Swept Up

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Text copyright © 2012 by Taylor Morris. Cover illustration copyright © 2012 by Anne Keenan Higgins. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-101-55235-3

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 1

  “Mickey, hello? Are you listening?”

  At the sound of Kristen’s voice, I looked up from staring at the nothingness of the cream carpet in Lizbeth’s bedroom. It was Saturday night, and Kristen sat in front of the full-length mirror, waiting for me to work my magic.

  “Sorry,” I said. I began brushing her hair again. “Must have spaced out.”

  “You okay?” Lizbeth asked. She sat at her desk, a stack of magazines in front of her.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t really. If you’ve ever had a fight with a friend then I bet you can understand. And I had no one to blame but myself. Eve was determined to never talk to me again, all because of my big mouth.

  “You sure?” Kristen asked, looking at my reflection in the mirror.

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling the brush through her long, shiny hair. “Positive. Just thinking about how to do this look.” I nodded toward the magazine beside us, opened to a style she wanted me to try for the dance on Friday. I made a deep part on the side of Kristen’s head and brushed her hair over. Lizbeth kept her eyes on me for a moment longer before turning back to her magazine.

  I didn’t want to ruin our sleepover, our first without our friend—my friend—so I didn’t say what had me spaced out. The truth was, the night felt empty without Eve. And if I couldn’t fix things, this was the way they were going to be for the rest of seventh grade. And maybe our whole lives. The thought almost wrecked me.

  “So, Mickey,” Kristen said. “It’s been a week and we still haven’t heard the details about you and Kyle.” Her smile stretched wall-to-wall as she asked, “Has he kissed you yet?”

  “No!” I blurted out, ignoring the flash of heat on my cheeks and pulling a little too hard on Kristen’s hair, making her cringe. Kissing already? We’d only just started hanging out.

  “Have you tried to kiss him?” Kristen teased.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “Don’t you want him to kiss you?” Kristen asked.

  “Kristen,” I huffed. “We’re just hanging out. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Sure,” she said, a greedy grin on her face. “We believe you. Uh-huh.”

  “Hey,” I said, pointing the brush to her face in the mirror. “Never egg on a girl who holds your hair in her hands.”

  She laughed. “Then I surrender.”

  I tried to laugh, too, but being at Lizbeth’s without Eve was hard. Talking about Kyle was exciting, but I felt like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing between happiness over Kyle and sadness over Eve.

  Here’s the deal: Eve and Jonah were my two best friends who happened to like each other, and they started spending a lot of time together. Like, so much time together that they totally ignored everything and everyone else. I was pretty frustrated about it, so I came up with a plan to detach them from the hip. My goal was to remind them that hanging out with their own friends—like me and the girls—was actually a nice way to spend an evening. Except the plan blew up in my face when I altered the truth slightly, telling Jonah that Eve was upset and then telling Eve that Jonah didn’t want to hang out with her.

  Yeah, I know. It was a major bad-friend move.

  It almost broke them up. It definitely caused them both a lot of heartache with each other and with me. And for sure none of it was necessary. I’d butted in where I never should have. Jonah has forgiven me, but that’s Jonah—we’ve had plenty of ups and downs and stuff just rolls off him. But Eve felt hugely burned and said we needed to back off our friendship for a bit. Not exactly like a breakup, but a break nonetheless.

  I was embarrassed by what I’d done, but I also desperately wanted to make it up to her. Eve was my friend—I hated having her mad at me. I hated that I’d done something to make her mad at me. I knew I could be a good friend—a better friend—if she’d just give me the chance to prove it. So even though it was scary, I tried talking to her last week. Just casual stuff, no deep conversations. Baby steps.

  On Tuesday in English class, just before we took a quiz, Eve was digging frantically in her bag.

  “Eve, hey,” I whispered across the aisle. “Need a pen?”

  She shook her head no and kept digging. I grabbed my bag and quickly got an extra pen.

  “Here,” I said, leaning across to her. She was one seat up so her back was to me. She didn’t turn to look. “Eve.”

  Just as I was about to toss it onto her desk, Rebecca, a girl on the other side of Eve, offered her a pen, saving the day.

  I put the pen back in my bag, trying not to feel stupid. Trying not to wonder if she had ignored me on purpose.

  Each day at lunch Eve still sat with us, but she mostly talked to Jonah. She said hi to me; she even answered when I asked if she liked the lasagna special on Thursday (“I guess”), but it all felt flat and meaningless.

