My Unfair Godmother(27)

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This made the girls squeal. “I Googled his composite sketch,” the third said. “He’s a total babe.”

“Were you afraid?” the first asked.

“Do you think he’ll try to see you again?” the second put in.

“Is Bo upset about it?”

That question I could answer. “Bo and I broke up Friday night.” Now all three girls oohed like they had learned a great secret.

“Good timing,” the first one said.

The second girl put her elbow on my desk and rested her chin in her hand. She smiled wistfully. “You must attract the dangerous type.”

“I’m going to hang out in convenience stores until I run into him.” The third let out a sigh.

The other girls trilled in agreement, then speculated where the bandits might strike next.

My mind drifted back to Hudson. I couldn’t help being curious about him, and this was as good a time as any to get information about him. I kept my voice casual. “Hudson was really cool under pressure.

Is he always like that?”

The third girl grunted. “No, he’s just too sullen to get worked up about death.”

Sullen? That description didn’t fit. The second girl leaned toward me. “Don’t mind Sarah; she had a thing for Hudson once.”

“Every girl in school has had a thing for Hudson at least once,” the third girl—Sarah—said defensively. “But then his mom died a year ago and he went all antisocial.”

“He’s not antisocial,” the first girl said. “He just took it hard. Can you blame him?”

I felt a pang of sympathy for him and wished I hadn’t asked. It seemed wrong to hear these girls talk so lightly about his pain.



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“We all wanted to help him,” Sarah went on, “but he cut everybody out of his life.” She twisted her pencil through the ends of her hair. “He used to start for the football team, and he didn’t even go out for it this year. He didn’t run for student body either, and he was class president freshman and sophomore years. He would have been a sure thing, but it’s like he doesn’t care about the people at school anymore.” The girls didn’t say more because the bell rang and the teacher told them to go to their desks. But I kept thinking about what they said, and I saw Hudson in a new light.

All during the rest of school, girls came up and asked me about the medieval bandits. Everyone wanted to know the details of the robbery. It was strange to have this surge of popularity.

Before long, Bo heard about the kiss. He texted me his opinion about it, but I didn’t care. At least he knew I wasn’t at home pining for him on Saturday night.



• • •

After school, I did homework in my room. I kept staring out my new pristine window. It was so clean it looked like nothing was there, like I could lean out into freedom. I couldn’t, though. I pulled the curtains shut. Before long, I heard voices in the kitchen—Nick’s and someone else’s. I wandered out of my room to get something to eat and to see who was over.

Hudson sat at the table with Nick, their math books spread out in front of them. The sight made me do a double take. Hudson looked so out of place there—Mr. Model Material next to the clutter, dirty dishes, and ordinariness of our kitchen. I stared in surprise and sputtered,

“What are you doing here?”

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It wasn’t an unjustified question. Granted, Hudson had told me he was friends with Nick, and suddenly I realized which of Nick’s friends had access to a police scanner, but they weren’t hang-out-at-each-other’s-house friends. Nick’s real friends belonged to the computer club. He wasn’t on knuckle-bumping terms with the football players.

“We’re doing homework,” Nick said.

I walked to the fridge, took out an apple, and let my gaze return to Hudson. I knew things about him now—that his mother had died a year ago, that his grief had changed him. But here in my kitchen, I couldn’t see anything about him that was vulnerable. He seemed more than confident—at least confident in my guilt. I raised an eyebrow at him. “You came here to spy on me.”

Hudson wrote an equation on his paper. “If you’re not hiding anything, you have nothing to worry about. I mean, it’s not like that band of thugs has ever, say, shown up in your bedroom.” I sent Nick an evil glare.

He shrugged. “You’re my sister. I worry about you, especially when the guys you hang out with threaten to cut out your tongue with their swords.”

Which meant Hudson had told Nick everything that had happened during the robbery.