Now that she was over the shock, anger was beginning to worm its way in, burning away the worry she’d been wrestling with all day. “That was a dirty, dirty trick! I hope Mommy spanks you every day for a month!”
“Kylie.” Mommy broke in, her voice soft and soothing. “Danny’s been punished, and he apologized. What’s the polite thing to do when someone apologizes?”
“I don’t care about being polite.” Spinning around, she snatched up her bookbag and shot Danny a glare. “I was worried about you all morning, and when Sadie said she saw you in the infirmary, I thought I was gonnadie,I was so scared. And it was all a lie! I hate you, Daniel Hollis, and I never want to speak to you again!”
Tears blurred her vision as she marched from the room out into the hallway. Ignoring Danny’s shouts for her to come back, she walked as fast as she could without getting in trouble for running and headed straight for her sanctuary.
The library.
Making a beeline for the romance section, she threw herself down onto one of the beanbag chairs and let the tears come. It didn’t matter just then thatmaybeshe was overreacting andmaybeshe shouldn’t have said the things she did. Her hearthurt, more than it ever had in her whole life, and she just wanted to be mad about it for a while.
She wasn’t sure how long she was there before someone else joined her, settling into the beanbag chair beside her.
“Wanna talk about it?” Eliza asked quietly.
“No. Boys are stupid.”
Her other bestie’s tinkling laugh seemed to echo in the silent library. “That, they are. What did Danny do?”
“Heliedto me.”
“Danny?” Surprise colored Eliza’s tone. “About what?”
“He faked being sick so he could play hooky and I felt so bad for him all day! I was so worried! And then Sadie told me she saw him and Mommy in the infirmary and I freaked out thinking he was like, dying or something, but the only thing wrong with him is that he’s a liar, liar, pants on fire.”
“That jerk.”
The simple, easy agreement loosened the knots in Kylie’s stomach and she even managed a weak laugh. “He really is. But I was kind of a jerk back to him.”
“Uh-oh. What did you do?”
“I told him I hated him and I never want to speak to him again.”
She snuck a peak over at Eliza just in time to see her friend wince. “Oof. You better hope he doesn’t tell your Mommy.”
“She was standing right there when I said it.”
Eliza’s eyes went round as she let out a low whistle. “And you’re able to sit comfortably?”
“Yeah, I sorta ran off right after that.” Groaning, Kylie let her head fall back against the bookcase. “I’m gonna be in so much trouble.”
“Probably. So if you’re gonna be in trouble anyway, we should go get some ice cream. Sugar makes everything better.”
It was tempting,sotempting. But… “I shouldn’t. I’m going to be in enough trouble, I don’t want to make it worse.”
“Suit yourself. You want me to walk you back to your Mommy’s classroom?”
“In a minute. I wanna check out some books, first.”
“You’ve read everything in this library, twice.”
“Sometimes they have new books!”
They did indeed have two new books from her favorite “guilty pleasure” author, Sadie Minx, so she checked those out along with the first four books of the series so she could reread the whole series together. With her new finds tucked safely away in her bookbag, she walked with Eliza back to her Mommy’s classroom, the rock in her stomach growing heavier with every step.
By the time they made it back to the room, Addison’s last class of the day was letting out. She and Eliza waited outside for everyone to file out before Eliza hugged her hard and reminded her she was just a phone call away if Kylie needed anything.
She did poke her head in the classroom long enough to stick her tongue out at Danny before tilting her nose in the air and flouncing off back to the library, where she would have to wait another hour or so for her own Daddy to finish his classes for the day.
