Текст книги "He's So Not Worth It"

Автор книги: Kieran Scott

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“So are you, like, in love with my brother?” Jenny shouted into my ear.“What? No!” I replied.I sucked half the punch from my cup. If there was alcohol in it, I couldn’t taste it, so I had decided to pretend that there wasn’t any. After the last few days and that “family time” comment from my mom, I deserved to let loose a little. Suddenly, a cheer went up from across the yard. Someone had built an elaborate catapult worthy of a physics fair blue ribbon, and half the party’s attendees had spent most of the evening flinging various items at the wall of the abandoned house next door. From the looks of things, this catapult had been in use for months—the dilapidated structure on the other side of the fence was peppered with holes, cracks, and stains of various hues and sizes—and as Jenny and I looked on, Cooper and Dex were helping some other guys load it up with a huge, dimpled watermelon.“Really?” Jenny was incredulous as she smacked my arm with the back of her hand, spilling half her beer over the rim of her cup and not noticing. Both of us wore hoodies with the hoods up to ward off the misty drizzle, and she pushed hers back slightly, as if to better see me. Her blue eyes were wide. “Everyone’s in love with him.”I glanced over at Cooper, who was stepping back to yank the release on the catapult. There were quite a few girls eyeing him over their drinks. I wondered if he knew they were all in love with him.Probably.He let her rip. The watermelon surged through the air and exploded against the white-shingled wall of the house. Everyone within ten feet of the catapult was pelted with watermelon bits. The resulting cheer was the loudest yet.“This is the coolest party ever!” Annie cried, bouncing over to us with an old crab-trap crate full of potential catapult items gathered from the vicinity. Inside I saw a lawn gnome, a rusty spade, and an actual crab, which I hoped was already dead.“Agreed,” I said. And the best part about it? No Cresties to be found.Annie’s expression drooped a little. “What’s wrong? Are you upset that Cooper’s not talking to you?”“Annie!” I said through my teeth. Jenny snorted a laugh and held her hand to her nose.“No. No, no, no.” She dropped the crate of launchables at her feet and took hold of my arm. “You made me come here and miss a perfectly good Crestie party. I could be taking notes right now . . . watching Faith upchuck her meager lunch all over the Rosses’ state-of-the-art automatic toilet bowl. I did not miss that so you could come here and not talk to him.”Cooper was slapping hands with Stoner, his biceps flexing under the sleeve of his clingy black T-shirt.“He totally likes you,” Jenny said, toying with her braid.“He does?” I asked.“Um, yeah!” She sucked down some more of her beer. “He mentions you at least three times a day. With my brother, that’s like he may as well have bought a ring.”At that moment, Cooper looked over at me. He said something to Stoner, then walked across the overgrown grass, dodging revelers as he came.“What’re you, avoiding me?” he said with a smirk.I blinked. “What? No! I—”He took my hand and tugged me toward him. My knees bumped his and I blushed. Then he turned both my hands so that my palms were facing out, and matched his palms to mine for a second before lacing our fingers together. He had this way of throwing me off balance and then suddenly grounding me that made me feel like his own personal Ping-Pong ball.“Wanna go somewhere?” he asked.“Where?” The word was a squeak.He looked over his shoulder, tilted his head, and pulled me away from my friends.“Don’t worry about me!” Annie shouted after us. “I’ll just be here flinging gnomes!”Cooper and I laughed as he walked me around the side of the house, helping me carefully step over a fallen section of the rotting picket fence, which had been lain flat by weather or time or some less-natural disaster. At the front of the house was a short wooden deck with a crooked railing. On the deck was an untrustworthy porch swing, with some gray-haired dude splayed across it, snoring. Cooper roused him, and the guy loped off into the night, toward the bay, where dozens of people were partying on a rickety dock, a cloud of smoke muting the twinkle lights strung above their heads.The porch swing creaked loudly as we sat, but didn’t crash to the ground like I expected. Cooper settled into the corner and put his arm out, like he expected me to cuddle into his side. I thought of Jake suddenly, and sat down on the opposite end.Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was the matter with me? It wasn’t like I’d be cheating or something. Jake and I had never even officially been together and we definitely weren’t now. I wished I had taken Cooper up on the unspoken invitation, but it was too late. He cleared his throat and sat up.