him go. “Why didn’t you back me up?”
“You could’ve at least mentioned the idea to Sunrise,” I say. “I thought you were going to.”
Meghan sighs. She holds up her candy, letting the bag spin, loosening the stranglehold on the neck. “I should have,” she admits. “You’re right.”
“So — are you going to apologize to Omar?” I ask her.
“What? No way! That guy —” She rolls her eyes, not bothering to finish the thought.
The light changes, and we start across the street. “It should be an interesting election,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“If Omar runs for president,” I explain.
Meghan stumbles a little as we step up onto the curb. “He was just kidding about that,” she says.
“He was?” He sounded serious to me.
“Omar couldn’t run for the bus , much less for president.” Meghan’s long green skirt swishes around her legs as she storms up the sidewalk.
“I hope you’re right,” I tell her. Omar’s a pretty popular guy , I think. It could be a tight race.
“Of course I’m right,” Meghan insists. “That guy.” And she chomps down on another fish. Have you ever seen someone chew angrily? I imagine that poor candy fish is getting seriously mangled.
I sigh. Well, anyway, I hope Meghan isn’t giving up on the tutoring thing. It really is a good idea.
But I know better than to say so.
T he café is bubbling with activity as I thumb through my new-to-me cookbook and crunch on malted milk balls. I’m thinking that a malted milk ball cupcake might be cool, but there are a few ideas in the book I want to try first. Meghan definitely picked a good one.
“Getting some ideas?” Artie places a mug of cocoa on the table across from me and then sits down. Just like that. As if it was something she does every day.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, clearing space for her. I’ve been making some notes, and my papers are covering most of the small wooden tabletop. All the larger tables are taken.
“Don’t worry about it,” Artie says. “I’m used to dealing with your papers.”
“I’m not as bad as I used to be.” In my old house, in my old room, my desk was a total disaster. Open books, pages torn from magazines, tubes of glitter glue that I’d left open until they solidified, orange peels — you could find almost anything on my desk. As long as you weren’t looking for my homework. Artie always thought it was funny, because I’m generally a pretty neat person. The rest of my room was usually tidy. “I share a room with Chloe now, so I can’t be a slob.”
“How’s your messenger bag?” Artie asks with a knowing smile.
“Let’s not talk about it.” She has me, as usual — my bag is a disaster.
“Remember that time I found a six-month-old baloney sandwich in your desk?”
“That never happened,” I insist.
Artie laughs. It did happen, and she knows it. The really gross part was that some creature had eaten part of the sandwich by the time she found it.
I tap a pile of papers on the table, straightening them.
“What’s this?” Artie asks, reaching for the brochure that has just been revealed under my papers. “Islip Academy?”She opens the glossy pages and starts flipping through them. “Wow, fancy.”
“It is, kind of,” I admit.
“Whoa — they have a sailing team?” Artie’s right eyebrow lifts into a delicate arch. I have always envied her ability to do that. “And fencing!”
“Yeah. Did you see the labs?” I point out the picture of the gleaming black granite lab tables and all the chrome equipment. “They even have an observatory.”
“No way.”
“It’s a small one.”
“But still!” Artie’s hazel eyes are glued to the brochure, where there is an image of a girl photographing a butterfly in a colorful garden. Below is the caption, Summer enrichment photography class in the Shakespeare garden . “Marco would kill to take a class like that,” Artie says.
“Yeah.”
Artie looks up, and our eyes meet for a
Jonathan Strahan [Editor]