"Look, Nic," he pressed on, ignoring his sister, "do yourself a favor and stay away from him, okay? He"s trouble."

As if I didn"t know that! As if I hadn"t wanted to hate him since June 7 at approximately three o"clock. I"d been trying. But didn"t Jared realize that sometimes the heart made decisions that the head didn"t go with?

"Oh, okay, now that you"ve put it that way, I"ll be sure to duck whenever I see him." I couldn"t keep the snotty tone out of my voice.

He exhaled. "Whatever. I"m hanging up. See you around. Or not."

I couldn"t help snickering at how dramatic he was being. Of course I would see him around. He was my best friend"s brother.

I heard a click; then Alison apologized.

"It"s okay," I said, surprised to realize it actually was. Deep down, I kinda liked it that he cared. Sort of like a brother. Still ... it was different from on the beach last summer.

"But what I"m not getting here," Alison went on, "is what he meant about not leaving the two of you alone. Was Jared at your house today, too?"

After a moment of embarra.s.sed silence, my voice quavered. "Well, yeah. He helped me hand out flyers since you were stuck cleaning your room. I-I thought you knew that," I said, telling a little white lie. I mean, I had thought she"d known. Until Jared told me differently.

"No," she said simply.

"I hope you don"t mind," I managed.

A call-waiting beep bleeped over her response, but maybe that was for the best? Since nothing like that was ever going to happen again. I told her I"d better take the other call in case it was my mom, and we said bye. Cheerfully enough, I thought.

"h.e.l.lo?" I said again immediately.

"Hey, Nicki, how"s my girl?"

Great. Now I"d really won the lottery. "Hi, Dad." I knew I should be relieved that he was no longer "missing," but honestly, I hadn"t been worried. If I lived 24/7 with Caffeine, I"d go AWOL now and then, too.

"Sorry about Cathleen"s call earlier," he said, in a fast, dismissive way that told me not to probe. "I took Autumn to the beach, and we went out of cell phone range."

"Yeah, I figured it was something like that."

"So how did it go at the bank?"

I sat up. "Fine. They took the check, no problem."

"Did you tell your mother it"s paid?"

"Yeah, last night."

"Did she believe the money was yours?"

"Yeah," I answered, then, wanting to steer the subject away before I had to admit that she"d showered me with appreciation and guilt, I asked how the kid was doing. Even used her name.

He hesitated.

The funny thing was, the longer he stayed quiet, the more my stomach tightened. "Is," I managed, "she okay? Not sick or anything?"

"No. No, she"s fine."

I let out a breath I didn"t realize I"d been holding.

"I was just surprised you"d ask about her. I hope it doesn"t have anything to do with what you talked about the other day, thinking I loved her more than you."

I bit down on my lip. I didn"t have anything to say to that.

"Nicolette," he continued when I didn"t respond, "you"re almost a grown woman now, so headstrong and independent. While you still need a father, it"s in a different way than a two-year-old does."

Okay, obviously he"d been thinking this through, been rehearsing. No way he"d let me cut in or change the subject. All I could do was sit tight and hope this heart-to-heart ended soon.

"So if I seem to be giving her more attention, it"s because she still needs constant supervision for her safety. Not because she"s any more interesting or important than you."

I understood that my dad was trying to reach out, but it didn"t make me feel any more included in his life.

The front door opened and Mom blew in, a stuffed briefcase clutched to her chest. I looked for a hint of a smile in her face, hoping the client had liked one of the properties. But all I saw was exhaustion.

"Oh, here"s Mom," I said, knowing how to put an end to this conversation-fast. "Want to talk to her?"

Mom"s eyes widened. Over the past few years, she and Dad had found an arrangement that suited them perfectly. They"d truly been able to start over. By going back to being total strangers.

"No, no, that"s fine," Dad said, his voice taking on an urgent tone. "Give her my best. And next time, it"s your turn to call, okay, Nicki?"

I grimaced. "Sure, Dad."

Mom put her briefcase down as I hung up. "There"s a stack of papers on the lawn. Know anything about that?"

Yikes. Thank G.o.d there was no wind.

"Oh, yeah," I answered. "A homework thing. I"ll go pick them up."

She slumped into a chair as I started toward the door. "By the way, before you woke up, you got a call from some guy."

The hair rose on the back of my neck. I was sure it had been Rascal scoping out my plans for the day. I just had to hope he"d had the sense not to speak his name to my mother. "Oh, yeah?" I said, trying to be cool. "Who?"

"Someone named Mitch."

