Michelle raised her pale eyebrows. “Always,” she said.
“Okay,” she began again, then promptly broke off when she heard the telltale squeak of Kristina’s footsteps in the hallway. “Come in here and stop lurking,” she called.
Silence; then, a moment later, Kristina appeared in the doorway. “I wasn’t lurking,” she protested, looking injured. “I was passing by.”
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.” Kristina was ten and small for her age, with big round glasses and a slightly crooked haircut that made her look like a Williamsburg hipster. Gabby loved her like all hell. “I need you to tell Mom something for me anyway,” she instructed. “Go downstairs and tell her there is an extremely slim possibility that Ryan McCullough is going to come for Monopoly.”
“Who’s Ryan McCullough?” Kristina asked.
“Thehockeyplayer?” Michelle said, sitting upright on the fluffy white area rug. Then, to Kristina: “He’s a super-hot hockey player; he’s the only freshman on varsity.”
“And he’s cominghere?” Kristina asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabby said, feeling her stomach flip over again at the possibility. “Probably not, in reality. I just saw him after school today and we were talking—”
“And you randomly invited him to Monopoly and he said yes?” Michelle asked. “How did you not tell me this?”
“I mean, not randomly,” Gabby admitted, already wishing she hadn’t said anything. Now when he inevitably didn’tshow up she was going to look pathetic on top of being let down. “He was here for Celia’s party last week.”
“Really?” Michelle’s eyes were wide. “He was here? You didn’t say that.”
Gabby shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal,” she lied. The last thing she wanted was to admit what a full-on idiot she’d made of herself that night. She should never have left her room to begin with. “We talked a little, it was just—” She shook her head, pushing the conversation—and Ryan’s dumb smile—out of her mind. “Whatever. I don’t actually think he’s even coming.”
“Uh-huh.” Michelle was looking at her with great skepticism. “Is this going to be like the time you told everyone that Hillary Clinton RSVP’d yes to your birthday party?”
“That was in second grade!” Gabby said, frowning. “I told one lie in second grade. I’d like to be let off the hook now.”
“Girls?” That was Gabby’s mom on the landing, her ash-blond hair in a short, stubby ponytail and her tortoiseshell glasses perched on top of her head. “Daddy’s got snacks ready, if you want to come down and play.”
“Gabby invited a boy to Monopoly,” Kristina reported immediately.
“Really?” her mom asked.
Gabby sighed noisily. She didn’t entirely appreciate the gobsmacked tone they were all using, like she was a dog walking on its hind legs or a chimpanzee using sign language,some kind of circus act. Granted, it wasn’t like she’d ever invited a boy—or a girl who wasn’t just a friend—or a girl whowasjust a friend who wasn’t Michelle, for that matter, over before. But still. “I mean, technically yes, but again, I don’t think he’s actually going to come, so there’s no reason for everybody to be—”
“What’s going on?” That was her dad at the bottom of the stairs in an apron with the De Cecco pasta logo on it, which he’d gotten by sending in a dozen carefully detached boxtops: her dad was a sucker for both any promotional giveaway and any complex carbohydrate.
“Gabby invited a boy to Monopoly,” her mom informed him.
Celia appeared from the living room in a drapey black sweater, her perfect fashion-blogger hair falling over her shoulders in bouncy yellow waves. “Shedid?”
“Oh my god, stop!” Gabby almost laughed, but only to avoid some other, less desirable reaction. “Please do not be weird about this. I don’t know how many times I can say there’s no way he’s even going to show.”
Then the doorbell rang.
RYAN
Gabby swung the door open wearing a plaid shirt and a disbelieving expression, her hair a flyaway blond cloud aroundher face. “You came,” she said, not sounding entirely pleased about it.
“Uh, yeah,” Ryan said. “I hope that’s okay.” He held up the bag of sour-cream-and-onion Ruffles he’d dug out of his mom’s pantry before coming over. “I brought chips.”
“You brought chips,” Gabby repeated, stepping back to let him inside. As she did, a tiny bespectacled girl in a SUNY Binghamton hoodie scrambled down the hallway behind her, peering around Gabby’s shoulder before darting away again.
“He brought chips,” Ryan heard the girl report.
“Jesus Christ, Kristina!” Gabby called over her shoulder. Then, turning back to Ryan, “Come inside, I guess. We’re just about to start.”
The first thing Ryan registered about Gabby’s house was how many girls there were in it. There was Gabby herself, obviously, plus her sister Celia, the junior with the movie-star hair. The littlest sister from the hallway, Kristina, sat on the carpet with her legs pretzeled, next to a girl from school whose name Ryan thought was Michelle and whom he had noticed only because she frowned literally all of the time.
