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  "Kate--" he said, but I didn't get to hear whatever else he was going to say because a woman actually came up to the booth and said, "I need some help."

  I started talking about vitamins right away, yammering about the ones I'd put on the counter, careful not to look at Will anymore. I still noticed when he walked away. "Look," the woman said, interrupting me, "I just want to know where the bathrooms are."

  "Oh. Section C, end of the hall."

  I didn't see Anna again, but I wondered what she was doing. I wondered why she'd looked at me for that brief second, and wished it meant something even though I knew it didn't. I didn't see Will, either, but I didn't think about him at all.

  Well, maybe I thought about him a little, but only for a few seconds.

  Ten minutes, tops.

  Mom was waiting outside for me when the mall closed. She didn't look happy.

  "How was work?" she said.

  "Slow. How was Dad's library thing?"

  "I don't know. I haven't seen him, I left him a note telling him I'd come get you and I've been driving around for a while." Her voice was clipped, and her hands knotted together. "Kate, do you remember your father saying he was supposed to get one last check for all his vacation time?"

  Oh no. This couldn't be good. "Sort of. What happened?"

  "Nothing. It came yesterday. It's just that he thought he had more vacation time than he actually did and so the check was . . . smaller."

  "How much smaller?"

  She sighed. "A lot smaller. I've been talking to your grandmother and . . . well, she's offered to come help out."

  "Grandma? Really?" Grandma and help didn't go together in a sentence unless it was 'Help, Grandma is driving me crazy' "Is that why you were so upset last night?"

  She nodded.

  "Was she mad when you said no?"

  Mom looked at me, and then I knew exactly why she'd been so upset last night.

  "You said yes," I said, incredulous. She'd told Grandma she could come visit?

  She nodded.

  "How long is she staying?"

  "I don't know."

  "A week? Two months? Five years? Come on, you must have some idea of how long she's--"

  "Kate, stop it," she said, her voice sharp. "This wasn't easy for me, but it was the only choice I had."

  I stared at her until she looked away. Grandma was her only choice? Grandma was going to help us?

  It was official. There was absolutely, positively no way my life could get any worse.

  Chapter nine

  I hid out in my room all night, only leaving to make

  myself a sandwich. I ended up throwing half of it away because Mom and Dad were sitting in the living room watching television.

  I know that doesn't sound bad, but trust me, seeing them was like watching a car crash.

  Mom was curled up on the sofa, her expression a weird mix of sadness and anger, and Dad was sitting in the recliner, smiling so fixedly at the television screen I knew he had no idea what he was watching. They each asked me how I was, and both of their voices were so intense, Mom's filled with frustration and Dad's with fake cheer, that I didn't want to be around either one of them.

  When I went to brush my teeth before bed, Todd was standing in the bathroom with a plastic shower cap on his head, staring at a box in the sink.

  "When did you get home?"

  "Little while ago," he said.

  "Do I want to know what happened to your hair?" I said, and reached for my toothbrush.

  "And, hey, did you hear about Grandma?"

  "Grandma?" Todd looked at me. "What about--oh, shit, is that why Mom and Dad were acting so weird when I came in? Never mind, of course it was. What's she done now?"

  "Shh," I whispered, pointing toward the still too-quiet living room, and shut the bathroom door, turning on the fan so the smell from Todd's head wouldn't kill me.

  "She's coming to visit. Mom wouldn't tell me for how long. She just said Grandma will be helping out, whatever that means."

  "When?"

  "I don't know. Soon. Guess you'll have to give up your room for her like always."

  He made a face. "Great."

  "Yeah," I said, and we both sighed.

  "So, what happened?" I said, pointing at his hair.

  "I went to a party, I met a girl who's a hairdresser, we got to talking, and she said I'd look great with red hair--"

  "Ha! Let me see," I said, and reached for the cap.

  "No way," he said, blocking my arm. "Anyway, afterward she said I could get rid of the color by stripping it or something. Whatever's in this box." He pointed at it, and I looked at its picture of an extremely blond woman and started laughing.

