“Go away,” came her quiet reply.
“It’s Guy.”
“I’m fine,” she huffed, still not opening the door.
I knew I could help her if she’d just let me. I was a peer tutorin Montreal.
“I have M&Ms,” I said, tempting her with her favorite candy. I didn’t really have M&Ms, but I knew where Heather hid them from Kitty.
She honked her nose into a tissue, then the door creaked open. She walked back to the middle of her floor. There was a math test with a red forty-two at the top.
“Ouch.” I nudged the paper with my socked foot.
“Dad’s going to kill me,” she sulked.
I nodded, chewing my lip. “What if you know how to fix your mistakes?”
She blinked up at me and narrowed her eyes.
“Come on,ma puce. Get a pencil and paper and I’ll get the M&Ms.” The term of endearment just flew out of my mouth and I couldn’t take it back.Ma puce: literally, my flea. When it’s said to someone younger, it’s cutesy. When it’s said to a girlfriend, it’s very affectionate. I didn’t know which of those Kitty was to me, but the name seemed to fit.
Kitty studied me and got a tiny smile. I fully expected her to question the French, but she didn’t say a word about it.
We settled in on her floor with chocolate and math problems. I looked over what she’d done, and where she went wrong.
“It looks like you skip a couple steps every time. Does that sound right?”
“Probably, yeah.” Her cheeks flushed.
“I’m pretty good with this stuff. I used to tutor back home. Do you want me to be your tutor?”
“Really?” Her eyes brightened. “You’d do that? I’m sure Mom and Dad could pay you.”
I waved that off. “You’re my friend. It’s what friends do.”
By the time Heather and Frank got home, I’d helped Kitty correct her mistakes on half of her test. Her smile had fully returned and she was back to throwing M&Ms at me every once in a while.
An inexplicable warmth ran through my veins. It was a warmth I sought out constantly.
But it was never quite the same if it didn’t come from Kitty. And that one day in the storage closet at the rink, I screwed it all up.
Chapter 2
Kitty
“She is so pathetic. I heard she sucked him off but she was so bad at it, he made her stop.”
My stomach dropped as two other voices laughed. I was in the bathroom before third period. No matter who they were talking about, it wasn’t good.
“He pushed her off him like she was diseased. It was hilarious.”
“She follows him around like a lost puppy. He only hangs out with her because he has to, anyway. If Frank weren’t his best friend, he’d have no reason to be around her,” another voice added.
My mind flicked through the roster of boys at our school. The only Frank was my brother.
Me. They were talking aboutme. And Guy. I’d never blown anyone, or offered, much less my brother’s best friend. Guy kissed me in a smelly storage closet at the ice rink and Shane and Brooklynn caught us. It must have been Brooklynn with the diseased comment. I was mortified.
On that fateful day of the closet kiss, Guy and I couldn’texactly fight in the car on the way home, because Frankie was there. While I was waiting for him to come unlock the car, I got a barrage of texts from Guy.
