I flipped on the lights.
My feet felt like they’d been squeezed through a meat grinder, so I kicked off my heels and left them in a pile by the door. A happy sigh escaped my lips as I made my way down the hall toward my room. It had been a long day. Muscles I didn’t know I had were achy, and my whole body felt sluggish, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. My mind was still turning, trying to comprehend the events of tonight:Met cute boy. Cute boy is actually AlecWilliams.It was hard to believe. Less than five minutes had passed since he dropped me off, but our time together already felt like a lucid dream. I wanted to touch his mask again, just to be sure the experience wasn’t something I’d imagined.
At my desk, I pushed a jar of my favorite bugle beads out of the way to make room for my bag. All sorts of jewelry-making supplies were scattered across the surface—crimp pliers, spools of gold and silver wire, clasps, you name it, along with containers and containers filled with beads of every color. I lifted the flap on my bag. Inside was Alec’s wolf mask. I pulled it out to examine it more closely.
There was a dusting of black jewels on the brow and a tiny row of silver swirls looping around the eyeholes. It was stunning, and much more intricate than I’d originally thought. Biting back a smile, I set the mask on my bookshelf with the rest of my keepsakes, between the conch shell Asha had brought back from a trip to Florida and the tiny carving of a lion my friend Boomer had made in shop class, back when he thought my last name was pronounced like the animal.
After pulling on my pajamas, I grabbed my phone and flopped into bed. I sent two quick texts to Asha.
Felicity:You’ll never guess what happened tonight!!!
Felicity:PS you’re going to die of jealousy.
Then I tossed my phone on the nightstand and waited for her response. I couldn’t contain my grin. This was the best Desertion Day I’d had in four long years.
Chapter 4
The next morning, I woke to the sound of a dog barking. Not fully awake, I nestled further into my pillow without opening my eyes. The barking continued, but I chose to ignore it until there was a knock on the window.
Was someone outside?
No way, I decided. Not when there was a giant thorny bush to crawl through.
Another impatient rap sounded on the pane, and I groaned.
Go away, I thought, but the knocking continued, so I turned over in bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Last night, I hadn’t fallen asleep until the early-morning hours. Thoughts of Alec had kept me up and—Holy mother!
I shot up in bed as everything came rushing back to me. I, Felicity Ann Lyon, had hung out with an actual member of the world’s most famous boy band. I glanced at my bookshelf, and proof that I hadn’t dreamed the encounter was sitting right on top of the copy ofEndless Origami:1,000 Step-by-Step Designsthat Rose had given me.
There was another knock, and it sounded angry enough to shatter the glass. I spotted Asha crouched outside in the bushes. She motioned for me to unlock the latch.
“God, you sleep like the dead. I rang the doorbell for literally ten minutes,” she complained, after I dragged myself across the room and pushed open the window. “I’m pretty sure your neighbor thought I was trying to break in.”
She passed her dog through the opening for me to take. I’d always been a canine lover, but Lord Pugton was an exception. The wrinkly nine-year-old pug farted so often I was starting to wonder if Asha only fed him refried beans. He peed in my shoe during a sleepover once, and every time he looked at me, I was convinced he was giving me the stink eye. In fact, his bulgy little eyes were focused on me now, sharp and suspicious, as I reached out and took him from Asha.
“I’m watching you,” I whispered when I released him on the floor. Lord Pugton made a mad dash toward my bed. He disappeared underneath it, most likely to hunt for another shoe to destroy as part of his reign of terror.
Asha hoisted herself onto the sill and climbed into my room. “Holy amazeballs,” she said, wiping her brow as she straightened up. “It’s like Canada in here. I’m moving in until this heat wave is over.”
I quickly shut the window so none of the heat could seep in. “Battle of the AC still waging?”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “It’s in full swing. My dad is relentless.”
Asha’s parents had been fighting about the electric bill since the start of the heat wave. Her father was a frugal-living penny-pincher who deserved his own show on TLC. He reused everything from coffee grinds to dental floss, and one time when we went to themovies, Mr. Van de Berg dug through the trash for a large popcorn tub so he could get the free refill. His biggest money-saving trick? No air-conditioning. Normally Mrs. Van de Berg put up with her husband’s strange antics, but she refused to melt to death in her own house—which, she’d complained, was currently hotter than summertime in Mumbai.
“You know you’re welcome to stay, but before you eventhinkabout sitting on my bed,” I said and handed her a towel, “you need a shower. Pronto.”
From under my bed, Lord Pugton grunted as if in agreement.
Asha was glistening from her daily run. I never understood how anyone could enjoy running. There were those awful feelings of burning lungs and Jell-O legs, but Asha had fallen in love with cross-country during our freshman year and had been racking up miles ever since. It was two miles from my house to hers. While that was a piece of cake for Asha, I often wondered how Lord Pugton handled the distance. This heat was deadly, and she was absolutely insane for running in it.
“Thanks.” She took the towel and wiped the sweat off her face. “I feel like I jumped in a pond. A scummy, disgusting pond. I have so much boob sweat that someone could do laps in my cleavage.”
“Asha,” I said, “someone could go swimming in your cleavage regardless of the sweat.”
Drownin it even. My best friend was curvy in a Marilyn Monroe sort of way, all bust and butt with a waist so small it was like she was born wearing a corset.
I’d always been a little jealous of her for it, starting in the thirdgrade when she pulled aside the collar of her shirt and showed me the pink strap of her first training bra. When I’d gotten home from school that day, I’d begged my mom to let me get one too, but she’d laughed and said, “All in good time.” But that time never came. While Asha blew through cup sizes, shedding bras like leaves in autumn, I was stuck with the chest of a little boy. Nowadays, most of the guys on our high school wrestling team had bigger boobs than me.
