I sat up on the side of the bed, cringing as pain radiated from one spot to the other. Jase watched with concern etched on his face.

“I fell down. You know me, always a klutz.”

“Youʼve never been a klutz. You were the first toddler in history that didnʼt toddle. Our entire martial arts class had to spend months learning ninjitsu because Sansei liked your grace.”

“Well, this is one ninja that never learned to walk on a solid sheet of ice in a pair of three-inch heeled Marc Jacob wanna-be boots.” Or to actually use her ninja skills when she was in trouble. This ninja sucked.

“Thank God Iʼm a boy,” Jase said, commandeering my computer chair. He swung it over to the edge of the bed before straddling it backwards. “Thereʼs no way you could get me to strut around in a 3-inch heeled anything.”

“I seem to remember it taking very little to get you in a pair of ruby red stilettos. And you didnʼt strut, you pranced.”

“Scout Donovan, what did I tell you that I would do to you if you ever mentioned that?” I looked as angelic as possible. “I fell down. Hard. I may have even broken my tailbone.”

“So?”

“So, my big brother doesnʼt fight people on the injured list.” That managed to get an eye-roll. I only referred to Jase as my big brother when I wanted something or was trying to get out of trouble. I mean, five weeks hardly counts as older, and the inch of height he had on me was pretty much moot as soon as I put on a good pair of shoes.

“Yeah, just remember this conversation when I give you a proper ass kicking the moment youʼre back to one hundred percent.”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Iʼm looking forward to watching you try.” I might not be able to fight off a homeless man, but Jase was easy. It wasnʼt so much that I was stronger than him, because I wasnʼt, but he was very predictable. It was like fighting a robot.

Jase and I sat talking for a long while about absolutely nothing. Despite its lack of substance, our conversation managed to erase some of the tension that I had been carrying around for the past twenty-four hours. He even managed to distract me from the whole werewolf freak out that I should have been having.

When Angel heard that I was awake she came into my room, bringing a turkey sandwich to guarantee her admittance. I didnʼt realize how hungry I was until I took my first bite. I was famished by the time I popped the last piece into my mouth about ninety seconds later.

“That was so good I think Iʼll go get another one,” I said. “And maybe some chips. And cookies. We have cookies, right?”

“But youʼre gonna take a shower and put on clean clothes first, right?” Angel asked. She was snuggled up to my side. I got the feeling that she had missed me while I was on my impromptu overnight trip. Since I was actually letting her sit like that I must have missed the Munchkin a little bit too. “No defense, but you stink.” This, of course, made Jase nearly fall out of his chair from laughing so hard. I felt embarrassed despite the fact that I had seen the other two people in the room walk around in dirty diapers.

“Thank you for that helpful bit of information, Angel Dear,” I said. “And itʼs ʻno offenseʼ not ʻno defenseʼ.”

“But offense is when our team has the ball.”

“Yes.”

“And defense is when the bad guys have the ball.”

“The other team isnʼt really ʻthe bad guysʼ, but yeah.”

“So, itʼs no defense,” Angel said as if she had just made the most stellar closing argument in the history of litigation.

There is no logic quite like kid logic.

“Makes perfect sense to me,” Jase said. “And the other team is ʻthe bad guysʼ. Especially if weʼre playing those arrogant jerks from Marshall County.” Well, Jase logic and little kid logic are pretty much synonymous.

My brother and sister were almost overly-attentive all evening. Angel insisted on making my second (and, to be completely honest, third) sandwich. She maintained that sandwich making was the same as cooking, which I was not allowed to do under any circumstance. Jase had recorded last weekʼs episode of the newest angsty-upper-class-teens-with-major-issues show we were both hooked on and the three of us piled onto his bed with a bag of chocolate chip cookies to watch it.

On a normal day ,I might have found all the attention annoying, but I was grateful for the distraction. Thanks to my siblings, I hardly had time to think between Jaseʼs assertions that he only watched the show for the hot chicks (and his long diatribes on the latest plot twists), and Angelʼs nearly three hundred questions that ranged from “Why is your favorite color white instead of pink?” to “What are you going to be when you grow up?”.

That night I once again had a vivid, in living Technicolor dream of Alex and the lake. He kept calling to me, but I still couldnʼt hear him. It didnʼt take long for me to grow bored with that routine, so I yelled, “Just tell me at school tomorrow,” and walked off into yet another dream, which may or may not have had something to do with dancing hippos.

Despite my five hour nap and early bedtime, I still managed to oversleep the next day. Jase threatened to make me walk as I stood in front of my mirror, trying to pick an outfit.

I fidgeted the entire way through English class. What was I going to say to Alex when I saw him? Would he really talk to me about the werewolf stuff? And what was going on between the two of us? As impossible as it seemed, it looked like Alex might actually like me too. I didnʼt know quite how to handle that.

At first, I was relieved that he wasnʼt waiting for me in Mr. Beckʼs class, but relief quickly turned to concern when he failed to make an appearance by the end of class.

“Where do you think Alex is today?” I asked Talley when we were supposed to be working on our written reviews of the Taming of the Shrew performance that seemed like a million years ago.

“I guess heʼs still sick,” she said, working diligently on her assignment as if there was something to say other than, “It sucked.”

“Heʼs sick?”

Talley looked at me as though I was missing something obvious. “Remember the whole having a fever and his brother coming to pick him up in Nashville thing?” Oops.

“Oh yeah. I meant that I canʼt believe that heʼs still sick. He thought it was only like a twenty-four hour bug or whatever.”

“I guess he was wrong,” Talley said, returning her very focused attention back to the criticism and away from me.