was sitting on a stool, reading a book and scratching her head with a neon pink pencil. A gray-haired man was unpacking a box in the kids’ section, and a half-dozen people were browsing the stacks. But I didn’t see Josh.
I breathed a little easier, but I wasn’t in the clear yet. I decided that if he didn’t surface in three minutes, he probably wasn’t there and I was safe.
Until then I was staying put. I pretended to study the table full of bestsellers just inside the door.
“Oh, fine!” Abbie whispered. “I should have known I couldn’t count on you in a bookstore. Come on, Hannah.”
Hannah followed her to the lounge. I watched as Abbie smoothly grabbed a random book off a shelf, then flopped herself onto the couch next to her boy. She kicked off her flip-flops and plunked her feet onto the coffee table, the better for J-boy to check out her legs.
It took, oh, about thirty seconds for him to recognize Abbie and start chatting with her. Hannah perched easily on the couch arm and joined in on the banter. How did my sisters make it look so effortless?
I pulled my ragged little notepad out of my bag. I jotted down all the things that would have been going through my mind if I were Abbie:
Okay, so he remembers me, I wrote, channeling my sister, but that doesn’t mean he likes me. What if he doesn’t?
What if he does?
What if he does but he has a girlfriend?
What if I become his girlfriend and then find out he kisses like a fish?
I stopped scribbling and looked at Abbie’s face. It was as open and sunny as the mason jar full of daisies on the coffee table. Clearly she was thinking none of these ridiculous things. I bet the only loop running through her head was: I look awesome! This hottie is the perfect match for me. Until I dump him to head back home.
I sighed as I flipped my notepad closed and tossed it back into my bag. When Abbie was born, she hogged all the badass genes, leaving none for me when I came along.
On the bright side, I realized, three minutes had passed and Josh hadn’t emerged from a back room or from behind a bookshelf. He clearly wasn’t there. Which meant I was free to dig into Dog Ear without worrying about how horrid I looked.
I glanced at Abbie and Hannah. Hannah had found a book and sunk into the leather chair to read it. Abbie was laughing with J-boy. She flicked one of her braids over her shoulder and propped her chin on her fist. She was laying it on thick! I had time.
I wondered if that book Josh had showed me, Beyond the Beneath, was still in stock. I started for the YA section.
But as soon as I passed the stacks of books on the corner of the counter, I realized I’d made a grave miscalculation.
The only person I’d seen behind the counter was the girl with the red streaks. But behind that barricade of books, there was plenty more room for another person. Especially if that person was sitting in a low chair and bent over a desk tucked below the counter.
I stifled a gasp as Josh came into my sight line. He was doing his letter C slouch again, so hunched over that you could almost see the knobby curve of his spine through the thin, white fabric of his T-shirt.
And in case you were wondering whether I thought his spine was as cute as his forehead, the answer, pathetically, is yes.
I froze in place, debating whether I should tiptoe back to the front door, where Josh couldn’t see me, or dart into the stacks to hide among the books. Before I could do either, though, I got distracted by the thing on Josh’s desk.
It was a huge poster. It had a blown-up image of a book cover in one corner. I couldn’t read the name of the book, but I could see that it was an image of blue sky filled with perfect fluffy clouds.
Josh was inking in a sketch above the cover. It was a beautiful girl’s face, gazing down at the book. She looked hazy and transparent—like she was one with the sky.
It was really, really good.
In another corner of the poster, Josh had made block letters in a funky, slanty font. I recognized it from the Dog Ear sign.
I glanced around at some of the other posters