But Kylie hating me? Okay, maybe a little just because the food-poisoning rumors she'd launched against me hadn't taken. But enough so she'd move back from Arizona? I couldn't believe I had that kind of power.

"Kylie didn't even look at me from, like, when we worked in the caf together until last week," I protested.

She held up her palms as if to say duh!

"What-the throwing-up thing?"

She nodded.

"That's crazy. She had the flu."

"Tell her that. And Rascal feeds off it, teases her. Think about her nickname, Nic. Chunky? Blowing chunks." She exhaled through her nose. "You were the only girl at Hillside she wouldn't tolerate taking her place."

A lump lodged in my throat, the size of, well, Arizona. "And you know this-how?"

"From Jared. Rascal shoots his mouth off when he plays pool."

Yeah, Jared told me.

Okay-a.s.suming I believed this-that was cold. Ice cold. What would Rascal have done if his stunt had backfired and Kylie hadn't come home? Would he have stood me up?

A jab of pain from my ring finger told me to stop twisting and refocus. Besides, Rascal was a jerk. Kylie was an idiot. Why should this surprise me?

But it didn't take long to make the next logical connection. That Alison had not said a word to me. Until now. When she was mad.

"When?" I asked. "When did Jared hear this?"

"At the beginning of the summer."

"And he told you right away?"

She nodded.

"And you kept it from me?"

She shrugged, and for a moment the animosity died out of her tone. She sounded like my friend again. "You were already heartbroken. Why make it worse?"

I turned away to privately digest all this. I understood protecting a best friend. But I hated to think she had been keeping secrets while I had whined to her about my unrequited love and my unworn prom dress, probably looking like the superloser I was.

And Jared? He knew I'd been duped, too. And besides being furious at Rascal, did he feel sorry for me?

Oh, G.o.d ...

Heat flared up my neck.

But in the midst of my humiliation, there was something left that wasn't adding up: Rascal and his roaming hands. "So if Rascal isn't into me at all, why'd he come over last Sunday?"

She pressed her lips together, as if choosing her words. "Jared says Rascal's been telling the guys that he's not getting enough from Kylie. So figure it out. There were rumors about you giving it up easy to my brother. Rascal already knew you kinda liked him. Either he was trying to get some on the side, or make Kylie jealous so she'd give in herself."

My thoughts cartwheeled. Knowing Rascal and his Teflon conscience, it was probably both. But as disheartening as this was, I couldn't think about it now.

I had to stay on Alison and me. While part of me (calmly, rationally) appreciated and understood why she'd kept this painful stuff from me, another part really resented it. And hated the fact that it had come out in anger.

"Thanks for finally telling me ... I guess." I swallowed hard. "And I suppose we're even now."

"Even?"

"Yeah, since I've been making you crazy lately." I didn't say with her brother. I didn't have to. Let her do her head-in-the-sand act and think I meant Rascal if she wanted.

Besides, while it was true that Jared and I were spending time together, he was still only a friend. Whether I liked it or not. So why go rubbing salt in Alison's wounds when nothing was bound to change?

She grumbled something meaningless and walked away.

Maybe she needed a feet-up, clear-your-head weekend, too.

Mom wasn't home. But since she hadn't expected me to be home at this hour, either, she hadn't left a note.

I couldn't quite bring myself to unplug the phone, but I made myself a promise to only answer if Mom's cell number flashed on the caller ID. Or Dad's.

I grabbed a DVD off our shelf. Bring It On, where one best friend gets together with the other's brother, was usually a favorite, but now? It hit a little too close to home. Instead I popped in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Mom shuffled in the door sometime after five. The business suit and the heavy lines around her eyes announced that her outing had not been a pleasure cruise. I looked back at the TV. Part of me did not want to know.

"The bosses called me in," she said, and let out this scratchy sigh. "I've been put on a sixty-day suspension. At which time they will reevaluate my 'place in the company.' "

I paused the movie. Johnny Depp stood frozen with a devilish half grin. But believe me, no one outside the screen was smiling.

"You told them it was me, right? That you had nothing to do with the flyers?"

She nodded and leaned over to pat my arm. "Maybe it's for the best. Maybe I should take this as a sign to find a new job."

Considering how much she hated it and how bad she was at it? Uh, yeah! But what I said was "At least you have the time to look around some."

She moved toward the kitchen. Probably to make something complicated and yummy that I totally did not deserve. I couldn't get my head back into the movie, so I followed to help.

As I pulled the silverware drawer open, my gaze drifted to the cluttered refrigerator door and a gaping hole in the midst of the photos/notes/coupons mess.

"The list," I said, and pointed to the mess. "It's gone."

"Oh, that-I was cleaning up last night and pitched it." She threw me an over-her-shoulder look. "It was just a joke, right?"

"Right." A joke. No matter how many so-called uses I'd come up with lately, I certainly hadn't committed them to paper. Still ...

"I started thinking, honey," she said as she started pulling things out of the fridge, "that maybe it was wrong of me to get on you about that dress. Your first formal dress is very special, like a rite of pa.s.sage. And since you didn't actually get to wear it, you should be able to keep it on the back of your door or wherever you like for as long as you like."

Emotion sort of jammed in my throat. Wow.

"You remember when Grandma died?" she continued, her question, of course, rhetorical. "Up in her attic, I found the dress I'd worn to my senior prom."

