Free A Blind Spot for Boys by Justina Chen Page B

all statement, no question. I knew the conclusionStesha was drawing, because it was no different from what Reb would blurt out if she were right here:
Fate!
    Thankfully, Dad shook hands with Quattro’s father right then, so there was no room for Stesha to say that word aloud. “Christopher, good to see you again,” Dad said, grinning. “No bedbugs here, I hope?”
    “So far, so good,” Christopher answered, a small smile lifting the edges of his mouth and accentuating the deep circles under his eyes. When had the man last slept? It didn’t look like anytime recently. But tiredness and graying hair aside, he looked like an older, darker, and much, much thinner version of Quattro. Gaunt came to mind.
    “How’s Auggie?” Quattro asked, forever endearing himself to my father by bringing up our dog. That rat.
    After Dad filled Quattro in on Auggie’s dog-sitting situation, Hank stopped fiddling with his camera long enough to say, “Small world.”
    “I suppose that’s what some people might think.” Stesha’s dubious smile made it all too clear where she stood on that theory.
    But Hank’s statement set off a chorus of similar stories about people running into friends in the unlikeliest places. I felt like I was trapped inside It’s a Small World at Disneyland with all the same nightmarish, head-exploding repetition.
    From Grace: “Bumping into friends happens to me all the time! Once, when I was in Paris, I ran into a long-lost college friend. I literally thought I had read her obituary in the alumni magazine just a week before. But there she was, back from thedead, sitting at a café, calling out my name. I nearly had a heart attack right then and there.”
    From Helen, nudging Hank: “And remember the time when we were in Scotland, walking across Saint Andrews?” For our benefit, Hank clarified, “The golf course. Anyway, we ran into one of Helen’s former colleagues who she hadn’t seen in what? Five years?” Helen nodded triumphantly, saying, “I had a feeling that I was going to see her all during the trip, right? Didn’t I keep saying that?”
    Of course, everyone had a small-world story; this was a Dreamwalks tour, after all, the one that attracted people who sought out the weird and the woo-woo. What I didn’t expect was Dad to join in on the fun. He said to Mom and me, “Remember the time when I kept meaning to call that client with that huge alpha rat? And then who do we see at the gym the next day? And he’d never worked out at five in the morning before?” Mom lit up because old Dad was back: joking, grinning, teasing. Right on cue, she piped in: “Alpha rat guy!”
    While everyone else kept chattering around us, one-upping each other with more stories about coincidences that were too coincidental to be coincidences—go figure that one out—Quattro sidled up to me and said, “Hey, you didn’t tell me you were coming to Machu Picchu, too. Oh, that’s right. I wouldn’t know because you haven’t answered a single one of my messages. I was beginning to wonder if you blocked my e-mail.”
    Busted. I flushed.
    Where was that quick-witted banter that intrigued boys and had girls lining up for private tutorials? Three weeks on a BoyMoratorium couldn’t have rusted my flirting skills, could it? Before I could embarrass myself with another series of one-word Neanderthal gruntings, Quattro placed his warm hand on mine. Not even a strangled “what?!” could have passed my paralyzed lips when a corresponding jolt twanged in the back of my knees.
    With a shiver that I knew he felt, I finally looked up into Quattro’s eyes. Mistake. They were much warmer than I remembered. So warm, a girl’s icicle-spiked defenses could melt if she weren’t prepared. I yanked my hand away, then covered it up by scratching the back of my neck vigorously.
    “Hey,” he said, “fate or small world, I’m glad we bumped into each other here.”
    Me, too.
Given my subpar bantering response, it was miraculous