  On the other hand, things with Kyle were going great. We just got along so well, and he was s
o cute and sweet. And while I loved hanging out with Kristen and Lizbeth, talking about boys and doing hair, I had to admit—at least to myself—that I really missed Eve. It was like I missed her as much as I liked Kyle, if that makes any sense.

  “You don’t have to give us the details about Kyle if you don’t want to,” Lizbeth said as I thought about how to execute the style on Kristen’s hair. “But we are curious.”

  “Extremely curious,” Kristen added.

  Before Lizbeth could ask another question, her phone buzzed with a new text. I was relieved. With everything that was going on in my head, I wasn’t sure I was ready to spill it all only to have the girls pick it apart.

  “It’s from Matthew,” Lizbeth said, reading her phone.

  “What does it say?” Kristen asked.

  “Okay,” Lizbeth said, reading. “He just says that Tombstone is the best Western of all time.”

  Both girls looked disappointed. “What does that have to do with anything?” Kristen asked.

  “They must be watching movies at Tobias’s house,” Lizbeth said, dropping the phone on her desk and going back to her magazine.

  Kristen shook her head. “Back to Mickey, please. Come on, tell us everything!”

  “You don’t have to tell us everything,” Lizbeth said, eyeing Kristen. “We just want to know how it’s going. Like, is it good? Are you happy?”

  I looked at their expectant faces, Kristen’s a bit more eager (ravenous?) than Lizbeth’s friendly, concerned smile.

  “Yeah,” I said, unable to suppress the grin creeping across my face as I thought about Kyle. “Things are going well. He’s really . . . nice.”

  Kristen stared at me, openmouthed, in the mirror. “He’s nice?”

  I turned my attention back to Kristen’s long, layered hair. Yes, they were my friends, but I wasn’t sure I felt comfortable talking about this. It was only two weeks ago that Kyle and I started hanging out just the two of us, talking more and kind of giving each other looks. Kyle was thoughtful and made me laugh. He was also brilliant at coming up with fun ideas for stuff to do, like when he took me hiking up Bended Brook, this steep, hilly trail that has a full view of our entire Massachusetts town. That ranks as one of the best things I’ve ever done in Rockford.

  At the end of last weekend, I got the guts to ask him out. Just to get ice cream, no big deal—except that it was a big deal. We’d had a great time and when he dropped me off at home, he said we should do it again sometime. And that he would call me. Or text. I think it meant he was my boyfriend. But I still wasn’t entirely sure. (How do you know when someone is your boyfriend? Is it like knowing when you’ve done well on a test or when you’re having a really good hair day?)

  Kristen and Lizbeth watched me closely, waiting for me to tell them more.

  “Okay, he’s more than nice,” I finally admitted. “He’s awesome.”

  “He is really sweet, Mickey,” Lizbeth agreed.

  “You guys!” Kristen said, clearly still not happy with the details—or lack thereof. “Mickey, at least tell us about your date last week. We still haven’t heard about it. And have you had another date since that you haven’t told us about? Or plans for another?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, no other date. But, okay, last week,” I said, figuring it wouldn’t be horrible talking about something that had already happened. As opposed to talking about, you know, my feelings. “He met me at the salon after my shift and we walked to the Waffle Cone together. When we got there—”

  “Did you guys hold hands on the way there?” Kristen interrupted.

  “No, just wait,” I said, starting to feel flustered again. I took a deep breath and pulled my special boar-bristle-and-nylon hairbrush, the very best kind on the market, through her hair. “So we got to the Waffle Cone—”

  “You held hands later?” Kristen asked. “Because you haven’t held hands all week at school.”

  “How would you know?” I asked her. Talk about feeling like I was under a microscope. Had she been watching me?

  “Well, have you held hands?” Kristen pressed.

  I sighed. “Yes. No. Look, do you want to hear the story or not?”

  She clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes gleaming, and nodded yes.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Okay, so we got there and he was totally sweet about getting us that table in the corner by the window, the one that’s kind of private but you can see out onto Camden Way.”

  “Ooh, very nice,” Lizbeth said.

  “And then he, like, let me wait there while he went to get the ice cream. He totally wouldn’t let me pay for it, even though I dug my money out of my wallet and practically threw it at him.”

  “Good.” Kristen nodded as I twisted back her hair, thinking I might do some tousled bun look. “He should pay for it.”

  “You think?” I asked. “Even though I asked him out?”

  “Of course,” Kristen said. “He’s the boy.”

  “That shouldn’t matter,” I said. “It’s whoever does the asking out. Right, Lizbeth?”

