"Luke!" I screech. "You can't put the egg shells in the batter!"
"I'm sorry!" he says, trying to pick the little white pieces out of the brown goop.
"Idiot," I mutter, a small smile playing on my lips.
"Okay, I think I got them all. Where's your trash can?"
Cabinets line my kitchen, and they're above and below the marble counter that wraps around most of the room. I slide open a cabinet that's under the counter, revealing a trash can, and he dumps the egg shells into it.
"At least I cracked the eggs," he mumbles. "You couldn't do that."
"Hey!" I have the urge to smack him, but since I'm not wearing my gloves, I don't.
"Seriously, how do you bake if you can't crack an egg?"
"I usually bake with my friends, and thy crack the eggs."
"How old were you when you were separated from your parents?"
The question catches me off guard. "Why do you want to know?"
He shrugs. "I'm just curious."
"I got separated from my parents when I was eleven." His eyes widen in shock.
Our parents basically train us to live on our own until Guards come and take us away, and they put us in regular houses and make us live regular lives. Each kid is assigned a Guard, and once that Guard thinks we can take care of ourselves, we're taken away from our families.
There's a big wall separating kids from adults, and us kids can't see our parents or families until we're twenty. Once we're twenty, we move back to the side of the wall our families are on, and we can either live with them, or get our own houses.
I'm not sure who came up with our stupid laws, and I don't know why they did it. I don't see a point in taking us away from our families at young ages, only to return us to them later, and I don't understand why we can't touch each other. Even when we're assigned a Match, we can't touch them. It's stupid, really.
"That's really young," Luke says. I open a drawer and take out an electronic mixer, then plug the mixer into an outlet near us.
I shrug. "I was a responsible child." I pick up our bowl of brownie mix and place it on the counter near the mixer, then start up the mixer and stir the brownie mix until there aren't any chunks left.
"How old were you?" I ask as I open yet another cabinet and take out a glass pan.
"Fourteen. I wasn't very responsible."
"So, where did you come from?" he gives me a confused look, so I say, "You just started going to my school, which means you came from another school."
"Oh, yeah. I live about ten minutes from here, I just went to a different Last School. But I didn't like it so I transferred."
"Oh, okay." I pour the brownie mix into the pan, then put the pan in the oven we'd preheated before we had started making the brownie mix.
"So, why are we making brownies?"
"Because they taste good. Duh." I take the two beaters off of the machine, then extend one to him. "Do you want to lick one?" I ask.
He grins. "Yeah." He takes it from me, and I watch in amusement as his tongue flicks around the thin metal wires, trying to get every bit of chocolate.
When he pulls it away from his face I burst into laughter when I see that he has chocolate on his nose.
"What?" he asks. I just shake my head and laugh harder. "What?" he looks so sad, which just fuels my laughter.