“You hate this party, don’t you?” he blurted.My face scrunched. “What? No. I’m having fun.” I turned my knees toward his. “Why would I hate this party?”“I don’t know. Because—” There was a huge crash, followed by a gasp, then a screaming cheer. We locked eyes for a second, then laughed. “Maybe it’s not . . . sophisticated enough for you.”My insides went all squirmy. “Why? What do you mean?” He gave me this look. Like duh. And now I was offended. “Wait, you think because I’m a Crestie this isn’t my type of party? Because I am not a Crestie, okay? I just currently live with one.”“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Cooper held up a hand, shaking his head at the same time. “Back up. Beep, beep, beep.” He motioned like he was guiding a reversing truck into a parking space. “What’s a Crestie?”My face burned bright enough to replace the busted porch light. Overhead, the sky suddenly opened up again and the world filled with muffled screams and shouts and pounding feet as everyone crowded inside. The raindrops pinged and plinked off of the various discarded items—tapped kegs, an old tin fishing boat, a coiled garden hose—in the dirt patch that was the front yard.“Right. Um, forget I said anything.”Cooper laughed. “No, no. There’s no forgetting anything now.” He inched closer to me and rested one arm on the back of the swing. “What’s a Crestie?”I blew out a sigh and rolled my eyes. “All right. Back home there’s this crest and all the rich kids live on it. At some point, like, a million years ago, the kids on the other side of town nicknamed them the Cresties and they’ve been called that for so long that it’s, like, who they are now. Sometimes they even use it to refer to themselves. Sarcastically of course. But I think they secretly like it.”Cooper gaped. “That might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”“I know. And I live it,” I said. “So what does that make me?”Cooper narrowed his eyes. One of the gutters on the porch overflowed, suddenly sprouting a gushing waterfall behind our heads. Little splatters peppered my arms. “So wait. I’m confused. You are a Crestie, or you’re not a Crestie?”I could have told him the whole story. How I used to be one, what had happened with my dad, why I was no longer one, how my mom was dating one. But suddenly, it all seemed too exhausting. And too silly to waste time explaining. I was here, with him. And the Cresties didn’t matter. They didn’t matter so much, he didn’t even know who they were.Suddenly, I’d never felt so free.“I’m not,” I said, sliding a little bit closer to him. Our knees touched, and when I laid my own arm along the back of the swing, our fingers touched too. “And you know what? I don’t want to talk about them anymore. I’m just a normal girl who’s loving this party. I swear.”Cooper looked into my eyes. His hand shifted and suddenly it was holding on to mine. “You are not what I expected.”Who ever is? I thought. Jake wasn’t. My mom wasn’t. My dad wasn’t. Even Shannen, Hammond, Faith, and Chloe weren’t exactly what they appeared.“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said.“You should.”And then he grazed my bottom lip with his thumb. And then he kissed me.

It took way longer to get to LBI than usual. People can’t drive for shit in the rain. There were all these accidents and people were, like, doing twenty-five whenever they came to a frickin’ puddle. But whatever; I was there now. At Hammond’s. And from the look of it, everyone else was too. There were cars parked everywhere—in the driveway, in the street, in front of the neighbor’s driveway—like everyone knew they were in for the night so it didn’t matter if they blocked in everyone else. I took a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror. My heart was pounding a mile a second.Ally was inside. I was going to see Ally.Probably should’ve used that four hour drive to figure out what to say to her.Shit. Whatever. Let’s get this over with.I got out of the car, pulled my hood over my head, and ran through the rain. When I shoved the sliding glass door open, a bunch of adults turned to look. Like I was some homeless guy crashing their party. They were all wearing linen pants and sandals and jewelry, and there was me in my coffee-stained shorts and crappy kicks.“Dude! You made it!”Hammond came outta nowhere and slapped my hand. He had a cup full of beer in his other hand and he was wearing a pink polo shirt. Where the hell does he get these clothes?“Hey. Yeah.” I glanced around the room. Ally’s mom and Dr. Nathanson were over by the bar, and I saw Faith’s mom and the Idiot Twins’ parents, and Quinn and her friends, but no Ally.“Jake!” Faith practically screamed. She wove through the crowd with her cup of punch over her head and air-kissed me. “What are you doing here?”“Did your mom unground you?” Hammond asked. “Thank God. It’s been boring as shit down here.”Faith slurped her drink and nodded. “So boring.”