The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) Read Free Page A

some guy. Millicent tugged at her arm. “Did you see Aaron come in?”
    Kimmy stared at her for a few seconds and glanced around awkwardly. “I don’t know.”
    “His friends came in a few minutes ago,” Millicent told her. “Was he with them?”
    The guy waltzing with Kimmy leaned closer to speak loudly over the music. “He’s in the closet with Jeannie.”
    Millicent and I both responded at the same time. “ What? ”
    I felt stunned and paralyzed, while steam came out of Millicent’s ears. She marched straight over to the closet, flicked on the overhead lights, and whipped the door open.
    There they were, for all the world to see, lips smacking and hands groping.
    They jumped apart at the intrusion, and everyone in the rec room shouted at Millicent to turn off the lights, but she simply stood there, motionless, staring. I did the same from across the room, unable to swallow the Doritos in my mouth.
    “You were supposed to be my friend,” she said to Jeannie. “You said we were blood sisters!” Then she turned and ran up the stairs.
    Some other kid moved to switch off the lights, while Jeannie reached out to shut the closet door again. She met my gaze for a second, and simply shrugged with what struck me as an apology—as if to say: What did you expect? It couldn’t be helped .
    My stomach dropped, and I wanted to pound my brother into the ground. But he was bigger than me and I knew I’d end up getting pounded—in front of everyone.
    So I went outside to get Gordon and we left in a hurry, up the stairs and out the front door. It wasn’t easy to pass by the closet a second time, knowing the great love of my life was in there necking with the brother I despised. I wanted to cry, but not in front of everyone. Another part of me just wanted to hit something.
    Outside, we found Millicent, sitting on the curb in tears.
    “Hey Millicent,” I said gently. We sat down on either side of her. “Are you okay?”
    She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her sleeve. “I can’t believe she did that.”
    “Me neither,” I replied.
    “She’s the one who kept telling me to go after him. She’d say things like: ‘He’s looking at you. I think he likes you. He’s checking you out.’ But none of it was true, and I don’t know why she did that when she liked him all along.”
    “We thought she liked Jack,” Gordon said, and I felt like a fool.
    Millicent turned to me. “I know, right? She was walking home with you every day. Did she ever let on that she liked Aaron?”
    “Not once,” I replied, thinking back on all our conversations, and fighting to keep the hurt inside.
    “Some friend she was,” Millicent said, shaking her head as a car pulled up. “Here come my parents. I gotta go. See you guys.”
    We all stood up and backed away from the curb. Millicent got into the car and it drove away, while Gordon and I began to walk home in silence.
    After a long while, he said, “You’re better off without her.”
    I shoved my hands into my pockets and shivered in the late October chill. “I guess so. I just thought she really liked me—but I won’t be so gullible next time. I think I’ll stay away from girls for a while.”
    I didn’t speak to Aaron when he arrived home an hour later, but that was nothing new. When it came to women, I’d learned a long time ago that he would always have the advantage, and he would always win.
    What I didn’t know was that sometimes in life, second place can turn out to be even better than first, for a variety of reasons.
    In any case, the race wasn’t over yet.

Chapter Six

    If I thought I had it rough on Monday morning—having to face Jeannie with no idea what to say to her—it was ten times worse for Millicent. Not only had she been rejected by the boy she liked, but she had also been betrayed by the girls who had taken her under their wing on her first day at a new school.
    At lunch time, Millicent chose not to sit with them, and because she was new in