  "Is your hair going to look like that? Because wow, will that be a really lovely look for you."

  "Shut up, Grandma."

  "I don't sound like her!"

  "Sure you don't."

  "I don't!"

  "Okay. Grandma."

  I elbowed him, and he grunted, frowning at his plastic-capped hair in the mirror. "So, Mom and Dad--"

  "Acting weird since yesterday," I said.

  "How did Dad's party go?"

  "How do you think?"

  "That bad?" he said.

  I brushed, and then spit. "Worse. Some of the people he used to work with actually showed up, and one of them--"

  "Has a kid you go to school with."

  I nodded.

  "How bad? Pointing and laughing bad?"

  "I'm not popular enough for that. Just some laughing." I thought about Diane laughing at me, and how Anna had too, and felt my eyes burn. I blinked hard, then rinsed off my toothbrush and put it away. "Hey, how bad do you think things are, money-wise?"

  Todd poked at his plastic cap, frowning. "Let's put it this way. Grandma's coming out to help."

  I laughed, but only so I wouldn't cry. Todd must have seen that, because he tapped my shoulder instead of shoving me and said, "Look, I gotta rinse my head off. This stuff is starting to burn."

  I went back to my room. When I got in bed, I could barely hear the television in the living room. I listened for a while, but never heard more than its low murmur. Mom and Dad still weren't speaking to each other.

  When I woke up, Mom had already left for work and Dad had left a note saying he'd gone to the mall early and that Todd would drive me to school.

  I woke Todd up. "Your hair turned out okay."

  "Go away," he mumbled, and pulled the covers up over his head.

  I tugged at them. "I need a ride to school."

  He tugged them back. "Take the bus."

  "I can't take the bus. No one takes the bus. I might as well wear a sign that says, 'I'm a loser.'"

  "I'm sure you wouldn't need a sign."

  I poked his side. "I'll tell Mom."

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes and then glaring at me. "You suck."

  "You do too. Now will you please take me to school?"

  He did, but he drove really slowly, and I ended up getting there late, which meant I had to go to the main office and get a tardy slip. The secretary working at the front counter asked for my name, stared at me blankly when I said it, and then told me to sit down and wait.

  A few minutes later Anna came in, carrying a stack of papers. "Permission forms for cheer regionals," she told the secretary. "Ms. Walters said I needed to bring them up here."

  "Thank you, Anna," the secretary said.

  Last year, she wouldn't have known who Anna was. "Can I have a late pass to class? Ms. Walters forgot to give me one."

  "Sure, just hold on a second."

  Of course Anna would get her pass right away, and of course it wouldn't be a tardy. She wasn't even going to have to wait. That was the power of being someone. Even the adults who supposedly ran the school weren't immune to it.

  "Thanks," Anna said, and looked around the office. When she saw me, she froze for a second and then turned away, looking back at the counter. I stared at the floor and wished her head would exp
lode.

  I wished that she'd say something to me.

  When the secretary finally finished filling out Anna's slip and gave it to her, I had to remind her I was there. And tell her my name again.

  I passed Anna in the halls later, and she didn't see me at all.

  I thought about that for the rest of the day, how Anna could see me and turn away, or worse, not see me at al --and how, in spite of that, I still wished we were friends. I knew I should be angry and strong or whatever, but I missed her. And worse than her not looking at me, or even looking at me and then turning away, was her not being in my life at all. Losing her hurt more than anything.

  I was still thinking about it when I got home from work and tried to do my homework, even though tomorrow was a teacher workday.

  Teacher workdays used to mean a day off. They used to mean fun. Anna and I would spend all day at my house or hers, eating ice cream and watching movies, or planning our future in New York. Anna was going to be a famous singer and I was going to be her assistant, go with her to photo shoots and video shoots and fabulous parties.

  The last teacher workday, I'd sat around watching television and arguing over the remote with Todd. And tomorrow I'd have to go to work. I almost wished I had to go to school instead.