“Not exactly,” I said. I moved a little farther into the house and scanned the room, like I was looking for somewhere to put my sweatshirt. There were a bunch of graduated seniors in the kitchen. I nodded at them. No Ally.“If you’re looking for the keg, it’s out back,” Hammond said. “Dad’s cool with us drinking as long as everyone crashes here.”“No. I’m good.”“I know what he’s looking for,” Faith said in a teasing voice. She rocked up onto her toes, and scanned the room. “But you’re not going to find her here.”I chose not to argue. I was too tense to play games. “Where is she?”“Where’s who?” Hammond said stupidly.“Ally!” Faith squealed. Because the people in the cheap seats wanted to hear.“Oh. Right. Yeah. She’s not here,” Hammond said, taking a slug of beer.“Do you know where she is?”Hammond sucked the foam off his lips. He didn’t look at me. “Nope.”Something inside me flipped. “Yeah you do. Come on, dude, where is she?”“You sound like her mother. She’s been asking me every ten minutes if I know where this party is Ally went to.” He chugged the rest of his beer, crushed the cup, and tossed it toward the kitchen, where it hit some girl in the leg. “Fuck her. She doesn’t want to hang out with us, she doesn’t have to.”He started across the room toward the stairs, but I grabbed his arm.“Well, who’s she hanging out with?” I asked.Hammond took a deep breath and blew it out, like he was losing patience. “Some local dude. I don’t know.”“What local dude?” Faith and I said at the same time.“He said they were having a party at Chum and Howie’s, whoever they are,” Hammond said. “Some huge rager up by the lighthouse.”My teeth pressed together. Who was this local dude and why was he taking my girlfriend . . . ?She’s not your girlfriend. She is not your girlfriend.“So let’s go,” Faith said.My eyebrows popped up. Best. Idea. Ever. “Yeah. Let’s go.”Hammond appeared interested. “But I don’t even know where it is.”“There aren’t that many houses by the lighthouse,” Faith said, raising her palm.“Yeah. So we’ll drive around until we find it,” I added.Never before had Faith and I been on the same page. She grinned. Apparently she was enjoying it. I smiled back.Hammond looked around. His parents were yucking it up over by the fireplace with some other coiffed adults.“Shit. This party sucks anyway. Let’s go.”It took fifteen minutes to drive to the lighthouse. Another fifteen to find the “rager.” There were people dancing on the roof in the rain. From the look of the shack and its weather-beaten wallboards, I was shocked they were still alive. I slammed the door of Hammond’s car and started toward the house, but I was still two steps from the door when I froze. All the blood in my body rushed to my head, and I suddenly saw myself driving my fist into the wall.Because sitting—no, practically lying—on the porch swing, with her tongue down some blond surf dude’s throat, was my not-girlfriend.

“Jake!”The word exploded from my mouth before I fully registered that he was actually there. He held his right hand in his left. Both were shaking.“Ow! Son of a bitch!”He whirled away, flinging his hand out, cursing under his breath. Then Hammond came jogging up the steps.“Dude! Did you really just punch the wall?”For me. Jake Graydon had just punched a wall for me. I felt this euphoric rush and then Cooper stood up next to me, and suddenly Faith was there also, wrinkling her nose at the house and cringing away from the rotted porch railing. And the rush crashed spectacularly.What the hell were they all doing here?“You’re bleeding!” Faith exclaimed with another nose wrinkle.Blood ran in a trickle from Jake’s knuckle and splattered the floorboards between his feet. Jake just stared at me. At my lips. Which still tasted like Cooper’s ChapStick. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I felt like a cheating slut. But Jake was not my boyfriend. He was not.He was just the guy who’d punched a wall over me.“You should really get some ice for that, man,” Cooper said.“Who the fuck are you?” Jake spat.Cooper tilted his head quizzically. Like he had just been faced with some exotic and heretofore unidentified breed of asshole. “I’m the guy who was invited here. Who the fuck are you?”Jake took a menacing step forward, so Cooper did the same. Hammond’s hand instantly shot out, pressing against Cooper’s chest. This was going nowhere good, and it was going there fast.“Back off, loser,” Hammond spat.“These are them, aren’t they?” Cooper said with a laugh.“Them, who?” Jake said, his eyes darting to me.“The Cresties.” Cooper did air quotes. He was cackling now.“What the fuck do you know about it?” Hammond asked, shifting so his entire forearm was against Cooper’s chest now. Cooper jostled back, then shoved himself forward. Their feet scuffled against the floor. My heart throbbed behind my eyes.“Guys!” I shouted, putting my hands up. They froze. “We’re not going to do this.”“Do what?” all three of them said in unison.Like they didn’t know.