Zoe wrinkles her nose. “I guess your future self orders in a lot…”
“Step aside. Let the master get to work,” Trent says, brushing past me.
“The master?” Chris asks, crossing his arms. “You?”
Trent starts pulling things out of the back of the fridge and from inside the pantry. He checks each item and either tosses it on the counter or in the nearby trash bin. The rest of us just stare at him. I’m not sure if I’m more blown away by the fact that he’s taking charge for once or that he seems to know what to do with all this food.
“What, like you’ve never seen a guy cook before?” Trent checks the drawers next and keeps poking around until he finds whatever he’s looking for. Within a minute he’s got the stove running and is throwing things in a skillet. “We’re having breakfast, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. It’s the best I can do.”
“Hey, breakfast is always good,” Adam says.
“True that.” Trent points his spatula at him. “Just remember to go grocery shopping in thirty years.”
“Uh…I’ll try.”
We ease ourselves onto bar stools perched in front of the center island and watch Trent do his thing. The skillet sizzles as he throws some bread and eggs onto it.
“Where’d you learn how to cook?” I ask as the delicious smell of frying food fills the air.
“My parents were junkies. They’d shoot up and sit around all day watching talk shows and forget they had a little kid to feed. Sometimes I’d sneak over to my neighbors’ place and they’d cook for me. They were from El Salvador and made the best damn pupusas you’ve ever tasted. I learned a lot from them before the state took me away.” His voice sounds casual, but his eyes are glued to the skillet as he talks. “After my last foster home went to hell, I took off. Been living on the streets ever since, shelter-hopping and grabbing food where I can. Cooking skills come in handy when you’re on your own.”
There’s a long moment of uncomfortable silence, the kind that comes whenever someone ventures into TMI levels of sharing. I’ve heard of other kids who bailed on the foster system and went homeless. It’s a tough life, but sometimes it’s better than whatever they were dealing with in their foster homes. I’ve considered going out on my own plenty of times when things got really bad. I was just too chicken to actually do it.
“That’s cool,” I say, breaking the ice. Trent looks up at me with a grateful smile.
“Yeah, man,” Chris says. “I wish I knew how to cook. And Adam definitely needs to learn.”
We all laugh and the nervous energy in the room vanishes. Trent serves us French toast with maple syrup, along with some bacon he somehow managed to find. I don’t know if any of it is fresh or not, but it all melts in my mouth and fills me with warmth. Turns out Trent’s a pretty damn good chef.
We all sit around the island counter and eat while teasing Trent about his cooking skills and Adam about his future self’s empty fridge. We don’t bring up what Future-Adam told us or how we’re all going to be killed tomorrow. We just stuff our faces and pretend we’re five ordinary people hanging out together with our whole lives ahead of us.
But even though we laugh and smile, our fate hangs over us like a reaper’s scythe. I can’t forget it, no matter how hard I try. The clock never stops ticking—and I only have a few more hours to stop all of our murders.
09:40
We explore the house, going through bedroom after bedroom after bedroom. Seriously, how many guests does Future-Adam expect to have at once? There’s also a library full of old books—which Trent and I both ooh and aah over—plus an exercise room, a giant office, and even a freaking movie room. We practically have to drag Chris out of this last one.
We find some extra clothes laid out in what I assume must be Future-Adam’s bedroom. It’s not the biggest one or the fanciest one, but it is the messiest one. It’s the only room we’ve seen that actually looks lived in. The bed is unmade, clothes are piled on a chair in the corner, and there’s a glass of water on the bedside table. Future-Adam is kind of a slob.