“I’ll bet he loves Angela’s cooking. Everyone does.”
Tom’s wife worked at the deli across the street, and her daily soups and stews were a Serenity Bay staple for many townsfolk.
Tom beamed as he hitched the waistband of his pants and patted his belly. “Best cook in the world, that gal of mine. In fact I’m going to swing by the deli right now, seeing as how I’m already in the neighborhood, and grab a coffee and one of her cinnamon buns for the road.”
“Good plan.” Tom’s arteries would probably thank him if he skipped the pastry, but the man loved to eat as much as his wife loved to cook. “Tell Angela I’ll see her at lunchtime.”
“Will do.”
After he left, she flipped the dead bolt on the back door, took a knife from her desk drawer and slit the tape on the box. Every shipment felt a little like Christmas, but handbags were her favorite. She had unpacked and inventoried half the order when the fluorescent light above the cash desk started to flicker.
“Seriously?” It was almost lunchtime and so far this day had yet to go as planned.
BY LUNCHTIME, CASEY had decided she loved everything about high school. So far they’d been assigned to homerooms, and both Kate and Henry were in hers. After getting their timetables and a rundown of the student handbook, the Grade Nines had been given a tour of the school and wrapped up the morning with an assembly in the gym. This afternoon they would attend each of their classes for an abbreviated session to meet their teachers and pick up textbooks and course outlines. Everything felt fresh and new and very grown-up.
Now she was making her way to the cafeteria with Kate and Alycia, a girl from the soccer team. The three girls hit it off right away, which was a good thing because in homeroom Alycia had whispered that over the summer she’d started hanging out with Brody, and Brody’s best friend was Dexter.
The packed cafeteria was abuzz with first-day-of-class excitement by the time they arrived, but they managed to nab an empty table for six. Casey took a corner seat, Alycia sat next to her, and Kate took a chair across the table.
“So, Kate,” Alycia said. “Do you think SBH is as good as your school in the city?”
Kate shrugged, lifting the top layer of her sandwich to examine the filling. “It’s okay. I didn’t see my dad, not even once, so that’s a good thing.”
“That’d be weird, all right,” Alycia said. “I’m glad my parents aren’t teachers.”
Casey didn’t think having her mom around would be the end of the world, but she kept that to herself.
Alycia jumped up abruptly and waved an arm in the air. “Brody! Over here. I told him I’d save seats for them,” she said after she sat down again.
Them? Casey scanned the room and felt her heart soar and then sink. Dexter was with Brody and the two boys were heading for their table. Brody plunked down next to Alycia and Dexter sat across the table beside Kate.
Alycia took on the introductions, which was just as well because Casey was suddenly tongue-tied.
“You guys both know Casey. This is Kate. She just moved up here from West Van. This is Brody. We’re...” She giggled. “We’re sort of going out. And this is his friend Dexter.”
Dex nodded at Casey. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
She should say something else, but what? Ask him how his summer was.
But he had already turned to Kate. “Good to meet you. When did you get here?”
“A couple of days ago.” She was smiling at him, just as Anne Hathaway had smiled at that boy in The Princess Diaries, and Casey’s heart settled in the pit of her stomach.
“Cool.” Dex leaned back in his chair and unwrapped his sandwich while he gave Kate a head-to-stiletto once-over.
Rats. She’d known this would happen.
But then his gaze swung back to her. “I haven’t seen Henry around. Do you know if he’s back yet?”
“Oh. Um, no, he’s still in Montreal. He’ll be back on Friday.”
“Cool. We’ll have to hang out after he gets home.”
We? What did that mean? Just the guys? The girls, too? Did Dex assume that because she and Henry were friends, the two of them were going out? That he and Kate would make another twosome?
She didn’t know how to ask without sounding lame, and then the conversation meandered in other directions as they compared timetables and talked about class assignments, about which teachers were cool and which were not so much. She’d like to share her excitement about the science classroom, but they’d think she was a total geek to be so enthusiastic about the lab benches and stools instead of desks, the hookups for Bunsen burners, the shelf of microscopes under plastic covers. She would tell her mom about them tonight.