Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa • Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Susan Colebank Stehl
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a
review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author
or third-party websites of their content.
Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,
a member of Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
www.penguin.com/youngreaders
eISBN : 978-1-440-67829-5
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Jason,
who believes in my dreams
1
GET OFF OF HER!”
Jayne Thompkins felt one of those heart palpitations her grams was always talking about. Her barely teenage sister was under a boy.
A boy who had his hand on the side of her sister’s breast.
And her sister was just lying there, taking it like a future pregnant fourteen-year-old.
Jayne closed her eyes for a second, willing this to all go away so she could get out of here and still make it to tennis on time. Which would be good, considering she’d just been made captain. Being on time seemed like a captainlike thing to do.
She took a slow, measured breath. Jayne thought back to her psychology class last semester, to the section that had talked about stress. Stress was a perception. She could choose to be stressed or not.
She opened her eyes. This guy’s hand was still squeezing her sister’s flesh. Or might as well have been. The Victoria’s Secret bra wasn’t exactly a deterrent. Not with Ellie’s T-shirt bunched up at the head of the bed.
Yep, Jayne felt stressed all right.
The boy with the tanned, shirtless back barely looked up at her. He either hadn’t noticed her or he was having too much fun licking Ellie’s collarbone in rhythm to the booty call music blaring around them.
Jayne snapped off the CD player and turned back to her sister. That boy hadn’t moved an inch.
Then again, neither had Ellie. Ellie, you’re a freakin’ idiot. About boys. About grades. About taking your insulin shot.
About life in general.
Ellie should’ve been watching bad Hilary Duff movies, not letting her boobies get felt up by this schmuck. Jayne was used to her sister’s flavor-of-the-week infatuations. But the boobie action going on here? Jayne hadn’t even experienced that yet at the ripe old age of sixteen.
And if she wasn’t ready for third base, Ellie sure wasn’t.
Ellie finally opened her eyes and saw Jayne standing there. Frantically, she pushed at the oblivious ball of hormones panting on top of her. “Danny, get up.”
The guy’s lips started working their way down Ellie’s chest. “Why?” He laughed as he said the word. “It’s just your sister.”
Jayne’s blood temperature rose a few degrees. This Abercrombie & Fitch reject didn’t seem to appreciate the situation he was in.
“That’s right. I’m just her sister.” Jayne gripped his waistband, using the weight of her body to get his private bits off of Ellie’s. “But if you don’t want to find out firsthand where our mother stashed the bodies of all the other Neanderthals who tried to get statutory with my sister, you better get up.”
Danny was barely upright when Jayne started pushing him, barefoot and shirtless, toward the bedroom door. “Out,” she demanded.
Jayne turned to see Ellie reach blindly behind her and grab her own shirt, pulling it over the C-cups she’d gotten over the past year.
Ellie’d gone from looking scared at being caught with a boy in her room to pissed off. “Does Mom have you spying on me now?”
Jayne stopped mid-push. Yeah, in between studying thirty hours a week and spending what felt like every non-sleeping minute building up her college résumé, she was spying on Ellie for the fun of it. “Don’t be a jerk. I forgot my tennis shoes this morning and was just heading upstairs to get them. But then I heard a bunch of giggling in here, Chuckles.”
A blush tinged Ellie’s cheeks. “Oh.”
Jayne found herself leaning her full weight against Danny, but he had come to a standstill. “I’m not going out there like this,” he said, pointing at his bare chest, his tiny pubescent nipples the size of peas.
Jayne looked at the Hello Kitty clock on Ellie’s dresser. Jayne was a practical girl, if nothing else. She was also a girl who knew the value of deadlines. “You have one minute to find everything you brought with you or else it goes into the next Thompkins garage sale.”
Danny started picking up his discarded clothes. Progress, finally. But he stopped when he saw Jayne following two steps behind him. “Do you mind? I can dress myself.”
“That remains to be seen.” She forced herself to stand s
till. Stalking the half-naked guy definitely wasn’t going to get him to move faster.
She lifted the flap of her messenger bag she’d come in with and pulled out a folder. “When I was at the career center today, I saw something you might be interested in.”