  I gave up on my homework and pushed my books away, tossing my pencil on top of them. Why did I have to learn more than I ever wanted to know about geometry but never got taught important stuff, like what to do when your best friend decides to act like she never knew you at all?

  Or how come I hadn't learned ways to stop having locked-in-a-classroom fantasies about a guy who, back when I met him last year, heard me say he was cute and then came up to me and said sorry, I wasn't his type but, by the way, did I have a pen he could borrow?

  Yes, that really happened.

  The first week of ninth grade I made the mistake of nodding when some senior guys asked me if I thought Will was cute. Ever since, I've told myself I only nodded because I was a stupid, scared freshman, but that isn't entirely true, and that's what makes the story so humiliating.

  Because, of course, as soon as I'd admitted he was cute, Will appeared, red-faced, and said thanks, but I wasn't his type, and could he borrow a pen?

  AND I ACTUALLY GAVE HIM ONE.

  That's the worst part. In spite of what he said, I gave him a pen. I was so mad at him. And at myself, for being so stupid, which probably explains why, when he finally spoke to me again (exactly three days later), this was what happened:

  "Hey," he said.

  "Give me back my pen," I said.

  "I don't have it anymore," he said. (I would never tell him this, but it was cool he didn't pretend not to know what I was talking about.)

  "You don't have it? Why? Did you freak out when someone asked you to write your name?"

  "And do what?"

  "What?" I said, and then immediately wished I'd said something else. Something smarter. Or at least more than one word.

  "What did I do after I freaked out about having to write my name? Eat the pen?" He grinned. (This was when I first saw the dimples.)

  "I don't know what you did," I snapped. "I'm not an illiterate jackass. And you owe me a pen."

  He flushed, then laughed. I walked off. And later, as I was telling Anna everything, I thought about him nudging me into a corner and kissing me as I was in the middle of a much cleverer speech about my missing pen. Thus began the madness.

  And somehow learning how to calculate triangle angles was more important than figuring out how to deal with this?

  Please.

  Chapter ten

  We had a sale at work. It didn't go well. Dad hauled a big box of vitamins out of storage and taped a handwritten sale! sign on it.

  "I don't know why we aren't drawing more customers," he said after a few hours. "I'm really surprised."

  I wasn't surprised that people didn't want to dig through a big cardboard box of vitamins labeled with a ratty handmade sign, but then I was sixteen and rational, and he was old and had quit his job because his desk broke.

  The whole time I was there, we only sold three bottles, and two of them were to a guy who argued over the price with me and then Dad until Dad caved in and sold them for half off because the labels were peeling back on one corner. Todd, who'd spent most of the day off doing whatever it was he did when he was supposed to be working (probably flirting), sold the other bottle and then asked Dad if he could take off.

  Dad said yes, of course, and I slumped into the chair by our cash register, wishing I had a car and could take off. Or that I was at least allowed to drive on my own.

  When the mall finally closed, Dad picked up the sale box and started reorganizing it, adding in bottles from the overflow he'd recently started to store in the tiny cabinet below our cash register.

  "Things are a little cramped here, aren't they?" he said. "You know, I think I'll take some of these extras home now, and once we have a little more money coming in I'll rent more storage space from the mall."

  And that's when I knew exactly why Grandma was coming. She had money. A lot of money and things must be really bad for Mom to be willing to take it, because for as long as I could remember, Grandma would always drop hints about Mom not living the way she could, and Mom would always say, "I'm living the way I want to," and then leave the room if Grandma kept talking.

  I looked at Dad's vitamins and added up the cost of all the bottles I could see on the counter--and in the box.

  Yes, they were definitely why Grandma was coming.

  "You want some help?"

  Dad shook his head. "I've got a system. See? I'm going by type of supplement, not name."

  "Okay, Dad." He was so weird. "I'm going to need another box, though," he said. "Will you go out to the trash bins and find one?"

  "Sure." Because nothing beat working at the mall selling vitamins with your dad except all that plus an end-of-the-day trip to the trash.