  She was looking at her phone, waiting for another message from Matthew, I guessed. “Hmm, I don’t know. I kind of like the old-school idea of the guy paying, even though my mom says that in this day and age, a lady can pay her own way. It just seems more romantic.”

  “What’s romantic about pulling money out of a wallet?” I asked.

  Kristen said, “Do you really have to ask?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s not about the money,” Lizbeth said. “It’s about taking care of things, even little stuff like ice cream. It’s gentlemanly.” Her phone buzzed, and when she looked down at the message she furrowed her brow. “Matthew just wrote, ‘I’m your huckleberry.’ What does that mean?”

  “Like Huckleberry Finn?” I asked.

  She shook her head in annoyance and dropped the phone back on the desk. “I have no idea. But I do think it was sweet of Kyle to pay. I really like him.”

  “He’s really cool,” Kristen agreed.

  He was sweet and cool. He made me laugh and feel jittery, in a good way—like when he teasingly bumped my shoulder as we walked down the halls or called me after dinner to see how much progress I’d made on my homework.

  “She’s got that look on her face again,” Kristen said, shaking her head as she eyed me in the mirror. I pinned her hair into a bun, then used the sharp end of the comb I’d brought to pull a few pieces out so it looked casual and effortless.

  “Do we have that look on our faces when we talk about our boys?” Lizbeth asked Kristen. “Matthew did just tell me he was my huckleberry.”

  “But what does that mean?” I laughed.

  Kristen and Lizbeth had been after Tobias and Matthew forever and somewhere in the last week had made it official. They were each a couple now, Kristen with Tobias and Lizbeth with Matthew. There wasn’t any big declaration of them being together or the boys asking them to be their girlfriends. It just was. That’s why I wondered about Kyle—did he think it just was for us, too? Can you be official if one person knows and one doesn’t?

  “Remember when they had the decency to be shy around us?” Kristen said. “Now I swear Tobias is on the verge of letting one rip in my presence. And when some guy starts telling you he’s your huckleberry, sense needs to be knocked into him.” She looked at Lizbeth in the mirror. “Remember how it felt the first time Matthew called you?”

  “I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” Lizbeth said. “But in a good way.”

  “And now?” Kristen asked.

  Lizbeth thought for a moment, looking down at her phone. “Now I just wish he’d say things that make sense.”

  “See!” Kristen said. “The magic is already gone.”

  Lizbeth laughed. “You’re being dramatic.�
��

  “No, I’m not,” Kristen said. “I remember the first time Tobias asked me to go watch one of his baseball games. He was all nervous and could hardly look me in the eye. Now it’s like he expects me to go to all his games. And he has like four a week. Mickey,” she said to me, “trust me: You’re in the good stages of your relationship with Kyle. Now it’s your job to keep it there. Because believe me—he won’t do it for you.”

  I noticed Lizbeth looking longingly at her phone. “Maybe huckleberry is code for something really endearing,” she said. “Like calling someone cupcake or sweetie pie or something . . .”

  I undid Kristen’s hair and shook it out with my fingers. I divided it into two sections like pigtails and began twisting them toward her scalp. Then I tied it into a knot, securing it with an elastic.

  “The time is now,” Kristen said, staring intently into her own eyes in the mirror. “The dance is on Friday, girls. Friday. And none of our guys have even asked us yet.”

  “Kyle hasn’t said anything to you?” Lizbeth asked me.

  “Nope,” I said. Should he have? I wondered. Had Jonah asked Eve?

  “If we can’t get Tobias and Matthew to ask us by Wednesday, then it’s over,” Kristen declared. “And that’s cutting it close as it is. Right, Lizbeth?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, bending the edge of the magazine cover. “I don’t want to give Matthew some ultimatum.”

  “You’re not,” Kristen said. “You’re just saying he needs to step it up. He’s supposed to be your boyfriend.”

  “He is,” Lizbeth said. “And I think he’s a good boyfriend. You’re the one with the problem with Tobias.”

  “Can’t you just ask Tobias to the dance yourself?” I asked Kristen. I figured since they were officially boyfriend/girlfriend and they both knew it (unlike me and Kyle), then it wasn’t a big deal.

  Kristen raised her chin slightly and said, “I can. I just don’t think I should have to.”

  “I bet Lizbeth can ask Matthew,” I said, looking over at her. “Right, Lizbeth?”

  “I could mention it to him,” she said. “But I’m positive he’ll ask on his own. Just like I’m sure Kyle will ask Mickey.”