Ellie crossed her arms, creating two inches of cleavage. “I already told you, I’m not going to college. I’m not some sheep that—”
“—that needs to follow the herd. So you’ve told me a bajillion times. But this is different.” Jayne sat down next to Ellie, opened the folder, and dropped a stapled packet in her sister’s lap. “The Fashion Institute of Technology’s having a contest open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors.”
Ellie shrugged. But she started flipping through the pages. “I don’t need a stinking fashion college in order to break into fashion. Gianni Versace didn’t go to one. Coco Chanel didn’t either.”
“But Calvin Klein went to FIT.”
Ellie made a farting sound with her mouth. “He’s totally commercial. And uninspired.”
“Michael Kors did, too. I’ve heard you say you think he’s genius.”
Again, Jayne felt Ellie’s shoulders move. But her sister kept turning the pages, which was a good sign. Anything that made Ellie think about a life that extended beyond boys, the mall, and the next party was a good thing.
The bathroom door shut. Ellie’s make-out boy had just gone behind it.
Jayne felt her head wrinkle up. She called out, “You better pee fast, pretty boy. I don’t have all day.”
Normally, Jayne didn’t like confrontations. But then again, these last few minutes hadn’t been too normal. She started jiggling her leg. If their mom caught this guy here . . . But why would she? She was at the studio, getting ready for the six o’clock news.
“Anyway, the ten-thousand-dollar prize money FIT is offering is free and clear.” Jayne tightened her ponytail, her leg still going at it like jackhammer. Once she got that guy out of here, she might actually make it to tennis on time. “You don’t have to get a degree at their school or anything. You just have to design a twenty-piece collection, sew up one outfit, and turn in everything by August first.”
“That’s four months from now.” Ellie’s voice rose a couple of octaves, but her eyes were bright. Jayne knew she’d hooked her.
“Elle, I’ve been wearing your stuff since you made your first cut-up, tie-dyed, hand-painted T-shirt at age eight. You totally have a chance.”
Ellie looked at Jayne, the pissiness gone from her clear blue eyes. Eyes she’d gotten from their dad, while Jayne had gotten the boring hazel-green eyes their mom had. As with everything in life, Ellie had managed to come out on top even in the genes department.
Sure, Jayne Lee Thompkins had made out in the brains department. But it might’ve been fun to be the cute, irresponsible one for once.
Jayne crossed her arms, her hands encircling the hard biceps she’d built up over the last ten years of tennis clinics. She leaned against Ellie and teased, “Then again, if I’d known you were getting felt up today, I would’ve left school earlier and headed over to Walgreens to buy you a box of Trojans.”
“Awesome.” Danny stood at the bathroom door, his backpack slung over a shoulder. His shirt and shoes were on, and he was tucking his blond hair behind his ears. The ends flipped out like a girl’s bob.
“I was joking, jerkwad.” After a quick glare in the guy’s direction, she turned back to Ellie and the packet of papers she was still flipping through. “Just think about it, okay? You win the contest, you get the money, and you get to go to FIT for six weeks next summer. In New York. Where all your idols live.” Jayne waved a hand around the room at the fashion ads Ellie had been tearing out of Vogue and Bazaar for the last six years.
Ellie snorted. “You mean if.”
“No. I mean when,” Jayne said with a smile.
Suddenly, the front door slammed shut. “Ellie? Jayne? You girls home?”
Ellie stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Jayne.
Their mom was home.
Ellie was screwed.
2
CRAP!” Ellie said. “She’s going to kill me.”
Jayne cleared her head, like she did right before she took a test. In order to outsmart her mom, she had to treat this whole situation like a test. “We’ll just say the jerkwad here was helping you study, Elle. Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it?” Ellie bit down on one of her cotton-candy-pink nails. “Jaynie, Mom grounded me this week because I’m getting a D in pre-algebra. I’m not supposed to have anyone over.”
“We’ll just say Dennis here was tutoring you in pre-algebra.”
“Yo, it’s Danny.”
Jayne hissed, “Keep your voice down, idiot.”
“But that won’t work. Mom paid for a tutor.” Ellie looked like a beaver with a log, the way she was going at her nail.
“We’ll just say Danny here’s that tutor.”
“Uh-uh. Won’t work. Mom made sure they gave me a girl because of my ‘boy-crazy tendencies.’”
Jayne exhaled. She shouldn’t be this tense. After all, it wasn’t like her mom was the Antichrist. Then again, Ellie always liked to say she didn’t have the fear of God in her—just the fear of Gen Thompkins.
