Sass & Serendipity Read Online Free PDF Page A

tell Mule was still peering at her as if she were a particularly baffling lab specimen. It made her feel fidgety.
    It was sad, really, when calculus was easier than conversation.
    “Wha-a-a-a-at?”
    Gabby lay in bed, sleepless and frustrated, tormented by her racing brain and the call of a nearby frog. It seemed to be chiding her, doubting her every thought.
    “Wha-a-a-a-at!”
    Meanwhile, her sister lay in deep slumber, her thick lashes faintly fluttering, round cheek smushed against the pillow, mouth slightly open. Once in a while she’d make a cooing sound and shift positions, but otherwise she seemed completely at peace. Daphne looked so young when she slept—not much older than the days when she’d sucked her thumb. It made it hard to be mad at her. Although Gabby still was, kind of.
    The study session had been going along fine until Daphne had started playing the sound track to
Wicked
at a ridiculous volume. Gabby had gone inside to complain and they’d ended up in a squabble that led to Mule’s excusing himself to go home. And Gabby had still needed his help on two sets of problems.
    Now she couldn’t clear her mind and fall asleep. It wasn’t just the math or the bickering or the loud, melodramatic music that troubled her. She also kept replaying her earlier conversation with Mule, and each time she did she found something else to kick herself about.
    She’d sounded mean. She’d sounded stupid. She’d hogged the conversation way too much.
    It was true what he said about her need to vent around him. There was something about Mule’s safe, loyal omnipresence that allowed her to lower her defenses. All he had to do was ask how her day went and suddenly all her pent-up stress would come spewing out like the contents of a punctured aerosol can.
    Of course, no matter how blabby she got around Mule,there were a few things she could never tell him about—which meant she couldn’t tell anyone.
    For example, no one knew about the time when she was five and gave herself a pet. Her parents wouldn’t let her have a dog (no fenced-in yard) or a cat (allergies), so one day she caught a small brown toad behind their house and decided to adopt him. She named him Hoppy and placed him in an old mop bucket too high for him to escape from, along with a dish of water and some pulled-up grass. Only she’d forgotten to keep him out of the sun. The next day she’d found his withered, half-baked carcass next to the empty water dish, with black ants crawling all over him. She still felt too guilty to tell anyone about that.
    Also, no one knew that she occasionally had the same dream. In it she’s trapped at the bottom of a deep hole, and a nameless, faceless guy pulls her out and kisses her—a tender, soft, slow kiss that makes it seem as if she’s melting into an oozy puddle. She’d be too embarrassed to tell anyone about that. Not just because it was cheesy, the type of fantasy Daphne probably entertained all day every day, but because she was pretty sure she knew who her nameless, faceless rescuer was.
    And that was the third thing she could never tell Mule or any other living being in the universe about: her secret time with Sonny Hutchins.
    Gabby felt a chill and snuggled down into her covers, making the old mattress groan. At night everything seemed harsher. Noises. Shadows. Memories. A pain welled up in the center of her body, dull but familiar, like an old injury reasserting itself.
    It had happened when she was thirteen. Her mom and dad had talked her into joining a kickball league, convinced that all that team spirit would make her more social, less serious and uptight. Only it had ended up being a disaster.
    Her offensive game was fine. She could run well, and her kicks were fairly decent. But no matter what her position in the outfield, she couldn’t manage to catch the ball. Every time it flew toward her, she would close her eyes and shield her head with her arms, and no amount of training could break her of