I glanced up at Nick, whose head was very close to mine. His face was turning red.

“The Triangle Pose is not for everyone,” I said drily.

Nick eyed me uneasily. Or maybe that was just the blood rushing to his head. Then he said, “You invited me here.”

I shook my head, and my ponytails brushed the wood floor. “You misunderstood me. You were making fun of me for not going off the jump. Suggesting that you do yoga was my subtle way of telling you to go to hell.”

“From here, move your hand behind your foot for Reverse Triangle. Breeeeeathe.” My mom was practically shouting into her headset now. She might as well change the ohm-like yoga music with chirping birds to a nice, relaxing polka.

Reverse Triangle put Nick’s head away from me, behind his muscular thigh. But even from several feet away, I heard him exclaim, “Ouch!”

“You think that hurt?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth. “Wait until Half Moon.”

“Half Moon does hurt,” someone nearby agreed. It was hard to tell who, with everyone upside-down.

“And roll up into Mountain Pose, with hands to heart’s center.” My mom stood, closed her eyes, and placed her hands in the prayer position on her chest. “Breeeeeathe and relax as two teenagers take a walk, leaving the haven of the yoga studio in peeeeeace and quiet.” She opened one eye and lifted her eyebrow at me.

“Come on,” I hissed at Nick. As my mom’s voice droned on, I rolled up my yoga mat and whacked Nick in the back of the head with it. He looked up from his obviously painful Reverse Triangle and glared at me. Finally, he took the hint and rolled up his own mat. We wandered among the adults balancing precariously and dumped our mats into the bin by the door.

As soon as the door closed behind us, I whirled to face him in the hall. “Thanks, Nick. I’ve never been kicked out of my own yoga class before. My mom will probably dock me forty-five minutes of minimum wage.”

He tilted his head to look at me from a different angle, and the scowl he’d been wearing since I’d whacked him in the head melted away. His words melted me in turn as he grinned brilliantly at me and said, “I really like your hair that way.”

Without meaning to, I self-consciously reached for my hair. Around the health club, my mother always wore her red hair in one ponytail or one long braid down her back. I used to, too. But since I’d grown as tall as her, people mistook us for each other. I couldn’t walk through the hall without middle-aged women stopping me to recount their hot flashes last night or to complain that the baby had the croup.

But I needed to pull my hair up for yoga, so I wore it in two ponytails. At first I worried the style was too little-girlish for me. Then, because of some of the looks I was getting from men at the health club who weren’t regulars, I’d started to wonder whether the hairstyle had the opposite effect, reminding them of Britney Spears’s schoolgirl getup.

Nick was giving me the same look. And this time, instead of being taken aback or feeling squicky about it, my heart raced and my face grew hot, my body’s response to the call of Nick. The yoga music and my mother’s soothing voice filtered through the door, reminding us we weren’t exactly alone, and occasionally a lady in sequined track pants speed-walked past us in the wide hallway that doubled as an indoor track. But I couldn’t stop glancing at Nick’s soft lips. If a dark corner had been available, I would have kissed him right then, despite everything he’d said to me last night.

No, I would not let him charm me. I said, “Nick, for real. Why are you here? You didn’t suddenly decide to pop into my mother’s yoga class after four years of health club membership.”

He still grinned at me with his head tilted, like he found me so amusing and did not take me seriously at all. Then he folded his arms on his chest, so his biceps strained at the sleeves of his T-shirt, courtesy of the arm curl machine. “Why can’t I tell you you’re pretty? You’ve got issues, Hoyden.” He turned and walked into the men’s locker room. The door closed gently behind him.

I stood in the hallway, listening to the muffled drone of my mother’s voice, the slow yoga chords filtering through the studio walls, and the swish of the speed-walker’s pants somewhere around the corner. I stared at the men’s locker room door like my x-ray vision would switch on any second. Ugh, mistake—lots of our members came to the health club to get back into shape, with good reason. Still I stared at the door, wondering what in the world was up with Nick. If he liked me, why was he mean to me? If he didn’t like me, why did he show up here? Was it possible that Josh was right, and Nick’s dis last night was a sign he actually had a thing for me? Again, this seemed very seventh grade. Maybe he was a case of arrested development.