  The trash bins were just outside our section of the mall, hidden behind a low brick wall and the loading dock. The only way to get to them was through the mall corridor, a long passage that snaked behind every store and was filled with storage lockers like the one Dad rented.

  When I got outside, a guy wearing what looked like a coffee-place shirt was tossing trash. He nodded at me. "Vitamin place, right?

  "Right," I said cautiously. He wasn't gorgeous or anything, but he was cute in an "I-have-floppy-hair-and-sell-coffee-and-probably-play-the-guitar" kind of way. "You work at the coffee place, don't you?"

  "Yep. Hey, can you tell your boss to stop talking about vitamins when he's in the store?

  My boss hates it, but I don't want to say anything because . . ." He trailed off and mimed dropping money in a tip jar.

  "Yeah, I'll get right on that."

  "Thanks," he said, oblivious to my sarcasm. "I'll see you around, I guess."

  "Great," I said, adding, "Moron," as he went back into the mall.

  Then I heard someone laugh.

  I wished I didn't know whose laugh it was, but I knew Will's laugh just like I knew he had a small scar right above his left elbow. You couldn't be reluctantly lust-ridden for someone without noticing stuff about them.

  "It must be a convention," I said.

  "I don't even get a 'Hey Will' before you start insulting me?" He was standing by the loading dock, leaning against a pallet of plastic-wrapped shoeboxes.

  "Nope. Bye."

  "Hey, hold on," he said, and hopped down from the loading dock. I watched him walk toward me with a mixture of annoyance because he was Will, and, well, more annoyance because I liked watching him walk toward me. "Check it out. I got a new name tag today." He unclipped it and held it out toward me.

  I looked at it. "A. GUY."

  He grinned. "Someone actually asked me what the A stood for," he said, his hand brushing mine as he took the tag back, sliding it into his pocket. "I said Larry."

  I laughed and he smiled at me again, dimples flashing. I
t was the closest thing to a nice moment I'd had with anyone in ages. Or ever with a guy.

  So, naturally, Will ruined it, saying, "So, what's the deal with your dad? We have a notice up in the back saying we're supposed to get a manager right away if he comes in."

  "Like you don't know," I said. "Am I supposed to tell you stories about my dad and his wacky vitamin-selling adventures now?"

  "Hey, I was just--"

  "Oh, I can't wait to hear this."

  He blinked at me. "I was just trying to talk to you."

  I hated how hot he was and hated myself more for noticing. For always noticing, even now. "Sure you were. Because you said so much when you were listening to the coffee guy complain about him. Oh, no, wait. You just laughed."

  "Not at you. I wouldn't--"

  "Make fun of me? Please."

  He stared at me for a moment, and then said, "Look, Kate, I'm sorry."

  For some reason, that made me furious. I didn't want his pity. I was sick of the mall, of vitamins, of everything. I lifted one hand, to either shove him or slap him, and he caught it. Caught me.

  I froze. It wasn't that I wasn't angry anymore, because I was. I just felt so much other stuff too, stuff I didn't even have a name for, and it hit me so hard I couldn't move.

  He didn't either, and as we stared at each other I felt a weird prickling heat, like a blush but stronger, shiver though me, and I knew something was going to happen.

  And then it did, and he kissed me.

  My very first kiss. With Will. It was like something out a dream.

  Except that I was standing by a trash bin outside the mall. And I was with Will, who had kissed just about every girl in school, and who I didn't want to like.

  "You jackass," I said, pulling away and trying to ignore how I was shaking all over.

  He stared at me like he'd never seen me before. "Jackass? You just shoved your tongue down my throat and now you're calling me names?"

  "I didn't do that!"

  "Did."

  "Did not."

  "Did," he said, and leaned in toward me.

  "Did not," I said again, and then I--oh, this is the embarrassing part--I kissed him. I couldn't help it. The look on his face was so intense and the whole thing was so intense that I had to. I couldn't help myself.