Oscar groaned, and scooted down the couch toward me. “I totally thought you’d go for truth.”
I grinned. “That’s why I chose dare.”
“Okay, fine,” he said. “I dare you to tell me if you have a crush on Greg Gunther.”
A quick heat danced across my cheeks and down my neck, turning my chest a bright red. My thoughts in exactly this order were:Gross! Rude! Okay... maybe not that gross. I didn’tlike-likeGreg, but even if I did, I knew he wouldn’t like a round girl with a surprising amount of body hair.
But my next thought was something I said out loud before I had a chance to decide if it was even a good idea. “Why? Do you like Greg?”
Oscar scoffed, but I know my question wasn’t totally out of left field. I was pretty sure Oscar liked boys too.
He looked at me for a while, and I thought he might say more, but instead Oscar patted my knee and said, “Don’t worry. That big-nosed goofball is all yours.”
I sighed at the thought of Greg and his toothy grin. He was somehow both cool and nerdy at the same time. I slithered down into the cushions of the couch and covered my blushing face with a throw pillow.
“Oh, Sweet Pea,” Oscar said dramatically. “Your secret is safe with me.” And then he hit play, unfreezing Cliff VanWarren, and life as usual resumed.
As I sit down at lunch with Oscar and open my lunchbox, Greg says, “Sweet Pea would know.”
I don’t know what he thinks I could possibly know, but that doesn’t stop me from grinning like a dweeb, until I catch myself and suddenly stop.
“Sweet Pea would know what?” asks Oscar as he swaps me one tamale for half a peanut butter and banana sandwich. (It’s a pity trade, honestly. Oscar’s mom’s tamales are so good, she makes them every December and lets us sell them at the holiday market for a class fund-raiser.)
“About that Miss Flora lady on your street,” says Greg.
Cooper Lawson leans around the other side of Greg.Coop is a thin black boy with midnight colored skin who always wears his perfectly maintained cowboy hat and creased Wranglers to school no matter how hot it is. He laid claim to Greg on his first day. Oscar says it’s like he peed on him to mark his territory. It was kind of annoying the way Cooper hogged Greg, but honestly, if you’re lacking in the friend department here in Valentine, the only option is to act fast when fresh meat shows up.
“My brother, Dale, said she keeps every single one of her pets that die and gets them stuffed at Topher’s Taxidermy on Eleventh Avenue. But that’s not the weirdest part. She captures any mice in her house and gets them stuffed and uses them to re-create famous paintings.”
“I don’t actually—”
“Sweet Pea is, like, the only person Miss Flora Mae even talks to,” says Oscar, like that’s suddenly something worth bragging about.
Way to put me on the spot. “Not true. She talks to other people.”
“Well, you live next to her, don’t you?” asks Greg.
“More like she lives on either side of her,” says Oscar. Immediately, he realizes he’s said too much and looks at me in a panic. Mom and Dad getting a divorce was sort of big news here in town. No one really knowswhythey got a divorce, but it’s not every day that the town therapist, whois known for her marital counseling, gets a divorce herself. That’s scandal enough without people knowing they’re basically neighbors now.
“Huh?” grunts Cooper. “What does that even mean?”
I let out a puff of air. “My mom lives on one side of her house and my dad lives on the other.”
“Whoa,” says Greg. “That’s so weird.” But he doesn’t say it in a mean way. More like when you find out that narwhals are real or that the heart of the shrimp is located in its head. “Are you excited about double Christmases and double birthdays?” he asks.
“Yeah,” says Cooper. “I’ve always been kind of jealous of kids with divorced parents. Double gifts. Double allowance. Double vacation.”
I stare down at my half sandwich and tamale, considering where to start. “It’s really not that great,” I mumble.
“Sweet Pea,” says Greg, “I meant to tell you, I found this YouTube channel that’s nothing butAmerica’s Most HauntedEaster eggs and conspiracy theories.”
“Oh, cool,” I say. And then trying to sound very casual, “Maybe you can show us during our library hour?”
I thought maybe once I got to know Greg, the anxious feelings would go away, but it only made it worse. He loves my and Oscar’s favorite TV show, and every time he and his family go on vacation, they do whatever ghost tour is local to that city, so he’s, like, very cultured. He’s evengone on a cemetery tour in New Orleans. And on top of all that, he has two cats. A boy cat person! They’re both fat tabbies (one with a stubby tail) who lived in the dumpster behind his uncle’s Cajun restaurant in Houston. Their names are Gumbo and Beignet—how cute is that?
Greg’s eyes shine as he continues. “One guy thinks Cliff VanWarren isn’t even alive and that he’s actually a ghost. Like, that he died during filming in an early season and his spirit still hosted the show until it was canceled.”
Did I mention that he’s not even a little bit ashamed of looking like a big nerd? I like people who like the things they like, even when others don’t get it.
