faith'."

"I don't think they're a religious cult. Is there even such a thing as a secular cult?"

"Maybe they're secretly a cult," says Trouble. "You join up and it's all corn on the cob and community shit and then once you're in deep they're like 'by the way, have some kool-aid'."

"They have a disturbingly high retention rate."

"So they're a nice secret cult. Or a really, really nasty one."

"Anyway," says Bella, shaking her head, "I'm just hoping Charlie doesn't make an enormous fuss about it when we're actually at his house this summer. It's one thing when I can theoretically just hang up on him."

"Worst case scenario, we go eat some corn," shrugs Andi. "It's boring, but we just turn down all the neon-color liquids, yeah?"

Bella shakes her head. "I don't want to. It's not a bowl of salad, and I don't want to, and that used to matter more than it currently seems to to Charlie."

"Is there some kind of special exception for bowls of salad?" wonders Trouble.

"Renée is sincerely motivated by concern for our health when she makes us eat salad," says Bella. "Also, it is not a suspicious, new behavior that she developed after converting to Scientology or something."

"Also, everyone's parents make them eat vegetables," says Andi.

"Not so much," he says to Andi.

"What, do you just eat whatever you want at home?"

"Actually, I was thinking of Ethan."

"He eats whatever he wants?"

"Eats whatever he wants, does whatever he wants. His parents couldn't give a shit."

"That sounds conveniently depressing. Depressingly convenient? Convenient and also depressing?"

"Could be worse."

"I guess, it could be depressing and inconvenient."

He laughs. "Yeah, that."

"You're over at his place a lot?"

"Yep," says Trouble.

"Bella thinks you're either sleeping with him or implying to people that you are for some reason," Andi says.

"I sure implied it to her," says Trouble. "Not to most people, but if you're after him I figure you should know."

"I like his accent," says Andi defensively.

"His accent is adorable," Trouble agrees.

"So is he gay or bisexual or what? Are you dating or do you just hook up?"

"I don't think he's gay," says Trouble. "And we're definitely not dating."

"Well, I like him, but I don't want him if he's going to keep hooking up with you, I'm not one of those people who thinks cheating doesn't count if it's with another dude," huffs Andi. "And Bella also said you don't think I can get him to like me."

"It is theoretically possible that there are some nice friendly human feelings in there somewhere," says Trouble. "But I've never seen 'em. Part of the reason he hangs out with me is 'cause he can get laid without pretending to care."

"Ew," says Andi.

"We can go to England for a semester in college or something, find you a cute Brit there," says Bella.

Trouble laughs. "Much better plan."

"Fiiiine," sighs Andi.

"Sorry," he adds. "I mean, not that I'm personally responsible for Ethan being kind of a dick, or that I'd even change him if I could, but - sorry."

"Why do you even sleep with him if he's a jerk and you know it?"

"Because I'm hopelessly in love," he laughs. "And we're pretty good for each other. Sexually if not emotionally."

"Wait, you're in love with him?"

"Yeah."

"Aaaand you also think he's a jerk."

"He is a jerk," sighs Trouble.

"You say that like you're complimenting his eyes, what is up with you?"

"I have weird taste?" he suggests.

"I guess."

"Where would the lonesome jerks of Phoenix be without you?" Bella asks dryly.

"Getting into way less trouble, that's for sure."

"What's the - oh."

He cracks up.

"Well, that was vulgar."

"But funny," he giggles.

"Okay, so I guess I'll just... I don't know, watch BBC shows or something until I'm over it, thanks for the warning," shrugs Andi.

"No problem," says Trouble.

"It's a pity though."

"Yeah, I guess."

Eventually the visit concludes, Trouble is shown out, and the twins go get some homework done.