The Parent Trap(14)

“Maybe you can convince your mom to change her mind about a dog.”

“Oh, I’m working on her.” Casey grinned and moved on to a terrarium that housed a small brownish-gray reptile. “This is Rex,” she said. “He’s a green anole lizard. I named him after my favorite dinosaur. Lizards aren’t dinosaurs, though.”

Like anyone cared.

“Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than lizards are.” Casey opened a plastic container that had small holes poked in the lid, took out a bug that was...ew! ew! ew!...squirming!...and dropped it into the glass enclosure with the lizard.

Kate hastily averted her gaze, not wanting to see this particular critter consume its meal. She didn’t respond to the dinosaur trivia, either, but Casey didn’t seem to notice.

“Rex eats crickets,” she said. “I buy them at the pet store.”

The only thing creepier than keeping live bugs in your bedroom? Picking them up with your bare hands and feeding them to something even creepier. Ew.

“What do kids do in Serenity Bay?” Kate asked, hoping to shift the conversation away from the science of Casey’s critters. “Besides school, I mean.”

Casey sprinkled fish food into the aquarium next to the lizard tank, and they both watched the multicolored fish dart to the surface. Finally, some normal animals.

“That depends. I’m on the soccer team and I’ve always been involved in a bunch of activities at school.”

“What about after school? Is there someplace kids like to hang out?”

Casey shrugged. “At Paolo’s, the place where our parents bought the pizzas, or at the after-school drop-in at the community center. The boys like to go there because there’s a pool table and video games.”

She made it sound lame, and Kate sort of agreed. Except for the part about boys. In the city, she and her friends usually went to the mall after school. Lots of boys hung out there, too, but she mostly loved to check out her favorite clothing stores. Recently she had been paying attention to the window displays and she already had a ton of ideas. When she was old enough to have a part-time job, she wanted to work in one of those stores and wow shoppers with her displays.

“Do you spend much time at the drop-in center?” she asked.

Casey scrunched her nose, making her freckles stand out more than ever. “I usually come home and do my homework, but sometimes I stop at the library on my way. I read a lot.”

No kidding, Kate thought. The only room she’d ever seen that had more books than this one was a library.

“You said you’re not into science books,” Casey said. “What do you like to read? Or do you like to read?”

Kate hesitated, having a mental debate about whether or not to confess her dreams. Why not? It’s not as if they were as lame as living with rodents and lizards and dinosaurs.

“Magazines, mostly. Fashion magazines. Seventeen, Teen Vogue. I want to work in the fashion industry someday.” She couldn’t believe she’d said it out loud. She’d never revealed this to anyone, not even her closest friends in the city. They were only interested in goofing around or gossiping on Facebook, and they would either shrug off her ideas as totally not going to happen or, worse yet, make fun of her.

“Cool,” Casey said. “You should talk to my mom. She lives and breathes fashion trends, and pretty much everybody in town shops at her store. Except me.” Casey grinned. “She doesn’t sell the kind of clothes I like to wear.”

Kate had already noted the other girl’s attire, the same outfit she’d been wearing when she and her mom had delivered the cookies earlier that day. Faded denim cutoffs with rolled-up cuffs just above the knee, the soccer T-shirt, black-and-white high-top Keds. Ponytail. No makeup. Total tomboy. Still, Casey might not get where people like her mom and Kate were coming from, but she understood what it meant to have a dream.

“I can’t wait to see your mom’s store, but what I really want to do is work for a big fashion magazine someday as the editor in chief.”

“Oh, wow. Like in The Devil Wears Prada,” Casey said.

Kate laughed at that. “You saw that movie?”

“Yeah, my mom and I have a movie night every Saturday. Except tonight,” she added. “Since you and your dad came over. Have you seen it?”

“Yes. I loved the clothes, but I’ll be nicer when I’m the editor.”

“More like Anne Hathaway,” Casey said. “Although I liked her better in The Princess Diaries. You sort of look like her, actually.”

“Lots of people say that. It’s mostly the hair, before Anne cut hers. My mom interviewed her once when she was in Vancouver for something.”