‘No way. I’m fine!’ Sophia tried to yank her arm away, but she couldn’t help wincing.
‘You’re definitely bruised, and you need a rest.’ Brendan took Sophia’s other arm.
Pouting, Sophia stopped resisting. As Ivy and Brendan drew her away from the broken pieces of the skateboard, she whispered, ‘What are you doing? Couldn’t you see? Finn was talking to me! Isn’t that fantastic?’
‘Fantastic?’ Ivy had to drop Sophia’s arm before she could give in and shake her own best friend by the shoulders. ‘He was talking to you because you had hurt yourself !’
Sophia gave a wistful sigh. ‘He was worried about me. Wasn’t that sweet of him?’
‘Not sweet enough to justify actual bruises,’ said Ivy. ‘You seriously –’
She stopped abruptly as her vampire hearing picked up on the conversation going on among the skater-boys behind them.
‘How crazy is that Franklin Grove girl?’ said one of the boys. ‘Watch out, Finn. Who knows what she’ll try next to get your attention?’
‘She obviously likes you a scary lot, bro,’ said another boy. ‘If she’s putting this much effort into faking –’
The first boy snorted. ‘Did you see that “accidental” triple somersault earlier?’
Ivy winced as she tried to imagine how much a triple somersault would hurt even a vampire.
Probably not nearly as much as hearing what Finn’s friends were saying right now.
‘Sophia . . .’ she began, in a whisper. Her friend’s face was pale and she looked as though she felt sick.
But Finn suddenly broke in: ‘Lay off her, you guys! You don’t have to be jerks about it.’
Score one for Skater Finn, Ivy thought.
Maybe he wasn’t the right boy for her best friend . . . but he wasn’t a bad guy, after all.
‘Hey!’ Finn called from behind them. Ivy turned and saw that he had broken away from his friends to head straight for Sophia. He held out his skateboard, which was painted with swirls of yellow and bright orange. ‘Here. This is one of my favourites. Do you want to borrow it until you get a new one?’
‘Really?’ Sophia breathed. She took the board from him and stroked it reverentially. ‘You would really do that? For me?’
‘Hey, it’s no big deal.’ Finn shrugged. ‘I’ve got more of them at home.’
He’s telling the truth, Ivy realised, as she looked at his expression.
To Finn, it really was no big deal. He was just a nice guy, doing a nice thing. But to Sophia . . . Ivy’s chest tightened.
Sophia was so busy stroking the skateboard, she hadn’t even noticed how casual Finn was being. And to her, the gesture obviously meant a lot.
As Finn headed back towards his friends, Ivy tried to think of the right thing to say. She had to tell Sophia the truth somehow, but she couldn’t bear to break her best friend’s heart by doing it. How would Olivia put it?
It had to be gentle, it had to be kind . . .
‘Did you see how stupid she looked?’
The biting tones of one of the identical pixie-cut blonde skater-girls on the other side of the park sliced right into Ivy’s vampire-strong hearing. ‘She doesn’t just go head-over-heels on her skateboard – she’s going head-over-heels for Finn, too!’
The other skater-girls giggled.
‘She’s like a little panting puppy,’ one of them agreed. ‘“Oh, Finn, just look at me, please look at me, please!”’
‘He must feel so sorry for her!’ a third girl piped in.
Sophia let out a muffled gasp of hurt, and Ivy could already feel the death-squint on her face as she spun around.