Not in his biceps, of course. Or his abs. Arrested development emotionally.

The door burst open and I tensed like a rabbit, ready to bolt before Nick saw me staring at the door where he’d disappeared.

It wasn’t even him. He hadn’t had nearly enough time to shower. It was two regulars who walked out laughing and called a hello to me as they passed.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I skittered into the women’s locker room before Nick really did catch me staring. I’d wasted enough of my winter break worrying about Nick. I had plenty more to enjoy: no homework, meeting Chloe and Liz at Mile-High Pie for supper in a few minutes, lots of slope time, and a renewed push tomorrow to master the jump. Not for Nick’s sake, but for mine.

As the locker room door thumped shut behind me, I pictured the lid closing on this box of troubles I’d opened with Nick’s name on it. Unfortunately, when I emerged from the locker room again a few minutes later, ready for Mile-High Pie, Nick was standing in the hall in jeans and his puffy parka, talking with my mother.

Yoga class had let out. My mother was all about chatting up the members, even the teenagers, even the ones she kicked out of her classes (apparently). I ducked around them, into the crowd spilling out of the studio. Better let my mother cool down for a few hours before I faced her about interrupting her Reverse Triangle. I flounced down the staircase. With every step down, I felt myself relaxing a little more, looking forward to a few hours out with my girlfriends, away from Nick.

And then my mom called, “Have fun on your date, Hayden!”

Another step down and I thought, Good. Mom is mistaken and has led Nick to believe I’m going on a date.

One more step down and I thought, Oh no, Mom has led Nick to believe I’m going on a date! No matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise, obviously I still held out hope for Nick and me getting together this winter break. I turned around on the stair, wondering what I could say to let Nick know I was still unengaged, without letting him know I wanted him to know.

Nick ran smack into me.

“Ooof!” he hollered, grabbing me around the waist to keep me from falling down the rest of the staircase.

That’s when I realized Mom thought Nick and I were going on a date together.

Quickly Nick let me go. He looked huge, frowning down at me from the step above. “Why are you stopping in the middle of the stairs?”

“Why are you tailgating me?”

He put his hand behind me, at butt level, without touching me. “What is that?” he demanded.

I bent a little and slapped my butt. “Something the heir to a meat fortune should know all about. USDA grade A prime, baby.” I straightened. “Just kidding. Really, it’s my butt.”

He put his hands on his hips, and from below I noticed his strong superhero chin again. He grumbled, “Why do you have ‘BOY TOY’ written across your butt?”

“Oh!” I put my hand behind me over the words, realizing that I probably should have been embarrassed about this sooner. “These are my little brother’s jeans. He wrote it to annoy me. Or to get me a date. Speaking of which, what did you say to my mother to make her think we’re going on a date?”

He shrugged. “I just told her we’re both going to Mile-High Pie. Aren’t you meeting Chloe and Liz there? I’m meeting Gavin and Davis.”

More of Chloe and Liz’s matchmaking, no doubt.

“Did you tell my mother that you called me a bitch last night, too?” I asked him. “Because that’s the best way I know to win parents over.”

For a split second, he looked uncomfortable. Almost immediately, he recovered and went back on the offensive. “You shouldn’t wear those jeans. People might think something.”

I stamped my foot on the stair. “Like what? I want to show off my fire-crotch? What do you care? God! Stop following me.” My hair was down now, and I felt it smack into his chest as I whirled around and flounced down the rest of the stairs, across the lobby, and into the cold night.

I mean, really cold. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since I came off the slopes that afternoon. The formerly slushy snow on the lesser-used sections of the sidewalks had frozen over and now crunched under my boots. I tucked my nose deep into my scarf against a sudden gust of freezing wind. Mile-High Pie was only a few blocks away, but this walk seemed to stretch in front of me forever. Cold and anger were not a good mix.

“Hayden,” Nick called from behind me.

