LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t change some body part of hers that was revolting. It had been my all-time comeback.

      “I know, I know, but I can’t change ugly.” Allie rolled her eyes.

      “You didn’t let me finish.” I looked back down to the book.

      “What then?”

      “I was going to say, but you shouldn’t change a thing.” I don’t know what possessed me to say it out loud, but in some weird way, I felt better, even though I figured, given our past, she would take it as derogatory.

      “Ha, ha, ha. Only you could find a way to give a compliment and turn it into an insult,” Allie slapped the back of my chair jarring my book off my lap.

      I could have added that I loved her and that I was going to marry her someday, but she probably would have slapped me. She’d take my honesty as an insult. “You should learn how to take compliments better than that.” I had played that one off perfectly.

      “There’s no way you could give me a compliment and still be in your right mind.” Allie shut the library door behind her. Hard. Not really a slam but not in the way a library door should have been shut according to our librarian at school.

      I opened my journal and began reading again, wondering how we would ever be the two people in the book considering how far away from that we were right now.

      After reading the last page, I remembered Allie in a recent lifetime tell me that she had always felt drawn to me. I hoped that would be true. Until then, I might have found a way to deal with my feelings about her.

      I would be honest. Sort of.

      When I could no longer bear to hold back the crazy feelings I held in for Allie, I would just let them out, and as always, she would take the sincerity of my words as sarcasm.

      I was a genius.

      I could even find a way to harass her the way I used to but now with compliments.

      She thought I was a weirdo before; now she would think I was off my rocker.

      With the book tucked under my arm, I stood from the chair. After a long stretch, I turned around to walk to the door.

      With slumped shoulders and red eyes, Allie stood in the doorway.

      Her icy stare held me motionless.

      “Did you kill my hamster?” Her voice was cold, but her gaze a fiery blaze. Her question sent a jolt of pain through me.

      “Of course not. How could you ask me that?” Two weeks ago I might have considered the boy in me capable. But even then I had never killed an animal. A bug maybe. An animal, no.

      “You killed my bug collection.” Allie’s voice cracked.

      I had been terrible to her. I could see how she might hate me. But no, I hadn’t killed her hamster. “Allie, I was a kid.”

      “That was only a year ago.”

      “Well, I would never kill an animal. I sorta like them,” I brushed a tear off her cheek. “Where is he?”

      She stepped from my reach.

      “Come on, seriously. I’ve been down here all day.” I waved my arm at the room as if the books could give me a verbal alibi. God, when had I learned all these words?

      “He’s upstairs. Still in his cage. Stiff and cold.”

      “He probably just died of old age. These things happen.” I started to take her hand, but fear of an impending shift caused me to rethink it.

      “No. Just wait. You’ll see.” Her cheeks reddened and her eyes sparked as she turned to lead me up to her room.

      We approached the cage. In the bottom was her hamster, Gabe, that she later found was a girl. He was lying on his back, definitely not dead from natural causes.

      A very sharp object had caused the incision in Gabe’s stomach. Yet there were none inside the cage or even close by he could have used to cut himself.

      This was done with malicious intent and there was no one in this house who would hurt Allie in such a way.

      Allie was the most loved of all the people in the whole house besides me.

      All the staff members treated us as if we were their own.

      “She was so sweet. Who could have done such a thing?” Allie took my hand the way she would have when were younger. When we were off on an adventure in the woods or when something alarmed her. I squeezed her hand.

      The animal just under my skin threatened a change, but I chided him away.

      This was a bad time.

      Allie had held it together very well when she came down to question me about it, but her voice broke into sobs. It was a natural reaction for me now to want to hold her, to soothe her, so I turned and pulled her to me. At first she was stiff in my arms, not used to me being affectionate in any way. She gazed into my eyes, our faces close, as our heights were still close to the same. When she saw I was sincere, she laid her head on my shoulder and cried.

      “I’ll find out who did this.” I smoothed her hair down and déjà vu hit. I’d held her and soothed her so many times before. “I swear.”

      After that, it was years before we touched again.

      And try as I might, I never learned who killed her hamster.

      And try as Allie might, she never learned who the mysterious girl was who kept my emotions in such a turmoil.

      Chapter 2

      Allie

      Since Cole stopped killing my dolls and burying my stuffed animals up to their necks in the back yard, all he seemed concerned with was whether I was going to stump my toe or if I was going to fall to my death out one of the windows of the house. The weirdness started when we were ten. Cole said he didn’t know why he felt so worried about me. But the older we got, the more he hovered over me like a weird bodyguard or something.

      I was tired of answering to him.

      It was as if I had been born with the most irritating cousin a girl could ever have, but we were of no blood relation. He harassed me about every choice I made in school, probably even more so because none of those choices involved him. When my friends invited to the movies, to the mall, or to the Shake Shop after school Cole always watched the doors behind us, scanned the room, and gave off this weird vibe that kept me from having any fun. He was such a downer.

      So I never told him they’d invited him.

      “You know he’s head over heels for you, right?” Frankie Frank stared past me toward the gym where the guys would soon come out after football practice. And yes, that was her real first name and last name. Everybody always asked her that.

      At the shock of Frankie’s accusation, I dropped my books on the ground beside her pearl-colored Cadillac Escalade.

      Frankie hit the unlock button and helped me gather my books. “Seriously. Have you ever noticed the way he stares at you?”

      “He’s just being protective. We were raised together so he feels responsible for every move I make inside and outside that big, dreary house. I swear that place is like a mausoleum.”

      “You might have twenty-twenty vision, but you’re romantically blind as a bat. He stares at you all day. And you never see it.” Frankie’s golden hair shone in the sun and her blue eyes sparkled. “Maybe if you’d lay a big sloppy kiss on him, he might loosen up a little.”

      “Ugh. Stop. He’d probably put me in time out.” I hopped into the passenger side just in time for Cole to exit the school from the gym locker room. “Hurry before he gets here and takes me home to spank me for not telling him where I’m going.”

      “You should try that. You might like it.” She snapped her seatbelt and cranked the

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