“Ally, why don’t you just come back with us?” Faith said plaintively. “We could all hang out! Maybe we could go to Café Bacci and—”“Just stop, all right?” I blurted. “I don’t want to hang out with you. Not any of you! Take the hint already.”Faith’s face sort of crumpled and Cooper laughed. But I couldn’t stand there and try to make her feel better. I’d finally told her the actual truth. I took Jake’s wrist and pulled him down the steps. It was just drizzling now, and the water cooled my adrenaline-flushed face.“What are you doing here?” I asked through my teeth.“I came down to . . . I don’t know . . . to talk to you,” he said, looking past me with venom in his eyes, I can only assume at Cooper. “And then I find you . . .” He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “What the hell is up, Ally? Are you, like, with that guy?”“I don’t know . . . maybe,” I said.His jaw dropped and he took a step back. “Are you kidding me?”“Me? What about you? I haven’t heard two words from you since I left. . . . No wait, since Shannen’s party . . . and then you come down here . . . what? Expecting me to, like, fall at your feet or something?” I demanded.“What did you want me to do? You basically told me at Shannen’s that you never wanted to talk to me again. And then . . . when I tried to, like, explain it to you . . . you told me you didn’t give a shit about me,” he rambled. “God! Why am I even here?”“You never tried to explain anything!” I shouted back. “You just wanted to act like none of it ever happened.”This look crossed his face. Like, yes, that’s what I wanted. Like, what would be so bad about that? He didn’t get it. He was never going to get it.“I don’t get you,” he said.“Fine. Then maybe you should just go.”“Yeah. Maybe I should.”Neither one of us moved. He looked past me again and his eyes clouded over.“I . . . I thought . . .”My heart welled pathetically inside my chest. It was still waiting. Waiting for him to say the right thing. The one thing that would make it all better. But at that point, I had a feeling there was nothing he could say that would do that. Then his mouth snapped shut.“You should come with us,” he said. “Your mother’s worried about you.”The exact wrong thing.I snorted a laugh. “Oh, really? Is my dad worried too? Are my parents your best friends now? Why don’t you get them both on conference call and maybe the three of you can figure out where I’m supposed to be for the rest of the summer at all times. When you’ve got a plan, gimme a call. I’ll be right here.”Then I turned my back on him, stomped up the steps, and grabbed Cooper’s hand. Annie stood in the doorway and I nearly leveled her as I barreled by. I slammed the door so hard, a shower of paint shards fluttered to the floor of the living room.“Wow,” Annie said.I was shaking from head to toe as I breathed in. “That’s one word for it.”

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Cooper asked.He assumed I’d been drinking, like everyone else around here, but I hadn’t. At least not since that first cup of punch last night. Though maybe I’d been acting a little buzzed. My body had been on high alert ever since Jake and his entourage had sped off into the night. It was even tenser now that it was time to say good night to Cooper. We hadn’t kissed again since the porch, but whenever he was near me he seemed to find excuses to touch me—a hand on the small of my back to steer me out of the way of staggering partyers, a brush of my arm as he reached behind me for a cup. Kissing him had been . . . odd. I’d never kissed anyone I barely knew before. I’d been so self-conscious from the moment our lips touched—trying to figure out where my hands, my knees, and my tongue should go—that I hadn’t really registered how it felt. But I was willing to try again.“I’m fine,” I told him.“Best. Party. Ever.” Annie said, hooking her arm around my neck from behind. She rested her chin on my shoulder, which was hard for her to do considering she was a foot shorter than me. She kind of got on her toes, tilted her head back, and bent me forward to do it.“She, however, is not,” I laughed.“Whoo hoo!” Annie shouted, throwing her arms up and releasing her joy toward the bay. We were standing just outside the side door of the small house, on what was once probably a pretty patio, but was now a kind of sunken, overgrown rock garden. All over the yard, the party stragglers hung on by a thread, trying to extend the night into dawn. A couple of guys played beer pong on a dilapidated Ping-Pong tabletop balanced atop a precarious pile of laundry baskets, fish crates, and beer cases. A girl in a cowboy hat leaned back on an inflatable chair, braiding the hair of the chick sprawled across her lap. Closer to the makeshift bar, half a dozen bikini top/miniskirt-wearing chicas danced and occasionally cheered, while a pair of dudes too drunk to rouse themselves looked on and nodded appreciatively.“Have I mentioned I like her?” Cooper asked, pointing.I laughed. “She’s a keeper. Don’t worry. I’m gonna drive her car back.”