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Amy and I went right from school to my house, she apparently didn't mind consistently skipping all her classes after lunch.

"All my important classes are in the morning anyway," she'd say.

We decided to stop thinking about all of my "problems" for a while and have some time off. If my school administrator was pulling a paycheck from the government to keep me out of trouble, he still would be after the weekend so there was no need to go nuts trying to figure everything out at once. Since my mom was gone we could hang out for a while at my house.

It took 'til about the time I'd ordered a pizza and paid for it myself that I realized I had a girl over to my house. That is, I knew Amy was there, but it didn't set in after all this time that I had no idea what was going on with Amy and I. We were spending a lot of time together, but it all seemed to be focused on figuring out my life. We never talked about anything else, and she seemed oddly interested in the whole thing.

And now there was a girl in my house, eating pizza I paid for.

Since she hadn't seen it, and it was one of my favorite movies, I elected to watch The Bourne Identity. I put the DVD in the player and turned on the TV while Amy curled herself into my living room couch. The TV was on the wrong input so I went through the settings to change that, then went through the DVD player settings to make sure all the display and sound settings were right.

"Geez, did you memorize the instruction manuals for this stuff?" Amy said between bites of supreme hand-tossed while I futzed with the menus.
"Eh.. no. I'm just good with interfaces," I said.
"Good with interfaces? Can you put that on a resume?" behind me, I could hear the grin in her voice.

I looked over my shoulder. "I dunno, I've always been able to figure these kind of things out. Setting watches, setting up electronics.. I can just do these things."

"That's got to be one of your least interesting super powers."

I started the movie and thought about how I could afford a TV about 10 times nicer than this one. I could afford a lot of things now, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to spend any of the insurance money. All the food and stuff I'd bought lately I'd done so with money I already had. As long as the money stayed in the bank, maybe everything could stay the same. Plus it was earning about 6% in a money market savings account. Just the interest on that is more than I could make in a real job straight from high school. But then, I'm supposed to be watching the movie and not thinking about these things for now.

Amy pointed out some of the similarities that I'd referenced, like the surprise ability to beat people up and the weird amounts of money coming from nowhere. There was scene I was dreading, though. Matt Damon and Franke Potente in a hotel room in Zurich or Paris or somewhere. They're on the run from the CIA people hunting them down, he dyes and cuts her hair, it's romantic, and they start making out. As aware as I was about Amy being there, for that scene I was very aware that she was sitting right next to me. Nobody said anything for a while, a tension seemed to hang in the air.

Teen drama!

It was dark when the movie ended. I got up and threw the paper plates away and stuck the leftover pizza in the fridge. Neither of us had said anything yet.

"Well that was good. I'll have to see the second one soon," she said at last. I just looked at her for a moment over the kitchen counter, thinking about what happens to Franke's character in an early scene. I for once worried that I might be going about everything completely wrong.

"So I guess I'll get going home now," Amy started, "my dad doesn't like me out late without reasons."

She got her coat and walked toward the door, which I was holding open. "Ok, bye then," I said as nonchalantly as possible. As she stepped through the door she stopped and turned around.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she started, "I had an idea for something we can do tomorrow. I'll walk here in the morning, we can take your car." She smiled and walked away.

I closed the door slowly, and looked back at my empty house. It smelled like oregano.