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She sat down on the black shag rug beside him This room had been decorated once by a professional and redone over the years by Zach Expensive chocolate-colored wallpaper had been covered by ical display of his childhood: a graveyard of action figures, a tangled heap of plastic dinosaurs, stacks of video ga-eared copy of Captain Underpants, and the five Harry Potter novels

She wanted to say, Can we talk? but to a teenage boy (or ht as well say, May I please rip out your spleen?

“Letgraffiti? Maybe you’re worried that I’irl trapped in a dude’s body ”

She couldn’t help s at that “I am so misunderstood ”

“You do worry about the weirdest shit I mean stuff ”

“Do you want to talk about Ah a few broken hearts in h school almost ruined me ”

He put down the controller and looked at her “How did you know you loved Dad?”

Jude was pleasantly surprised by the question Usually she had to pry this kind of conversation out of her son Butup, or maybe he’d actually been hurt by Amanda

There were so s she could say,to Mia, she ht have done just that But this was Zach She didn’t want to ruin thistoo much

“The first time I saw him, I knew I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true When he said he loved me, I believed him, and I hadn’t believed anyone since my dad Until Miles … and you kids, I used to worry that I was like uess, and when he kissed me for the first time, I cried I didn’t knohy then, but now I do It was love and it scared the bejesus out of ain ” She s up every word “Soirl, Zach I prorown up and she’ll be a wo with her ”

“And she’ll cry ”

“If you’re lucky she will ”

In the next teeks, Lexi learned about keeping secrets When she ith Zach, her love for hi, a wave that knocked her sideways so hard she couldn’t tell which as up Later, when she ith Mia, guilt s was up with Zach, but it never occurred to her to look to Lexi for answers

That was the worst of it, the broken trust More than once Lexi had almost blurted out the truth, desperate for absolution, but she hadn’t done it, hadn’t opened her heart to her best friend And why not?

Love She couldn’t deny Zach anything, it seemed, and he wasn’t ready to tell his sister about them Lexi wasn’t even completely sure why; she just knew that Zach was afraid to tell Mia, and if Zach was afraid, Lexi was more so