I didn"t know whether to be relieved or irritated. Why was he suddenly buddying up to me? Why not call one of the smart kids? "Oh," I said to Mom. "He"s in my Spanish cla.s.s."

"He wanted you to call him back."

Well, I wanted a lot of things, too. Mitch could take a number and wait.

My locker was the unlikely center of the universe that next morning. Jared walked by it-twice-without meeting my eye. Mitch stopped to tell me how bored he"d been all weekend, how he couldn"t seem to get any "action" going. Whatever that was supposed to mean. And not a word about Spanish.

And then Kylie showed up. She couldn"t even wait until geometry for our big chat.

"So," she said, and tugged on my sleeve, "did you talk to Jared?"

I didn"t laugh. Well, not very hard. "About?"

Her eye roll was like, duh! "The pizza thing."

"Did you talk to Rascal?"

She glanced down. "Yeah, well, he"s not much for working things out with Jared."

You think? And especially not now, since he"s wearing the imprint of Jared"s fist on his face.

But all I did was nod.

"I was hoping that it went better with Jared, and that we could put our heads together and make this work," she went on, good friend that she was.

But I was a gazillion years past her games. "You really want to go to the homecoming dance, huh?"

She stared at my face for a long moment, maybe trying to figure out if I"d asked a trick question. "Game. I said homecoming game."

"But the dance is after the game."

She gave me another duh look (just in case I was silly enough to believe we were really becoming friends).

"What"s your dress like?"

She bit on the inside of her mouth. "Incredible."

Score one for Jared-he sure called this right.

"Okay, maybe you just bring Jared to our caf table today and we force them to talk."

I nodded, as if that was an option, as if she hadn"t beaten this subject beyond death. Then I arched a brow and let her have it. "Look, I see two problems with that plan. One, I"m not Jared"s girlfriend, and never was. And two, you"re not Rascal"s girlfriend anymore. Why would either of them listen to us?"

"Not Rascal"s girlfriend? Who told you that?"

"Who do you think?"

She didn"t even try. Probably too taxing on her limited gray matter. Without a breath, she replied: "Well, whoever told you that was lying." She examined a fingernail. "Everything"s fine."

My tongue ran over the roof of my mouth. That figured.

Later, settling into our geometry cla.s.s, I caught Kylie"s gaze in pa.s.sing. "How"s Rascal"s nose?" I asked.

"Sore. How do you know about it?"

"I was there." I pointed to the knee I"d sc.r.a.ped on the pavement, but when I looked up, she was already two seats behind and one row over, plopping her books on her desk.

"Nicolette, don"t you have anything better to do with your Sundays than go to school to watch football scrimmages?"

"That"s what he said? That it happened here?"

Mr. Hammond told the cla.s.s to settle down- meaning Kylie and me, I imagined, as all eyes seemed to be on us.

"He"s a pretty good liar," I said, and imitated her best eye roll.

Hammond glared my way. He had dark hair and a thick unibrow that made him look like Bert from Sesame Street. It made me, on my good days, feel sort of sorry for him. Like spending his life teaching geometry wasn"t bad enough.

I opened my notebook and pulled out my homework, then found a fresh sheet and scribbled: If you want the truth, ask Jared.

I folded it up into a nice little square, waited until Hammond turned to write some useless equation on the board, and flung it on Kylie"s desk.

A minute or so later, something hit my shoulder. I waited until the coast was clear, reached down, and picked up her reply.

Yeah, right. What"s it like on your planet?

My heart started beating like a moth trapped under a jar. I wrote furiously.

On my planet, your boyfriend is telling people he"s over you.

I threw it at her, then waited for the scoff or grunt or the flying reply.

Nothing.

Finally, I turned around.

The great Kylie Schoenbacher was acting as if she was paying attention to the teacher, but her eyes were as pink as her candy-colored lip gloss.

I shifted back around. Trying to feel the triumph my head told me I"d earned.

At lunch, Alison and I scarfed down chili cheese fries in the caf as I told her about the stuff with Kylie.

"I"ll bet she"s grilling Rascal right now. Making his life frigging miserable."

"Way to go, Chunky," I said, and grinned.

"You heard him call her that, too?"

"Yeah. Can you imagine?"

She shook her head and then scanned the room. I figured she was trying to find Kylie, but faces were hard to single out in the crowd-even if Kylie"s was particularly well painted.

I licked some chili off a finger. "So, you think she"ll find out he was at my house yesterday?"

"Only if someone else tells her. Any witnesses?"