Free Almost Eden by Anita Horrocks Page A

like they’re making her worse instead of better.
    I don’t understand how it could be your will for Mom to be in that place. It’s not fair for her to have to go there just because I was bad. Please, please, God, help her get better soon. Really better. Not just well enough to come home, but well enough so she never has to go back there. Not ever.
    Amen.

M ark Giesbrecht is a first-class, good-for-nothing dork.
    I was lying there at the pool minding my own business, soaking up the sun. He sits himself down and starts eating
knackzote
, which is no problem until he starts spitting the shells down my bathing suit top. He didn’t do it to anyone else, just me. I had to go into the change room to get them all out.
    “If you ask me, I think he likes you,” said Jillian.
    We’d taken over her backyard for our first pajama party of the summer.
    “That’s an understatement,” Heather mumbled, her face buried in her arms. “He’s always picking on you.” I was sitting on her bum, kneading her back and shoulders.
    “Ow!” she squirmed. “What’s with you? Take it easy already.”
    “Sorry.” Beside me, Sadie was giving Naomi a back rub and beside them, Joy was giving Jillian a back rub. It was Eleanor’s turn to sit out. “He bugs me. I wish he’d just leave me alone for once.”
    “Give the guy a break,” said Sadie. “Mark’s not so bad.”
    Sadie, defending Mark? She’d been acting a little weird the last couple of days, but sticking up for Mark wasn’t a little weird. It was–bizarre.
    “Mark’s okay, I guess,” Joy said, grinning. “But he’s no Pete Wiens, eh Jillian?”
    Sadie snorted.
    “’Fess up, Jill.” Eleanor got right in Jillian’s face. “Has he or hasn’t he?”
    “Has he or hasn’t he what?”
    “Kissed you, you fool!”
    “Time,” Jillian announced. She ignored the question purely for the pleasure of tormenting us. “Pete and I just like to hang out. We’re buddies.”
    “If you say so,” said Sadie. Grinning, she reached over to crank up the radio. Donny Osmond was singing “Puppy Love,” and she started crooning along with him.
    Jillian thwacked Sadie with a pillow, but she was outnumbered. We all howled out the words to the song, laughing ourselves silly and dodging Jillian’s pillow as we switched places.
    In ten minutes we’d switch again and so on, until everyone gave six back rubs and got six back rubs. It was a pajama party ritual, whether we slept inside or out, liketonight. We’d put our sleeping bags in a circle around a pile of junk food and Jillian’s transistor radio.
    “You might as well tell us,” Joy coaxed. “We’ll weasel it out of you sooner or later.”
    “Hah! See my halo?”
    Heather, sitting on Jillian’s bum, lifted two chunks of her hair. “More like devil horns.”
    Right away Naomi gasped. “Don’t say such a thing!”
    “Holy flippin’ Moses,” Heather rolled her eyes.
    “Hey you guys. Lets not fight over it.” Eleanor, the peacemaker, nipped the argument in the bud.
    Usually we were pretty careful to avoid subjects that upset Naomi, which included pretty much anything about the devil or witches or magic. Her parents were awfully religious, even for Hopefield. They were even more strict than Eleanor’s parents, and Eleanor’s parents had been missionaries in South America and everything.
    “Anyway, Pete’s far too shy to do anything except ride home with me,” grinned Jillian.
    “Maybe you could get him to ride home with you along
schmungestrasse
” said Eleanor, adding a long drawn out kissing sound.
    The rest of us were too astonished to speak. We were for sure all thinking the same thing–what the heck did Eleanor know about lover’s lane?
    Eleanor giggled nervously. “I just heard stuff, you know, from my older sister.”
    Jillian bailed her out. “I’ll probably just wait for a Sadie Hawkins Dance so I can ask him out.”
    “Fat chance,” said Heather.
    “Why?” Jillian looked up at the sudden