in record time. In a minute we’re all back at the table with our plates piled high with spaghetti and meatballs. Abby starts shoveling it into her mouth. She doesn’t even bother to try to talk anymore.
“What do you think?” Nick asks as I try not to pig out myself. “Satisfactory?”
It’s easily the best spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever tasted.
“Delectable,” I say, and he laughs.
He has sauce on his chin. “So what are you two going to do when we get back to the hotel?”
“Ukulele lessons,” I tell him.
Abby claps her hands together. “Yay! Uku-lei-lei!”
“You’ve probably got to rush back to your lonely, utterly abandoned phone before it implodes from lack of use,” I rib him.
“Stop.” His mouth splits into that crooked smile he has. I know, all the guys in romance novels have crooked smiles. But when I say that Nick’s is crooked, it’s because his teeth are crooked. And I’m starting to get why that’s a thing people like.
“I’m feeling the call of duty this afternoon,” he says.
It takes me a second, but I catch on. “Which is a game that you play on your PS4.”
“You should really try it with me sometime.”
I can’t imagine myself doing that, pretending to shoot people. Although maybe, given how angry I’ve been feeling lately, it could be therapeutic.
“I have a better idea,” I say. “Come to ukulele lessons with us.”
His mouth opens in surprise. “Why?”
“So we can hang out more. Because you’re a boy who’s my friend.”
Abby immediately understands what needs to be done here. “Please, Nick, come with us! Please!”
“You need to get uku-lei’d,” I say with as straight a face as I can manage.
“Okay.”
“Yay!” Abby jumps up and down.
“Yay,” I say, too.
34
Abby ditches me on the ride home. She wants to sit with Josie again, so I pick a seat in the back of the bus. I’m flipping through my photos, deciding which ones I will send to Nick, when someone says, “Can I sit here?” and I smile and say, “Go right ahead.”
But it isn’t Nick. It’s Michael Wong.
I frown up at him. “Don’t you want to sit with my sister? Work things out?”
He makes a quick little grimace. “She and I need to give each other some space.”
We ride for a while in silence until I can’t hold back the obvious question. “What’d you do?” Although I feel like I can guess. Like Leo, Michael Wong’s a cheater. And he made Afton an accomplice.
“Do?” Michael repeats, like he has no idea.
“To get Afton mad at you?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. I told her—” He stops himself. “She’s crazy, that’s all.”
I sit up straighter. “Don’t call my sister crazy. She may be a lot of things, but crazy’s not one of them.”
“Okay, yeah, sorry,” he says, although he clearly doesn’t mean it. “She can just be a little intense, is all.”
Normally, I’d agree.
But not today. “What is it with guys saying girls are crazy, just because we have feelings and sometimes we dare to show you what they are? That doesn’t make us crazy. Crazy is a messed-up, ableist word, anyway. I mean, guys act like they’re clueless morons half the time, but we don’t go around saying you’re stupid, do we?”
Okay, maybe we do.
Now Michael’s looking at me like I’m the crazy one.
“I’m just saying, if Afton called you a douchebag—although I don’t approve of douchebag as an insult, either, because it’s misogynistic, but that’s fine, whatever—if she called you that, it’s probably accurate.”
I’m pleased with myself that I even had the guts to say this.
Kahoni is coming down the aisle handing everyone a paper-wrapped coffee mug, an apology gift from the plantation for the mix-up with lunch. I take mine with a mumbled thanks and lean down to put it in my bag. When I sit up again, Michael has switched places with the guy in front of him. He’s putting headphones in—the fancy wireless kind that make it look like snot is dripping out of his ears. Then he starts bobbing his head to some music I can’t hear.
I kick the back of his chair.
The ride back to the hotel goes quickly this time, since we didn’t go far. When I stand up to exit the bus, Nick stands up, too, from the seat directly behind mine.
I didn’t even know he was there.
He’s staring at me. He clearly heard everything I said to Michael.
“Oh, great,” I moan. “You’re going to call me crazy now, too.”
“I would never.” He presses his hand into his chest. “No,