Picture Perfect Read Free

coming,” I told her.
    “I forgot how she is,” Adam commented as we walked over to the stairs together, me loving the feeling of digging my toes into the soft, warm sand. “I mean, maybe it’s a good thing she hasn’t changed, with everything that’s happened.”
    “How is she?” I asked.
    “Like, um, a whirling dervish,” Adam said. “Those things that spin around and around.”
    “Whirling dervish? Wow, have you been taking vocab vitamins along with your steroids?” I asked.
    “Shut up.” He gave me a playful—but still possibly bruising, with his strength—hip check as we headed up to the deck. “I don’t take steroids, okay? I mean, I know guys who’ve done it and it’s disgusting. So let’s not talk about that anymore,” Adam said in a more serious tone.
    “Agreed,” I said. “I didn’t really think that, you know.” Although it had kind of crossed my mind, because I didn’t understand howhe’d transformed himself. If he’d changed that much…what would Spencer look like? “Anyway, let’s forget we ever said anything, and just eat.”
    “Deal.” Adam picked up a paper plate and started loading it with food. I followed his lead, taking some of almost everything.
    Heather and I sat next to each other on the deck. We both sat cross-legged, in a sort of yoga position. She’s tiny—about five feet tall—and used to do gymnastics at the same level I danced—we were both a little obsessed. She’d always been amazingly flexible, and I was, too, so we used to spend these vacations trying to out-bend each other doing splits, back bends, handstands, and anything else we could do to be pretzel-esque. Adam and Spencer had dubbed us the tumbling twins—or maybe it was the tumbling twits. I suddenly couldn’t remember.
    Maybe there were some things about our last get-together that I’d purposely forgotten, like the look on Spencer’s face when I’d awkwardly tried to tell him how I felt—or the look of his back, rather, when he turned away, ignoringme, as if I hadn’t said anything. A person can forget a lot in two years. But that? No. And if I hadn’t forgotten, I worried he hadn’t, either.
    Maybe the Flanagans won’t come, I thought, looking around at everyone else already gathered. Maybe they decided to stay home. Maybe their car broke down and they’d decided to just can it.
    Oh, relax , I told myself as I bit into a cob of buttery corn. Spencer has moved on, and so have you. You’ve had tons of other guys in your life since then. Sure. There’s that tech guy at the Apple store…and the guy at the Starbucks drive-through you flirted with—once—and…um…
    Adam sat down across from us. “What’s wrong with chairs, anyway? You guys against chairs? Wait, I know. You have to stretch. Isn’t that what you were always doing?”
    “Before I quit gymnastics,” Heather said. “Actually, I just didn’t see enough chairs.”
    “When did you quit gymnastics?” Adam asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
    “After the accident,” she said. “I broke a few ribs, and…it hurt to breathe, never mind flip.Plus I was just ready to make some changes.”
    Adam nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I mean…about everything. Must have been really hard.”
    There was a long pause. I looked at Adam, then at Heather, then at my plate, wishing I could say something decent that didn’t sound completely clichéd.
    “You know what?” Heather suddenly looked up at both of us and smiled. “We have to go out tonight.”
    “We do?” I asked. I hadn’t pictured going out and partying as being in the cards, not with the proportion of parents to us. I mean, it was something I’d hoped to achieve, but only in a fantasy, which is the way most of my daring plans occur.
    “We do. I mean, do you really want to sit around and listen to the guys all night? First they’ll talk about the place where they all lived, and who never washed the dishes, and who did, and who partied the most, and what