Oh, good! Just what this walk needed: a double-shot of ex to go with that cold and anger. Shaking my head, I crossed the icy street.

“Hayden.” His voice was sharper, angry now, and it echoed against the two-story storefronts closed for the night. I could tell from the direction of his voice that he was crossing the street after me.

“Don’t you mean Hoyden?” I called over my shoulder.

Heavy steps cracked behind me, closer and closer. Nick rounded in front of me and stood in my path, his breath puffing white into the black night. “I never called you that.”

“You call me Hoyden all the time!”

He frowned at me and said, “Fire-crotch.”

“Take a number.” I tried to walk around him.

He caught me by the elbow. “Would you hold up for a minute and listen to me?” His dark eyes focused on me, hardly blinking when the wind gusted in his face. He put on a very convincing act of disbelief and outrage. “I mean, I did not call you a fire-crotch. I was afraid you overheard that in the lunchroom last week. Everett Walsh called you a fire-crotch as you walked by. I told Everett Walsh that he should watch his mouth. Then Everett said, ‘Oh, you’re one to talk, you say stuff like that about Hayden all the time,’ and I said, ‘I would never make a comment about her crotch. No.’ We nearly got into it right there in the lunchroom, but you conveniently missed that part.”

I certainly had. And I wasn’t buying it. Nick, standing up for me? “Let me get this straight. Your lunchroom speech went a little something like this.” I put my hands out in front of me like I was a Roman orator enunciating for the crowd. “‘I, Nick Krieger, defender of women, would never denounce the crotch. I am above the crotch.’”

He gaped at me. Other boys might not look so hot while gaping. Nick looked adorable in the soft light of the streetlamps, against a backdrop of small town and snow.

I put my hands down.

He watched me silently for a few moments more. “You don’t think very well of me,” he finally said.

I shrugged. “I don’t blame you for being confused and thinking, ‘Gosh, I called Hayden a fire-crotch and she’s mad? What’s up with that?’ There was a time in my life when you could have called me a fire-crotch in front of a bunch of people, and I would have just laughed. I wanted any kind of attention I could get from you. In eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, when you insulted me and other girls said it was just because you liked me, I believed it. But I guess everybody reaches a point when they’re done with that, and they want to be respected. This is definitely unfortunate for the purposes of teen love—I mean, look at Gavin. But there it is.”

“You don’t want to be with me because you think I don’t respect you.”

“I know you don’t respect me.”

“Because you don’t believe me that I didn’t call you a fire-crotch?”

“You don’t have a good track record for telling me the truth.” I walked around him and nuzzled my nose into my scarf again, heading into the wind.

His boots crunched behind me.

“And stop following me!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“I’m not following you. Stop walking in front of me.” The crunches sounded louder and louder again until he jogged past me and kept jogging until he was fifty feet ahead of me on the sidewalk. He disappeared around the corner. I was left with nothing but my anger and the cold again.

When I finally reached the restaurant and swung open the door, of course the first thing I saw was Nick hanging his parka on the coatrack, revealing how adorable he looked in his sweater and scarf underneath. And Fiona Lewis was calling to him from the ancient Galaga arcade game. His other ex. Drat!

“Haaaaaydeeeeen!” moaned Josh and his peeps from the nearest booth. Double drat! Just what I needed when I was trying to get the upper hand in this ongoing argument with Nick: the undying friendship of four fourteen-year-old boys.

On hearing my name, Nick looked up at me, then nodded toward the posse with a smirk. “Your boyfriends are calling you.” He glanced toward Fiona.

“You act like that’s not possible,” I heard myself say coyly, even though my brain was waving frantically at me, screaming, Stop, Hayden, don’t go there!

Nick turned back to me, and his eyes flew wide in surprise. “I act like what’s not possible?”

“You act like I would never go out with any of them.” Which I wouldn’t. They were like brothers to me. Especially my brother. And they still watched cartoons. It was just that Nick acted so disdainful, as if I could never have anyone if it weren’t for him or Everett Walsh throwing me a bone.