Pinch of Love (9781101558638) by Alicia Bessette Page B

allergic to.”
    â€œIt was in your oven, wasn’t it? You were trying to burn it up in your oven.”
    â€œI wasn’t trying to burn it. It was an accident. I didn’t know it was in my oven.”
    â€œHow could you not know something was in your oven?”
    â€œI don’t bake much, okay?”
    â€œOkay. But you’re learning, right? For the contest.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œSo, let’s see this attic.” She crosses her arms. “Probably looks just like mine.”
    â€œI doubt that, actually.”
    In the hallway the glass doorknob reflects tiny me and, beside me, tinier Ingrid. I put my hand over tiny me and tinier Ingrid. I shove the door with my elbow and hip. It opens one inch.
    Shove. Two inches.
    Shove. One foot.
    She pokes her head inside and looks up the steps. “It’s wicked dusty in here.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIt smells totally weird.”
    â€œI know. Sorry about that.”
    â€œThis is, like, wicked, wicked creepazoid, Zell.”
    I reach in. I feel the wall for the light switch. My heart does its crazy dance—thump-thump-thump-thu-thu-thu-thu—and as the light flickers on I crash back against my bedroom door.
    â€œYou okay?” she asks. “You really are allergic.”
    â€œI’m fine.” I force a smile, and the beats stop altogether. Then my heart goes back to normal.
    The extra light makes the doorknob twinkle. The floor in front of the first attic step looks not just rubbed raw but scraped away, scraped to the core.
    Ingrid exhales mightily.
    â€œListen,” I say. “You don’t have to—”
    â€œI do love me an adventure. Promise you’re not going to flip on me if I pick that thing up?”
    â€œPromise. No flipping.”
    â€œAnd you swear—pinkie swear—that all I have to do is carry it upstairs and leave it there, and we’ll take Ahab running? Right now?”
    â€œPinkie swear.”
    â€œEven though it’s sort of late?”
    â€œYup.”
    She stares into my eyes. She grabs my wrist, yanks my pinkie upright, and locks her own pinkie over it. Then she scoops up the present, cradles it, and pounds up the steps.
    â€œWhat is all this stuff up here?” she calls. “What are all these—”
    â€œJust put the cube next to that other box on the floor and come back down here. Don’t touch anything.”
    â€œOkay, okay.”
    Clunk.
    â€œCareful,” I say.
    â€œSorry. I’m coming down.”
    I hear her place both feet on each step before she takes the next. “Hold the hand railing, okay?” I say.
    â€œI am. Why are you so nervous?”
    Because I’m the angry town widow? Because I’m a quivering mess who can’t bake and who makes young children cry?
    The attic door makes an awful screech as I pull it shut. Ingrid brushes invisible dust from her clothes before she takes my hand and leads me down the hall.
    â€œAhab time,” she says. But she stops at my office door. It’s open a crack, just enough to show Hank’s fingertips and toes.
    â€œZell?” She approaches Hank.
    â€œYou might not want to go in there,” I say, envisioning Garrett’s horror when he learns that a model human skeleton hangs in my office. I reach to shut the door, but it’s too late: She now stands opposite Hank. He seems to tower over her.
    â€œUm, why is there a skeleton in front of me?” Ingrid flicks the light switch and looks all around—at the spinal column attached to the brain that hangs from the wall, at the scraped-up heart on my shelf. The sight of the heart sends me spinning into a Memory Smack: Nick gave it to me right after our graduation from Wippamunk High. As EJ and France posed for pictures, Nick grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me under the bleachers.
    He produced a paper bag from his gown. “I didn’t have time to wrap it. It came in the mail