Biggest Flirts Read Free Page B

face carved into the stump by Mrs. Spitzer’s house.
    “That’s not weird either,” I said. “That’s artistic. Just ask the Chamber of Commerce. We have a large number of creative people in town, but that doesn’t make us any stranger than a town in Minneso—”
    We both stopped short. An enormous white bird, about a yard tall from feet to beak, stood in the center of the sidewalk in front of us.
    Will arched his brows, waiting for me to take back my protest that Florida wasn’t weird.
    “That is a snowy egret,” I said self-righteously. “They are very common. In Minnesota you have moose wandering the streets.”
    “You’re mixing us up with an old fictional TV show about Alaska. Get behind me. I’ll protect you.” He nobly placed himself between me and the egret as we edged into the street to go around it, then hopped up on the sidewalk again. Will kept looking back at the bird, though, like he thought it would stalk us. “Honestly, more than the weirdness, it’s the heat that’s getting to me. Right now in Duluth it’s probably in the fifties.”
    I shook my head. “If I lived there, I would lose so many parkas at parties.”
    “Parkas!” He gave me a quizzical smile. “You don’t really have an autumn here, do you?”
    “Define ‘autumn.’ ”
    “The leaves turn colors.”
    “No, we don’t have that.”
    “Hmm. It doesn’t even get cool?”
    “Define ‘cool.’ ”
    “Below freezing.”
    “Jesus Christ, that’s cool ?” I exclaimed. “We would call out the National Guard for that. But it has gotten below freezing here before.”
    “When?”
    I waved away the question, because I didn’t know the answer. “There’s probably a plaque commemorating the event on the foundation of the Historical Society building. Turn here.” We walked up my street. Even if the power to the streetlights had gone out and the moon and the stars had been blocked by clouds, I would have known when we approached my house from the sound of the crispy magnolia leaves strewn across the sidewalk. Several years’ worth.
    He nodded ahead of us. “Isn’t that the high school behind the fence?”
    “In all its glory.” I swept my arm in an arc wide enough that I pitched myself off balance and stumbled over a root that had broken through the sidewalk. Will grabbed my arm before I fell.
    The campus didn’t look too impressive. I’d had a good time for my first three-fourths of high school, but that was because I had a lot of friends and didn’t do a lot of homework, not because the school was some kind of fun factory. It was just a low concrete block labyrinth built to withstand hurricanes, although the gym and auditorium were taller, and our football stadium was visible in the distance. There were lots of palm trees, too, and a parking lot bleached white by the sun.
    “That’s a convenient location for you,” Will said. “Though I guess you have to go all the way around the fence to get to the front entrance.”
    “Yeah, I ride my bike when I have time. Then I can go straight to work after school. But some mornings I’m running late. Well, most mornings. Then I go over the fence.”
    “What if you have books and homework to carry?”
    “I don’t do my homework, so I don’t bring my books home.”
    “Oh.” He followed me onto the front porch and waited while I unlocked the door. When I turned back to him, his head was cocked to one side like he was trying to puzzle me out.
    I didn’t play games with people. Mostly I told the truth. What you saw was what you got. Maybe that confused him.
    “Come in?” I asked.
    He stared at me a second too long, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Sure.”
    He didn’t seem sure, though. The swashbuckling pirate I’d wanted was retreating over the waves, and I didn’t know why. He wasn’t drunk. In fact, now that I thought about it, had he even opened the beer I’d handed him? Maybe he was tired from his move. I knew if I’d moved to