“Okay.” He didn’t look worried. “So . . .” He took a step toward me. His hand ran up and down my bare arm. Goose bump city. “I’ll see you later?”“Yeah. Definitely.”He leaned down to kiss me, closed-mouthed but lingering; his soft lips offered the promise of more. Then he stepped back again.“Bye,” he said.“Bye.”He dropped his head forward as he loped back toward the house over the uneven paving stones of the patio. I bit my bottom lip, but felt like my grin would break off my face.That was not odd.“So, I guess we’re over Jake,” Annie said, standing stiller than she had in hours.I lifted my shoulders, even as a twist of guilt took me by surprise. “I tried to tell you.”“But you have to admit, it was pretty romantic,” Annie said. “Him running up the steps, slamming his hand into the wall . . .”Together we headed for the broken gate in the white fence that surrounded the property. Annie stepped over a pile of beer cans and kicked aside a half-inflated kiddie pool, nearly tripping herself. I put out a hand to steady her.“Yeah.” It was. It was really romantic. And also humiliating. And exciting. And confusing. And annoying. And all-consuming. All I’d thought about for the rest of the night was Jake . . . and whether or not Cooper wanted to kiss me again. How could I possibly be all-consumed by one guy and feeling tingly about another?As we made it to the gate, a very tall, very thin guy was coming through with a pastry bag. He had a short beard and shaggy black hair. The sun was just starting to come up over the far side of the house, lighting his face and making him squint. I gave him a glance and kept walking, but something in his eyes made me stop dead in my tracks.It was fear.And I knew him.I turned around.“Charlie!?”He ducked his chin and looked up at me, almost sheepish. “Whatsup, Al?”Annie raised one eyebrow as he turned around.“Charlie! Oh my God! What are you doing here?”I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Should I hug him? No. I’d never hugged him before, so why start now? But I was so surprised to see him. And he looked so very different. When he’d left Orchard Hill, he’d been clean-cut and athletic, bulky even. The guy standing in front of me now with his shorts hanging just south of his hip bones was lean, lanky, and possibly stoned. He swayed a bit on his feet and placed the pastry bag down on a weathered Adirondack chair just outside the gate, as if its weight was throwing off his equilibrium.“Don’t tell anyone, okay?” he said.“Don’t tell anyone what?” I asked.He sighed and took a couple of steps toward me. When he looked up, he narrowed one eye. “That you saw me?”Now Annie was intrigued. She stood right next to me and looked into his face like she was trying to place him. He shot her a kind of wary look and held his hand above his eyes to shield them from the brightening sun.“No. Of course not,” I said. “But . . . why? I mean, what are you doing here?” I asked again.“I live here.” He gestured lazily over his shoulder. “This is my place.”I narrowed my eyes. My brain, apparently, was tired after a full night of partying and drama. I’d met Howie, a slightly chubby, self-proclaimed hacker extraordinaire with Coke-bottle glasses. Which could mean only one thing. “You’re Chum?”His head bobbed. “Short for Chuck Moore.”“Shut up!” Annie had finally caught on. “You’re Charlie Moore? Shannen’s brother?”He reared his head back, showing us the underside of his chin. I shot Annie a just chill look.“I thought you were in Arizona,” I said.“She told you that, huh?” He sat down sideways on the edge of the Adirondack chair and ran his hand over his hair. “I was . . . for a while. But it just wasn’t my scene. I moved back here last year and got a job with a security company. You know . . . one of those places all our parents hire to check on the houses during the year?”I nodded. My parents used to employ one of those. I’d never forget that one December night they’d called at two a.m. to tell my dad an alarm had gone off at the shore house. He was out the door in ten minutes and called us two and a half hours later to tell us a wood plank had shattered a window in a windstorm. He’d fired the company the next day for not actually checking the house before calling him.“So you’re not in school?” I asked. The very idea of Charlie Moore—über-popular, three-varsity-letter-athlete, everyone-wants-me-as-a-prom-date Charlie Moore—not being in school simply made no sense.“I’m taking classes at Monmouth,” he said.“Oh. Cool.”He should’ve been at Yale, debating politics in some elite study group. He should have been at Michigan scoring winning goals in Big Ten soccer games. He should have been at UCLA, surfing and making all the girls swoon.“Anyway, you can’t tell Shannen you saw me, okay?” He stood up again and ran his hands down the backside of his plaid shorts. “She thinks I’m this big thing at Arizona State.”