“What are we going to do?” Ellie whispered, her words coming out like a mouse on helium.
They both knew that boys weren’t allowed at the Thompkins homestead when no parent was around. And boys were definitely never allowed in either of their bedrooms, the only exceptions being paramedics and firemen if one of them was dying. As in not breathing.
Bleeding and unconscious didn’t count.
Evasive action was needed. Now. Jayne called out, “We’re in Ellie’s room, Mom. We’ll be right there!”
“Whose car is that in the driveway?” Jayne should’ve known their mom wasn’t going to back off that easily.
Jayne racked her brain for a good explanation. Just like during a test, she mulled her options. None were good. And just like during a test, she opted to skip this question for later. “Mom, can’t hear you! We’ll be out in a minute!”
She turned to the boy in her sister’s room. Judging by the look of terror on his face, he definitely didn’t want to face Gen Thompkins. She was the kind of woman who convinced fathers to send their sons to military schools. Word on the street was she’d already done it twice.
Only Jayne and Ellie knew the truth. And how close the rumor was to the truth. Gen had powerful friends. That didn’t bode well for the boys who messed with her daughters.
“Okay, we need a plan,” Jayne said, looking around the pale rose room. Her eyes stopped on the door leading to the adjoining bathroom. “The bathroom window. Let’s go.”
Danny and Ellie ran ahead of her into bathroom and then stopped. “That window’s like five feet up!” Danny whined.
“Keep your voice down!” Jayne surveyed the window and the claw-foot tub under it. “Ellie, bring your desk chair in here.”
Jayne grabbed the chair her sister dragged in and positioned it under the window. She went up first, sliding the window open before pushing the screen out with the palms of her hands. “Okay, listen, David, Denny, dipwad.” She climbed off the chair. “Whatever your name is. Your skinny butt should fit through here. There’s a natal plum bush below it, so your fall should be cushioned.”
“Fall?” A lock of girly hair fell over his eye.
Jayne arched an eyebrow at him. “Military school?”
He scowled at her and stepped onto the chair.
“Wait.” She stopped him from climbing through the window by hooking a finger through his belt loop. “Make sure you put the screen between the bush and the house to hide it. I’ll pop it back in later.”
He started to pull himself through the window. Jayne yanked him back down again.
“What!”
“You’re going to have to leave your car here.”
“Whatever.” His scowl told her he thou
ght she was nuts. And that she could go to hell.
“Do you want my mother seeing you drive away?”
“No, but I don’t really want to walk ten miles to get home.”
Jayne had to admit that it was pretty hot for April. Then again, Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, was usually pushing the triple digits this time of year, and this big whiny baby should be used to it. She said in a low, rushed voice, “You should have thought of that before introducing yourself to my sister’s boobies.”
Jayne pushed him through the window and closed it.
“Girls?” The three of them stopped talking as the bedroom door handle jiggled. “Everything okay in there?”
Jayne’s mind raced to think of an excuse. What could buy them time with Gen Thompkins, the mother who micromanaged every minute of their lives when she wasn’t micromanaging her career?
“We’re putting highlights in Ellie’s hair, Mom. I’m on a roll with the foil, or else I’d get the door.” Jayne’s mind raced, trying to cover any loophole she hadn’t thought about. “Gustav couldn’t fit us in, so we got our own kit.”
“I’ve warned you girls about those box highlights. I hope you’re not turning that gorgeous hair of Ellie’s orange.”
It was just like her mom to think Jayne was screwing up. Jayne had never gotten anything less than an A-minus in her entire life, but her mom still found a way to harp about a minus.
Her mom’s voice pierced through the door again, breaking through Jayne’s thoughts. “Whose car is that out front?”
Back to that question again. Jayne wasn’t fooled by the no-nonsense, sane tone of her mom’s newscaster voice. She knew that if any of them played this the wrong way, her mom would get a drill and pry the door off its hinges.
Ellie looked at Jayne, speechless again. When it came to standing up to their mom, Ellie had a way of becoming a big useless blob.
Which usually turned Jayne into a big fat liar. All for the sake of saving Ellie’s butt. “One of Ellie’s friends took her to get the highlights, and when they got here, the girl ran out of gas. Dan . . . ielle took the bus.”
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