Free Bang by Norah McClintock

Chapter One
    The way the day starts: Sweet. Perfect. Like a cool breeze on a hot day. Mainly because of Leah. She answers the door when I ring the bell and stays to talk until JD comes down.
    And then, before we take off on our bikes, she says, “Wait.”
    She runs inside and gets her camera. “It’s brand-new,” she says. “It’s digital. I saved up for it.”
    She takes our picture—JD and me with our bikes. Then she says, “Hey, JD, take my picture with Q.” So JD does.
    I ask her to make me a copy of it. If she does, I’ll put it up on my wall, right over my bed. These days, Leah is most of the reason I spend as much time with JD as I do. I’m trying to work up the nerve to ask her out.
    The way the day ends: Like a tornado, sucking my whole life up and spraying out the pieces all over town so I’ll never be able to put it back together again.
    The first thing we do when we get back to JD’s house is strip off all our clothes, right down to our shorts. JD wants those too, but I say no. There’s no way I’m going to stand there in his kitchen buck naked.
    He sends me up to his room to grab some clothes. When I come back down, JD has stuffed all our clothes into the washing machine, which is in a sort of closet off the kitchen. He pours in a ton of liquid detergent, turns on the water and punches“On.” I’m pulling on a clean T-shirt of his when Leah walks in.
    She looks at me, then at JD, and says, “What are you guys up to?”
    â€œWe were riding our bikes in the ravine,” JD says. “Q had this idea we could jump the stream.” He gives me a look. “I should have known.”
    Q is me. My name is Quentin, Q to my friends.
    Leah shakes her head, like
of course
I would suggest something that dumb.
Of course
JD would want to give it a try.
Of course
that would explain why she’s just caught me changing into JD’s clothes in the middle of the kitchen.
    I stare at JD, trying not to let my face show what I’m thinking, which is: This guy is good. He can lie with the best of them. No, he can lie
better
than most of them.
    Leah says, “Well, I hope you didn’t total your bike, JD, because if you did, Dad’s going to freak.”
    I freeze. Our bikes. Geez, they’re in JD’s garage, but there’s nothing about them thatwould give people the idea that we tried to jump a stream with them, let alone that we ended up
in
a stream. They aren’t wet. They aren’t muddy. Nothing like that.
    â€œDon’t sweat it,” JD tells his sister.
    Even now I can’t help noticing for the millionth time how pretty she is. I wonder, How come I only started noticing recently? I’ve known JD since kindergarten, which means I’ve known Leah that long too. But for most of the time I’ve known her, she was like flowery wallpaper, always in the background, always kind of annoying.
    Not anymore. Now I can hardly take my eyes off her. She has thick brown hair and dark brown eyes that are the color of coffee, just like JD’s. She’s tall, like JD, and slender, and she makes my heart pound and my mouth go dry. Her lips are pink and soft looking and, boy, you don’t need much imagination to know how it would feel to kiss them. That’s been on my mind a lot—that and how JD would take it if I all of a sudden tell him I have a thing forhis sister. Now, I think, I’ll never get the chance. Not after what we just did.
    â€œWe’re going out to the garage right now,” JD says. “We’re going to clean everything up before Dad gets home. Our bikes will be as good as new. He’ll never know.”
    He flashes her a smile. She shakes her head again, but I can read in her eyes how much she loves him. They’re twins. They have this bond. He says it’s weird having a twin. He says when they were little, they used to finish each other’s sentences. He