“Tonight’s the big reveal,” Faith said, looking up from the spiderweb she was drawing on her little customer’s face. “Jake and Chloe … you know.”

She rolled her eyes up at the kid’s mom, having enough sense, at least, not to mention what the big reveal was about.

“Ugh. I’m so sick of those two making you look suicidal,” Annie said, earning an appalled look from the mom. She pursed her lips and studied me for a moment. “You know what you need? You need a random hook-up. A revenge hook-up. Square things up between you and Jake.”

The little kid’s mother gasped and tugged him off the chair before Faith could finish her masterpiece. They disappeared into the crowd, the mom shooting dirty looks back over her shoulder. Annie didn’t even seem to notice.

“Great! You just lost us two dollars,” Faith groused, throwing her hands up.

Annie ignored her and started to turn in a slow circle, tapping her index finger against her chin. “Now, let’s see … who would be a good random hook-up for Ally Ryan …?”

“Annie, stop. I don’t want a random hook-up,” I said, glancing nervously at Faith, who had one of the biggest mouths in Northern New Jersey. Neither of them knew I had already, briefly, psychotically considered a random hook-up with Lincoln. And neither of them would ever know that.

“Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet,” Annie said. She tilted her head as a pack of jersey-sporting football players strolled by. “Hmmm … Will Halloran’s kind of hot.”

I gave Will the once-over and mentally agreed. Will had one of those compact, muscular, running-back bodies that made girls swoon whenever he happened to take his shirt off. Couple that with the warm brown eyes, the killer smile, and the genuine nice-guy attitude, and he’d be a good hook-up for anyone. Just not me.

“Not my type,” I said, hoping she would drop it.

As the football team headed toward the popcorn booth, Lincoln himself sidled up behind Annie. He had an eye patch over one eye and a red bandana tied around his head. Wisps of his red hair stuck out over his eyes and around his ears.

“S’up?” he said, holding out his ever-present wax-paper bag. “Nonpareil?”

Annie turned and slowly ran her eyes over him. I blushed. Hard. Suddenly I recalled the feeling of his arm around me, his thumb hooked into my waistband, and I could hardly look him in the eye.

“How much sugar would you say you consume in one day?” I asked him, trying to be normal and pretend like I didn’t know my BFF was sizing him up for potential sexual relations.

“It’s less if you take one.” He smirked and shook the bag in front of me. I rolled my eyes as I plucked a chocolate. Annie stepped behind him, checked out his butt, and gave me a thumbs-up over his shoulder.

“Stop it!” I said through clenched teeth.

“Stop what?” Lincoln looked confused.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

I grabbed a handful of candy and stuffed it in my mouth. Annie stepped out from behind Lincoln.

“I’m gonna go check on the ice-cream stand,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Huge mistake assigning it to the jazz band. They’re eating the profits and then some.”

As she walked off, taking slow, sideways steps, she lifted a hand next to her cheek to block her lips from his sight, and mouthed to me, “He’s cute! Do him!”

I almost choked. Luckily, Annie had had enough with the torture. She whirled away, tulle spinning, disappearing quickly into the crowd.

“So. Mrs. Thompson tells me I’m supposed to paint faces. Which is good because I rock at art,” Lincoln said, using his tongue to dislodge some chocolate wedged between his teeth and his cheek.

“Really?” Faith said.

“No.” He looked me up and down. “You don’t look busy. Wanna give me a goatee and a scar? Make me look authentic?”

I swallowed the massive mound of melting chocolate and licked my lips. I felt hot from head to toe, and was glad to have something to distract me from thoughts of Lincoln’s butt. Was Annie right about its thumbs-up-worthiness?

“Sure,” I replied, gesturing to the chair at the end of the table. “Have a seat.”

Lincoln complied, dropping the wax-paper bag on the table and dusting some white sprinkles from his fingers. I picked up a black crayon and hesitated, looking him in the eye.

Okay. No more butt-thoughts, but now I was looking right into his eyes. His intensely green, smiling eyes. And suddenly I realized there was no way to do this without touching his face. I’d been doing it all day. Holding the person’s chin, tilting the cheek, tilting it back again. Was I going to touch Lincoln Carter’s face right now? My pulse began to thrum in my ears. I could feel that I was blushing and I felt the sudden need to track down Annie and kick her in the shin.

“Just be gentle,” he said seriously.

I laughed nervously and rolled my eyes. “I promise.”

As I leaned in to start his goatee, Faith eyed me curiously. I hoped she wasn’t putting two and two together—that she wasn’t thinking I was considering Annie’s suggestion. Because I wasn’t. Not anymore. Lincoln just had a flirtatious personality. That was it.

Besides. I hadn’t thought about Jake and Chloe in two whole minutes. That had to be some kind of record.

jake

I was sitting at the huge table in the Applebys’ dining room, staring at this champagne pear salad thing that Mrs. Appleby could not shut up about, when Chloe’s fork suddenly clattered against her china plate.

“Mom, Dad, there’s something I have to tell you.”

My legs stopped bouncing under the table. “What, now?”

We had decided to wait until after dinner. The plan had been hashed and rehashed fourteen thousand times. She couldn’t just ditch the plan. Chloe gave me an apologetic look and shrugged. I glanced at her father, who was slowly finishing his last bite, and my life flashed before my eyes, right down to my goldfish, Beckham, who’d died in the third grade. But I guess I saw her point. Sitting here knowing what was coming was torture. Might as well get it over with. I pushed my chair back a little bit, in case I had to run.

“What is it, sweetie?” Chloe’s mother asked.

She looked pale under her helmet of blond hair, and her hand fluttered up to fiddle with her pearls. For a split second I wondered if she already knew somehow. Woman’s intuition or whatever.

“What’s going on?” my mother asked, smiling at me. Like she was expecting good news. What that could be, I had no idea. Maybe she thought Chloe and I were going to tell them we were a couple, which was what my mom had wanted all summer. Suddenly I felt sorry for her.

Chloe laid her cloth napkin down flat on the table and pushed back too. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was—that we should have planned a strategic escape route. She’d told me she was going to be blunt, but what did that mean, exactly? I held my breath and prayed like I’d never prayed before.

“I’m pregnant,” she said flatly. “Jake and I are …” She paused and shot me this pained look. Almost like she was apolo-gizing. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Yep. That was blunt.

“What?”

That would be the four of them. At the same time. At roughly the same glass-cracking pitch. For a second there was silence, except for my heart beating in my ears, my eyes, my stomach, my toes. I glanced over my shoulder at the door.

“Young lady,” Mr. Appleby said in a warning tone, gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

But he stopped there. His words just hung in the air over the table while the candles flickered. A pear slice slowly slipped from the top of my mound of spinach to the edge of the plate. It knocked a walnut onto the white tablecloth, and a brown stain of dressing spread all around. It looked like blood seeping from a gunshot wound.

“No,” my mother said, standing suddenly. “No no no no no no no. You two aren’t even … I mean, you haven’t even … You’re dating Ally!” she shouted at me accusingly.