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view."
96
"Oh, no, no, they aren't. I was just wondering
..." My voice trailed off.`
Way to go, Hayley! Now what was I going to say?
"Wondering?"
Z"Uh, if your sisters painted your toes, too."
°Flynn laughed. "Actually, they did, hoping to
improve them. I have very ugly
jock feet."
"Let's see." It had popped out of my mouth
before I could stop it.
¬ Flynn's eyes glittered with laughter. "You want
to see my feet?"
"Never mind." Jeez, Hayley.
Z I could feel him studying me, then, using the
toe of one shoe against the
heel of the other, he flipped off a Docksider.
"You asked for it," he warned,
and removed his sock.
XI looked at his foot and burst out laughing.
N"Excuse me," Flynn said, feigning hurt.
"ExcuseZ me. I had hoped for a more
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polite response."
"It is` a funny foot," I said. "And the pink-
sparkle nails don't help much."
:"All right, let's see yours."
"What?"
P"Fair is fair. I want to see your feet."
p"Well... well ... they look just like
Breeze's," I said.
97
F "I don't think so," he replied. "Because hands
usually match feet, and, even
though the rest of you is the same size as
Breeze, your fingers are longer
than hers."
~I blinked. He was right, but I was surprised
he'd noticed that.
He reached and tugged on my shoelace. When I
didn't move, he untied it. He
glanced back at me then gently slipped off my
sneaker.
xI pulled back my foot. I felt suddenly and
unbelievably shy.B It's just a
stupid foot, Hayley,p I told myself. But
somehow, this felt so personal.
Despite the fact that a million people had seen
my bare feet at the pool,
Flynn staring at one of them made me feel very
vulnerable.
"Well?" he said.
ÜI realized there was something even worse than
me removing my sock: Flynn
removing it. I took it off. "There."
t"Very pretty," he said. "You have very nice,
dainty toes."
8I quickly tugged on my sock.
®Flynn laughed out loud, then put on his sock
and Docksider. I focused on
tying my shoe.
""Mind if we watch, Saturday Night Live?" he
asked.
ÞAfter a few minutes and a lot of laughing from
Flynn, I began to relax again.
For some reason, the skits seemed
98
H terribly funny that night, funnier than they
ever had before. Once I started
laughing, I couldn't stop. I noticed that,
sometimes, Flynn laughed just
because I had.
~ A clock in the hall struck twelve. Five
minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Delancy
unlocked the front door. I frowned at my watch,
unable to believe they had
already come home, feeling for a moment like
Cinderella.
`And maybe that should have been a warning to
me.
99
***
9
D"It's about time! Where were you?"
ø I had tried to be quiet, in case Breeze was in
bed, but she was leaning
against the wide entrance to the family room,
her arms folded, one hand
holding a remote. Behind her, the TV screen
showed the menu for the DVD she
must have been watching. "What?"
""Where were you?"
X"Babysitting. You got me the job, remember?"
"Flynn left here two hours ago." I nodded. "He
came straight home."
("So why didn't you?"
100
Now I understood, but I guess I was still
pretty annoyed with her. "Becausev
I was babysitting. Are you having short-term
memory loss?"
j"Since Flynn was home, the Delancys didn't need
you."
` "Yes, but he couldn't drive me home and leave
the little girls alone. And it
was too late to put them in his car while he
dropped me off. So I stayed till
his parents arrived."
ÜBreeze tapped the remote against her thigh. "It
wasn't too late to call me."
¬ I frowned, then glanced away. The idea had
never occurred to me.
H "You've called for a ride home from Gabriel's
plenty of times. And don't
tell me that you stayed as late as you could
simply because you wanted to earn
more money."
J"Well, that's a good reason," I said.
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N She scowled. "You're the most ridiculously
honest person in all of Saylor
Mill. If you had thought of that angle, you
would have called a taxi and paid
for it yourself 1 ."
"I would notf have paid for it," I insisted.
"I'd have figured out what was
less expensive for the Delancys, either paying
for my taxi or paying for extra
hours, and chosen according to that."
pShe rolled her eyes, and I couldn't really
blame her. "I
101
Þguess I didn't think about calling because I
was having a good time--the
girls are very cute," I added quickly.
R"And when did they go to bed?" she asked.
V "Breeze, stop! Stop it! Put your brain back
on. Go look in a mirror. Reread
your diary. We both know which of us all the
guys fall for. You've got nothing
to worry about."
®She studied me quietly for a moment, biting her
lip. "You've got glitter on
your face."
¶I brushed my cheek. It felt warm, like I was
blushing. "I'm really tired,
Breeze. G'night."
Z Some people wouldn't understand why I'd do a
favor for Breeze after she was
acting so huffy the night before. But those
people probably have more than
just one sister and one parent--a parent whose
mind can stray as far as Pluto.
Breeze and I have been through everything
together, and sometimes you just
have to forget about who's right and who's
wrong, and put up with each other's
silliness. Or maybe it was just that I needed to
put Flynn back into a
"photograph"--slip him into a frame where he
would be nothing more to me than
a two-dimensional image.
º In any case, when I sat down at my computer
Sunday afternoon to work on the
picture that Jared had requested, I asked Breeze
if she wanted to look with me
through photos of Flynn and select two that I
could print for her.
102
> She chose one of those "vision on the
sideline" photos that people seem to
like, probably because the players have their
helmets off and their faces are
more visible. I would have chosen it, too. But
Breeze's lips curled with
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