“Let me guess. You drove her away, didn’t you?”

Brian’s tone was accusatory when I hobbled to the kitchen alone. I shot him an irritated glance. “Shut up, Brian,” I muttered, pulling up a chair and sitting at the breakfast table. I stretched my legs out before me and sighed.

“What did you do this time?”

“There’s some fancy dinner thing going on at her house, okay? She had to go home.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient?” he said dryly, joining me at the table. “Tell me the truth. Were you really going to let her have dinner here, or were you just waiting for the chance to hurt her feelings and make her leave?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen you do this before. There’s a girl you’re interested in, and you make her like you. Then you hurt her feelings and get her to hate you and never talk to you again.”

“I can’t help it if they can’t stand me.”

“I don’t get it. Why do you do it?”

“I’m not interested in Jamie Jenkins.”

Brian snorted. “I saw the way you were looking at her after you knocked her out.”

“She hates me.”

“I don’t think so. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come here at all.”

“Why don’t you just mind your own business, Brian?”

“I heard she’s going out with Tonie Melman’s brother,” Brian went on.

“Geez, Brian. You’re such a gossip-rag.”

He leaned forward. “What are you planning? Because if you’re just up to the same old thing, I’m warning you to stop now. She’s not the kind of girl you mess around with. This could backfire on you terribly.”

I sighed and got to my feet. “You know what? I’m not hungry after all. I’m going to bed.”

“Mike!” I heard him calling after me, but I ignored him.

“Were you really going to let her have dinner here, or were you just waiting for the chance to hurt her feelings and make her leave?”

I told myself that Brian had it all wrong. But I couldn’t put it out of my head.

I couldn’t go to sleep. I just stared up at the ceiling of my bedroom in the dark until I heard Brian go to the guest bedroom and shut the door. Then I waited a while longer before getting up.

I made a lot of noise leaving my bedroom and going down the stairs with my crutches but it didn't matter. Brian was a heavy sleeper.

The air outside was chilly and all the houses were dark. I hadn't noticed the time on my way outside, but judging from the abandoned look of the neighborhood, it was probably past midnight. I paused at the bottom of the driveway and chose to go to the right.

About five minutes into the walk, I began to wonder what the hell I was doing. What was wrong with me? Brian had a point. I had done it before. But was I hurting anybody? A little harmless flirtation never hurt anyone, and none of the girls I knew were ever broken up. They had gotten what they had wanted from me and didn't really care one way or another. And who was Brian to lecture me? He was even worse than I was...

I heard the sound about four times before I realized someone was calling my name. I turned my head, searching for the source of the voice.

Somebody threw a piece of crumpled paper at my head and I looked up.

Jamie Jenkins was looking down at me from a second floor window. I went over, standing on the flowerbed directly under it.

“What are you doing out in the streets?” she asked, mildly curious. “It’s past midnight.”

“What are you doing up?”

She suddenly grinned. “It was my Math homework I threw at your head.”

“Ah.” I glanced down the empty street. Funny how I had wound up here. “How was your dinner?”

She rolled her eyes. “Stuffy and boring.” She leaned languidly on the windowsill. “How was yours?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t eat.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What about Brian? You must have disappointed him.”

“He’ll get over it.”

She stared down thoughtfully down at me.

I sighed. “I’ll go on now-”

“Wait right there,” she quickly said. “Don’t move.”

I blinked. “But I—” It was too late. She’d moved away from the window.

I sighed and looked around. Jennifer and I lived in the upper middle class section of this particular neighborhood but the street Jamie lived on was for the upper-upper class. The only word that can be used to describe some of the houses was “mansion.” The Jenkins house wasn’t all that big, but it was still impressive.

I went back to the spot where I had been standing a moment earlier and picked up the piece of paper.

She came up behind me then. So very quietly, but I knew she was there. I turned around and she made a face.

“I was going to startle you,” she said a bit sulkily.

“Math’s not your best subject, huh?” I asked, handing the paper back to her.

She laughed in a mockingly hysterical way. “No.” She glanced back at her house. “Want to come in?”

I hesitated. “I’m taking a walk. Maybe some other time.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Why?”

“Just so someone can pick you up if you fall down or something. Wait here. I’ll go get a jacket.”

I grabbed her hand as she started to go back. “Wait.”

“What?”

“Do you have pie?”

She looked confused. “Do we have what?”

“Pie. It has some sort of filling between two layers of crust.”

“No...But we have strawberry shortcake.”

“Maybe my walk can wait.”

She smiled. “All right, then. You might get hit by lightning when you step through the threshold, though. It’s got to be against some cosmic law for a Harding to enter our house.”

“For strawberry shortcake, any risk is worth it.”

“The cake’s in the fridge,” she told me in a low voice once we were inside their kitchen. She pressed a switch and a dim light came on over the round breakfast table. “I’ll go get my Math homework to keep you company. Help yourself to the food, really. The people here don’t eat that much and it’ll just go to waste.”

“You shouldn’t tell me things like that, Jamie. Take it back or I will eat everything in sight.”

“You’ll get fat,” she teased. “And then who’ll chase after you?”

I opened their refrigerator and brightened. “In my case, the effort to keep myself from turning into a walking skeleton is greater than what it would take to keep from blowing up,” I said absently. “Can I make a roast beef sandwich, too?”

“Eat the fridge whole, I don’t care.”

“I can’t digest metal very well.”

She rolled her eyes at me and left the room.

When she came back a minute later, I was seated comfortably at the table, an open-faced roast beef sandwich in front of me and a huge slice of cake on the side.

“All that sugar will make you sick,” she said in awe, sitting down across from me and putting her notebook and papers on the table.

“Nah, this is nothing.”

“Do you always eat like that?”

I glanced down at my plate. “This little? Of course not.”

“That’s a little to you?”

“Hey, I’m a growing boy.”

“No, seriously. Have you always been so...”

I laughed, shaking my head. “When I was a kid, I was skinny and tiny and sickly. My mom despaired of ever getting me to eat enough. It was only in Italy where I learned to really enjoy food. Although it’s mostly because I hit a major growth spurt right about then.”

She stared at me.

“Aren’t you going to do your homework?”

“No. You’re much more fascinating.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Am I?” I smirked.

Unexpectedly, she blushed. “That came out wrong.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It sounded right to me.”

She blushed even redder and hurriedly changed the topic. “You went to Italy?”

“I guess you haven’t heard that about me?”

“I only hear the bad stuff. Like how you’ve dated half the female population of Coleridge High, how you bully teachers, how you pay people to do all your homework for you. Stuff like that.”

“Huh. Have you heard the one where I supposedly eat girls’ hearts and suck out their souls?”

“A version of that.”

I made a face and answered her question. “My parents shipped me off to Italy when I was twelve. I lived there until I was fourteen.”

“That must’ve been interesting.”

“It was. I loved it there,” I told her. I didn’t add that there, nobody knew me, and nobody judged me. Catalina and her family had been the only ones I had, and they had taken care of me like I was one of their own.

She picked up her pencil. “Will you be okay if I don’t talk to you?”

I waved a hand at her. “Do your homework. Can I raid your fridge some more?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed resignedly. “Please. Help yourself.”