“That’s all right,” Elise said drearily. “I don’t have anything to do with my life anymore except babysit.”

As he straightened, he looked over at Elise and saw the can in her hand. His eyes narrowed into icy blue slits. In two strides, he’d reached her and grabbed the beer from her hand. “If you want to get drunk on your own time, that’s one thing. But don’t you ever do it when you’re watching the kids.” His voice got louder. “Do you even know where they are?”

I would have withered up and died if someone talked to me like that. Elise took it in stride.

“Abby is asleep—at least she was until you just yelled. Bailey and Olivia are watching TV. Dan is putting away his junk, and I’m entertaining a guest.”

Elise’s brother glanced at me for the first time. He didn’t seem impressed.

“What, you’ve only been here twenty-four hours, and you’ve already found drinking buddies?”

My mouth fell open. I knew I looked stupid, but I couldn’t help it.

“Cassidy lives down the street. She brought over cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood. Unless you give me my beer back, I’ll give yours to the dog.”

He crumpled the top of the can in a way that made its return unlikely, then stalked out of the room without another glance at either of us.

Elise flipped him off and then leaned back into her chair with her arms folded. “That was my brother Josh.”

“Oh.” And then, because I felt I ought to say something else, I added, “I guess you two don’t get along.”

“Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t.”

An awkward silence came between us.

I shifted in my chair. “Well, I’d better go. But if you want help finding your classes tomorrow, I can give you a tour in the morning.”

“That’s okay. It’s such a small school. How hard can it be to find things?”

To Elise’s credit, she got up and showed me to the door. She even thanked me for the cookies and told me goodbye. I half expected she wouldn’t.

I walked back down the street shaking my head. I had hoped for someone who was funny, smart, nice, and not a drama queen. Out of those things, I’d gotten, um, nothing.

I went inside my house and sat down at the kitchen table. Mom was on the other side surrounded by charcoal sketches. She was a freelance artist and frequently worked all day on her projects. This meant dinner would be something Dad picked up on the way home from work. I was clearly excused from kitchen duties tonight, but I still sat there, staring off at the cabinets and replaying the scene with Elise in my mind.

“What’s the new girl like?” Mom asked.

“Sort of psychotic.”

Mom glanced up from her paper pad. “Why is that?”

“I think it’s because she comes from a family of psychotics.”

“And what did this psychotic family do?”

“Yelled at each other.”

Mom went back to her pad, making quick, dark strokes on the paper. “If that’s your criterion, then we’re occasionally psychotic too.”

“Yeah, but at least we don’t flip each other off.”

“And we can be mighty proud of that.” Mom laughed, and suddenly it did seem funny—the thought of my parents and I giving each other the finger. Despite what my mom had said, we hardly ever fought, let alone yelled at each other. My life was quiet, predictable, sane. That’s the way I liked it.

So who cared if Elise was rude? Eventually I’d find another best friend. And I still had Faith and Caitlin to eat with and talk to. I probably wouldn’t see much of Elise at all.

Chapter 3

As I stood at the bus stop the next morning, rereading parts of Macbeth for honors English, an ancient white Nissan pulled up. Elise leaned out of the passenger side. “Hey, Cassidy, do you want a ride?”

After yesterday’s reception, I couldn’t believe she offered. I stood there with the book open in my hand and stammered out, “Sure,” because I couldn’t think of an excuse to turn her down. I climbed into the back seat and noticed Josh was driving. He didn’t say anything to me, but Elise turned around so we could see each other. She was smiling like she was happy to see me.

I put on my seatbelt. “It’s nice that your parents let you have the car for school. That’s still a matter of debate at my house.”

“It’s Josh’s car,” she said, “and he never lets anyone forget it. I’m surprised he doesn’t ask for cab fare.”

Without glancing at her, Josh said, “That could be arranged.”

Elise ignored him. “My parents would never let me take one of their cars to school. I don’t know what I’ll do next year when Josh graduates.”

“Ride the bus,” Josh said.

“No way. I’ll have to date someone who owns a car.”

Josh came to a stop sign, looked both ways, and almost stopped all of the way before he went through the intersection. “You could always get a summer job and save up for a car like I did.”

Elise let out a snort. “I doubt there are many high-paying jobs for teenagers in Pullman. So hey, that means you’ll have to get some measly minimum-wage job next summer—just another one of those small-town benefits Mom and Dad were so eager to have us experience. Maybe McDonald’s is hiring. You’d look spiffy in their uniform.”

He shook his head. “We’ll probably be too busy helping Mom and Dad with their store to get jobs.”

“You mean you’ll be busy with the store. I’ll be stuck at home babysitting.” Elise wrinkled her nose. “And with what they’ll pay me, I won’t even be able to afford a bike.” She let out a martyred sigh. “It’s settled. I’ll have to find some hot guy with a car.”

Josh smiled. “I’d better warn all the upperclassmen with wheels.”

“Just remember,” she said, sending him a sharp look. “I know where there’s video of you running around in nothing but Batman tighty underwear. You don’t want to see that make its way around the internet, do you?”

“I was six at the time,” Josh said.

She waved her hand in his direction as if to erase this point. “My camera works. It wouldn’t be hard to capture some of your less-than-flattering behavior. I’d start listing things right now, but I don’t want to gross out Cassidy.”

Josh made a scoffing sound. “Like what—you mean all the times I don’t act like a girl?”

Elise leaned closer to me and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “He lets the dog lick his face. That’s like frenching with a canine.”

Josh shot Elise a look, taking his eyes from the road for the first time. “No, it’s not. Sheesh, Elise, what have you been doing on your dates?”

She smiled at him smugly. “Are you going to warn the upperclassman about that too? I’ll have a boyfriend with wheels in no time.”

“And a few communicable diseases,” he added.

“Cad,” she said and laughed—a sound that was light and airy and told me that this sort of teasing was normal between them. It was as if all the yelling—all the flipping off of yesterday—hadn’t happened. Elise seemed so nice, so normal that I almost expected her to say, “Oh, by the way, I have an evil, psychotic twin sister. You may have met her.”

Another thing hit me about Elise. Although she had nearly called me boring for preferring homework to partying, the girl had a vocabulary: cad, canine, capture some of your less-than-flattering behavior. Elise was smarter than she let on.

“What’s your class schedule?” I asked her.

She pulled out a paper from her backpack and handed it to me. It was so crumpled, I wondered if she’d wadded it up at some point. I could imagine her doing that—crumpling it up and throwing it across the room. Maybe I would have done the same thing if my parents had uprooted me. It made me want to help her, to make all of this easier for her.

“We’ve got lunch and Honors English together,” I said.

She looked down at the Macbeth book in my lap. “Is Honors English doing Shakespeare all year?”