“I promise, I won’t say anything,” I told him. “We’re not currently speaking, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.”“What?” He looked baffled. Like imagining me and Shannen not being friends was as hard to picture as him being a stoner at Monmouth State. “Why?”“It’s a loooong story,” Annie said. He eyed her warily. “For another time,” she added.“I don’t live on the crest anymore,” I said. “We’ve kind of . . . grown apart.”I wasn’t about to tell him his adorably mischievous little sister had grown into an evil troll.“Oh.” He nodded as if this made perfect sense as an explanation.“But I don’t get it,” I said. “Why come here of all places? All our friends spend their summers down here. Did you really think you could go without seeing them?”He lifted his shoulders. “Figured if I hung with the locals, I’d never bump into anyone. And I never did . . . till now.”We both smiled.“Well . . . I guess we should go,” I said, edging away. “I guess I’ll . . .”“See you around?” Charlie said. “Cool.”I nodded and Annie and I headed for her car. She grabbed my arm as she made her way over the uneven gravel.“Charlie Moore!” she squealed under her breath. “Do you realize what this means?”I realized exactly what it meant. It meant I had a secret to keep from Shannen. Just like the one she’d kept from me. And I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that.Suddenly, my phone rang. I looked at Annie, confused. My mother had stopped calling around two a.m. when I texted her that I was fine and was going to crash at a friend’s with Annie. She’d texted back that we were going to have a “long talk today”—a promise that made my stomach clench every time I remembered it—and my phone hadn’t made a peep since. “What time is it?”She checked her watch. “Five fifteen.”I fumbled my phone from my pocket. The call was coming from Jump. What the hell was my father doing calling me at five a.m.? Had my mother called him to tattle on me? Was I in trouble? Seemed unlikely, since they weren’t speaking, but I couldn’t think of another reason. I decided to bite the bullet and answer it.“Hello?”“Ally, good morning,” my father said. He was frazzled. He always sounded formal when he was frazzled. “Sorry to call so early, but have you seen Jake?”I shook my head slightly, trying to make sense of my dad asking that question, via phone, at dawn. For some reason, I instantly knew I had to lie.“Um . . . no,” I replied. “Why?”He muttered something I didn’t understand. “He ditched in the middle of his shift last night; went on his break and just didn’t come back. It was mayhem here. Just mayhem. I don’t know what he was thinking.”I was stunned. Jake had bailed on my dad to come down here? I didn’t know whether to be pissed off or flattered.“I called his mother and she had no idea where he was. We thought he might have gone down there.”I pressed my lips together and stayed silent.“Well, if you see him, please tell him to call me,” my father said.“Sure, Dad,” I said.“Okay. Thanks, kiddo. Go back to sleep.”I closed my eyes as a seagull cawed overhead. “Okay. Bye, Dad.”“What was that?” Annie asked as I hung up.“That was just me lying to my dad to protect Jake,” I said matter-of-factly.Annie laughed. “This just gets better and better.”“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Can I ask you something?”She shrugged, and almost knocked herself over doing it. “A’course.”“The other day, when you said you had Crestie dirt, was it about Jake?” I asked.She blew out her lips. “No.”“I don’t believe you.”“Okay, yes.”She turned and clomped toward her car.“What was it? Annie!” I jogged after her. She yanked on the passenger side door, but it was locked. My heart hammered against my ribs. “Is he going out with someone? You have to tell me.”“It’s nothing,” Annie said. Then she looked at me, all defeated. “Can you please open my door?”I tossed the keys up and grabbed them in front of her face. “Only if you tell me.”She rolled her eyes hugely. “Okaaaay!” She gave me this hesitant sort of look. “He came into the store looking for you.”“He did?” I asked.“Yeah. He went up and down all the aisles and everything, then bought some mints and left them there.”I considered this. “Did he ask about me?”“No. But it was obvious why he was there.” She turned back toward the car and pulled on the handle with both hands. “Can we go now?” she whined.“In a minute.” I leaned back against the door and studied her face. She refused to make eye contact. “That’s it? That’s all you have to tell me?” I wheedled.She nodded. “Yup. That’s it.”“Swear?”“Swear.” Then she glanced at my newish sandals. “Can we go now before I barf on your feet?”I stuck my tongue between my teeth. “Ish. Fine.”But as I trudged across the uneven dirt to the driver’s side of the car, I didn’t entirely believe her. Something else had happened. I was kind of dying to know what, but I took comfort in the fact that she’d tell me at some point. Eventually my little gossip-hound best friend always cracked.