I pulled in a ragged breath, suddenly fighting back a wave of tears. If Zac was right, if life wasn’t supposed to make sense, then it meant everything that happened had no reason. It meant my mom could walk out of my life forever without an explanation. It meant Hannah could be valedictorian, class queen, and whatever else she wanted in life while squashing me under her shoe. My dad would marry Trisha or some other brainless girlfriend-of-the-month he decided to bring home next time and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.
“Hey.” Zac’s voice sounded very close. “You okay?”
I lowered my hands and opened my eyes to find him kneeling in front of me. One of his hands rested on my knee and the other on my shoulder. I shivered slightly at the contact with his skin.
“Fine,” I said, pushing Zac away. No, Zac was wrong. Life had order to it. I could fix things. I had been doing exactly that for the past four years.
“I’m fine,” I repeated in a firmer voice. Putting things in order began with winning over Zac and making it to Costa Rica. If that meant I had to go along with one of his crazy plans, so be it. “Let’s find Delia and tell her we’re doing the website.”
Zac broke into a huge grin at my words. “We are? Awesome! You won’t regret it. We’ll have the best project in the whole class.”
Zac grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. He bounced out of the room and into the hall, calling out, “Delia! She said yes!”
“Who said yes about what?” asked a voice behind us. A tall, beautiful woman stepped through the front door, carrying a grocery bag in one arm. She had the shiniest black hair I’d ever seen and I could detect a slight accent in her words.
“Hi, Mom,” Zac greeted her. “This is Avery, my business partner. She said yes to building a website for our matchmaking service.”
Mrs. Greeley’s gaze flickered downward, taking in the sight of Zac still holding my hand, our fingers entwined. I pulled my hand away quickly and hid it behind my back.
“Isn’t this a school project?” Mrs. Greeley asked. Zac and I followed her into the kitchen, where she set the bag of groceries on the counter. “Are all the teams building a website too?”
“No,” Zac admitted. “But our project is different. We’re making it into a real working business that we can keep up after the class is over.”
“I’ll get to work on building the site,” Delia said as she walked into the room. “And you’ll talk with the programmer, right?” she asked her brother.
“Programmer?” I asked. “I thought you were doing all the work.”
Delia leaned against the counter and laughed. “You don’t want me building your database. Zac found someone else to do that. What did you say her name was, Zac? Holly?”
“Molly,” he said. He cleared his throat and glanced quickly at me. “Um, Molly Pinski.”
“You hired Molly to build our project?” I exclaimed. When had Molly and Zac talked behind my back? And why hadn’t she told me?
Zac nodded. “She’s the best computer expert I know. So I talked to her about the idea and she said it wouldn’t take her any time at all to build it. And she’s doing it for a very low price.”
“How low?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Zac said. “I’m handling it.”
“Zac,” I said in the sternest voice I could manage. “How low?”
“Free,” he said. “She only asked for ten percent of our profits from the business.”
Leave it to Molly to work out a deal to benefit herself in the long run. If the matchmaking thing was successful, she could earn more money than she would have from a one-time payment on her work.
Not that I expected this matchmaking business to work. There couldn’t be many people at Willowbrook High who were stupid enough to fall for this scam.
“I can’t believe you got Molly roped into our project,” I said, shaking my head. “You know she’s in that class too. She has her own project to worry about.”
“Zac,” Mrs. Greeley said, scowling at him. “You don’t need to convince all of your classmates to follow one of your ideas.”
“I’m not!” Zac said, flailing his arms in frustration. “I talked it all over with Molly and she assured me it would be no problem. She wanted to help out.” He reached over and patted my shoulder. “You worry too much, Avery.”
Mrs. Greeley raised