Keep You Read Free

door banged back against the wall as it was nearly ripped from its hinges.
                  “And there go all the chips,” Jordan complained as he listened to the commotion.
                  Mike was the first one into the living room. Jo glanced up from her favorite, coziest spot pushed back in the corner of Dad’s big-enough-for-two chair and saw Michael’s newfound cocky grin and smiling green eyes. He was growing his platinum blonde hair out and it covered the tops of his ears now. Two nights ago, Jo had watched him at the kitchen table taking a pair of scissors to a perfectly good pair of jeans, and then he’d safety pinned the cuts back together. When she’d asked him why he didn’t just wait until he tore a knee out of his pants, which was sure to happen if he played whiffle ball with her in the backyard, he’d snapped at her that she “didn’t know shit about being cool,” and then Mom had cuffed him on the back of the head.
                  He was wearing those jeans now, and his skateboard sneakers, and the four friends who trooped in after him were dressed similarly. Jo let her eyes move over them with the jaded disinterest that all younger sisters use when scoping out their brothers’ gangly friends: the one with the pimples, the one with braces, the one with fire engine red hair, and…
                  Jo glanced away from the last one, her little hands curling into fists in her lap. Her heart fluttered, just a little, like it did on the first day of school. And because that sensation was troubling and she didn’t quite understand it, she forced herself to look at Mike’s dark-haired friend again.
                  Her sister Jessica had a poster of a shirtless Brad Pitt hanging on the inside of her closet door upstairs. Their closet door, because they shared a room. Brad Pitt was tan and square-jawed and had sun-streaked blonde hair and Jo walked past his brooding picture at least twice every day and didn’t spare him a second thought.
                  Mike’s friend did not look like Brad Pitt. He wasn’t tan and he wasn’t square-jawed. His hair, a little shaggy and a little spiky, was a glossy dark, dark brown, or maybe even black, she thought. He lifted his head up to scan the room and his eyes were as blue and clear as pool water. He was wearing a black AC/DC t-shirt (one of her favorite bands) and red sneakers peeked out from under his jeans (her favorite color). Staring at him like this only made her heart beat faster and Jo tore her eyes away as she felt a warm, unwelcome flush creep up her neck and come to full bloom in her cheeks.
                  No , she thought to herself. She was not Jessica; she did not get all heart-pounding and head-spinning over boys. No, no, no, NO .
                  But he was coming into the living room and he was plopping down on the end of the sofa nearest her, resting his red sneakers up on the edge of the coffee table. And her heart was thundering against her breastbone. She felt a little nauseous. Stupid! She chastised herself.
                  “Move, midget.” She hadn’t been paying attention to Mike, who now stood in front of her, a bag of Doritos and a Coke in one hand, the remote he’d taken from Jordan in the other, and was waving it at her. “Move,” he repeated when she only frowned at him.
                  “I’m sitting here,” she protested, which for some reason made Mike’s friends laugh.
                  “Not anymore. Get up , Jo.” He had that look in his eyes that meant if she didn’t relent, he’d grab her feet and drag her out of the chair.
                  She wasn’t going quietly, though. Jo lifted her chin to a proud angle, stuck her tongue out at him with slow deliberation – to the sound of more laughter – then stood with all the dignity she could muster, realized all the other