Sway by Amy Matayo Page A

the letters, I’ll let you put them back for me. Deal?”
    I give him a look, then hand the record back and sink to the floor to join him, trying and failing to conceal a smile. “Deal. But that doesn’t mean you can pull them all out—hey, slow down!” I’m sitting there with my mouth hanging open while, in a matter of seconds, a dozen more records have joined the pile. Just because I’m so accommodating doesn’t mean he should disrespect the system I have going here. After all, I didn’t spend an entire week last summer grouping these by name, genre, style, album color, male artists, female artists, release year, and Billboard best-sellers for nothing. It takes a lot of work—not to mention charts, graphs, and extensive case studies—to perfect an arrangement this intricate.
    Kate, you are the classic description of OCD. People could do research on you.
    Lucy’s description of me on the first day we met comes back to sock me in my fragile ego, and I straighten my shoulders. She was so not right.
    I eye the albums, hoping his hands are clean.
    “What I meant to say is, be careful not to bend them. I’ve been collecting this particular set for years, and I would hate to see any of them damaged.” They look clean.
    “How long?”
    I drag my eyes to his face. “How long what?”
    Caleb’s amusement only grows, as does his smile. This boy is dangerous, and I’m pretty sure he knows it. “How long have you been collecting these?” He pulls an album out of the tight space it’s currently sitting in. It takes work to keep myself from gasping a little, but I’m the only person who’s ever touched that one. “Take Velvet Underground here…” He dangles the album in question from two fingers and the vinyl slips out of the sleeve a little. He doesn’t appear to notice. It’s all I can do not to scream and snatch it away. These are my babies. My life’s work. And he’s treating them like nothing but cheap lined plastic inside old musty cardboard. What an uninformed, perfect idiot. “How long have you had it?”
    “Um…” The vinyl slips a little more, and my eyes go wide. “I bought it for my sixteenth birthday, so exactly five years.” My voice squeaks on that last word, and I feel my hand twitch by my side. If I could…just…grab it.
    “And you’re how old now?” Caleb touches the edge of the black sphere—touches it!—and pushes it back inside with one finger.
    “Twenty—” I clear my throat. “Twenty one yesterday.”
    “Twenty one.” He says it like a question, like he can’t believe my oldness. What, do I look like a kid? Because most people say that I’m mature for my age, that I’m—
    “Twenty one,” he continues. “With a collection like this. A collection you’ve alphabetized, categorized, and organized with the precision of a pediatric heart surgeon. Which I find interesting. Because for someone so old and with such an extensive compilation, you don’t seem to appreciate that this particular album is worth more than what some people pay for a car. So tell me, Princess, why in the world is it just sitting out unprotected on a cheap shelf that I know came from Wal-Mart?”
    Now who’s the idiot?
    He’s been playing me the whole time.
    I finally reach out and take it. “That’s not funny! If you knew how much it cost, why did you handle it so carelessly? Do you know what would’ve happened if it had slipped and cracked? Ten thousand dollars, straight down the toilet.”
    “Trust me, I wouldn’t let it fall. I won’t do anything that might result in you throwing up again. But…ten thousand dollars? And you bought it yourself?”
    “Trust fund,” I say sheepishly. It occurs to me that I shouldn’t be talking about this to a perfect stranger, but something tells me he’s honest. And except for the guy in the bar last night, my judgment hasn’t failed me yet. Besides, starting now I’m no longer going to count that guy, because I’m ninety-nine percent sure