Her voice seemed to catch, but I would have set myself on fire before speaking what she was surely thinking, which was that her senior prom had been her first date with my dad.

"Grandma had kept it for me," Mom continued, "because that night had been so special."

I worked to find my voice, grappling with the unspoken tension and what she was trying to tell me. "So what you're saying is my hang-up about my prom dress ... it's hereditary?"

Frozen at the sink, Mom seemed to smile to herself. "I wouldn't go so far as to say hereditary. Safer to say lots of people attach emotions and memories to their possessions. But it is fitting that you bought your dress with money from Grandma, don't you think? She would have loved that dress as much as she loved mine."

I nodded, giving that warm thought a moment to penetrate. Then, getting back to Mom's dress, I asked what had happened to it.

"Unfortunately, the dress was ruined from the years of heat up in the attic. The color had streaked and faded, the crinkly stuff underneath-"

"The crinoline," I volunteered.

"Crinoline. It had cracked. The whole thing was a mess."

A sudden flash of grief blew across her face. Making me think that she, too, was drawing the connection between the fate of her dress and the fate of her marriage.

Ugh.

Had I been a friend, I probably would have given her a hug. But I was the product of her regrettable marriage, for better or for worse. And this was waaay too much yuck for me to handle head-on.

"So you threw your dress out?" I asked, attempting to keep my head erect and the conversation light.

She nodded. "Nothing else I could do. But somewhere, I'm sure, there's a picture of me in it. I'll dig it up for you one of these days."

My words spilled out before I could catch them. "Only if you want to. I mean, if you think it wouldn't upset you."

Her lips curved, but there was no joy inside her smile. "It'll be good for me. That was then, and this is now. It's time I truly moved on."

Yeah. It probably was. But she wasn't going to hear that from me.

After a long moment, Mom gave her head a little shake. "But don't worry about yours. You've got that industrial-strength dress bag to protect it from the elements. Plus, we'll keep it out of the attic. Yours will live on forever."

I nodded. But saving The Dress forever didn't seem so important as simply having it right now. ...

"But if you think you've got an obsession with your prom dress, Nicolette, just wait until you've got a wedding dress in your closet!"

We laughed and got busy making dinner- together.

Later, my belly filled, my good spirits gave way to worries again. I wondered where Alison had been all afternoon. Had she been out cultivating a new best friend?

I tried to sleep, but the darkness only made my thoughts bolder and, well, darker. I needed to talk to somebody, and for the first time since I was twelve, my best friend was out of the question.

Eventually, I bolted up, remembering I had Jared's cell phone number. A way to contact him exclusively- without getting Alison or waking up the whole house.

I raced through the darkness, careful to avoid the furniture, grabbed the phone, and punched in his number.

" 'Sup?" Jared's recorded voice answered. "Leave me a message." Beep!

So I did. "Hey, Jared, it's Nic," I said, trying to sound normal, like I called his cell at eleven o'clock every night. "Nothing important, just, uh, checking in." I ended idiotically that I'd see him on Monday at school.

And crawled back to bed. And worried that he hadn't picked up because he'd seen it was me who was calling.

I tried to smother my mile-a-minute brain with my pillow, but I felt like any chance of falling asleep was now lost for the night.

When a ping, ping, ping sounded against my win-dowpane thirty minutes later, I told myself it was either rain (in October? In Thurman Oaks?) or my imagination.

A thud that nearly shattered the gla.s.s, however, made my heart catapult to my throat. I threw back the covers and crept to the window. Pulling back the shade, I crouched down on one knee and cupped my hand to the gla.s.s.

Outside, moonlight shone down on a tall, dark figure a few feet from my window. Not a stranger or a potential strangler. But a guy offering a sweet smile.

OmiG.o.d, what was Jared doing here?

Shock tangled with some very mushy girl feelings that I'd deny to my last breath, and I flipped the lock and cranked the window ajar. "Jared?"

"I got your message," he called out softly. "Didn't want to wake your mom by calling."

"It wasn't important," I shout-whispered.

"Come outside."

I knew I should tell him-Alison's brother-to go home. That it was late. And my relationship with his sister was complicated enough. But since when did I let my good sense guide my actions?

"Be right there!"

Dressed in PJ pants and a tank top, I crept down the hallway, flipped on the porch light, and cruised out the front door. Goose b.u.mps rose on my bare arms, and my feet did a squish-squash thing in the dewy gra.s.s. I couldn't remember feeling happier.

He stood on the lawn, moonlight dancing off his dark hair. Looking big and strong and impossibly handsome. I moved closer and closer until his voice jarred me from my steamroller advance.

"Hey," he said in a low murmur. "What's up?"

I paused, maybe a foot away, and tried to collect myself. After all, I'd called him.

"This sounds sort of dumb now, but I couldn't sleep and really just wanted a friend."

He just stood there, giving off this amazing mix of superhot masculinity and protective tenderness. I almost wanted to unload on him, just to have his dark eyes, his focus, all over me.

But the thing was, suddenly I didn't feel like talking. Like overa.n.a.lyzing. Like being friends.

I knew what I wanted was ...this. Jared and me, alone in the darkness. The only two people in the world. Making everything and everyone else go away ...

I inched closer.

As if in answer to my prayers-or maybe because we really were in sync-his hands moved to my bare upper arms (Oh G.o.d, kiss me! Kiss me!), and his face angled toward mine.