Chapter One

For a few seconds, Stevie couldn’t understand anything Susan Carol was saying. Between the rush of words and her southern accent, most of what he heard was gibberish. He was picking up perhaps two words a sentence.
“Hate them . . . Never, ever . . . The nerve . . . Can’t be trusted . . . Hate them.”
The second time he heard ‘hate them’ he broke in because he guessed she was repeating herself. “Calm down,” he said.
He understood her next sentence quite clearly: “CALM DOWN! DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME TO CALM DOWN, STEVEN RICHMAN THOMAS. I WILL NOT CALM DOWN, NOT FOR ONE SECOND!”
He realized he was smiling. Her anger was one part amusing and about five parts touching. She seemed to be more upset about what had happened than he was. And her tirade was making him feel much better.
“What did you tell them?” he said when she finally paused to take a breath.
“I told them they better find themselves another girl, that there was only one person I would work with and some eye candy guy named Jamie Whitsitt, of all things, was not that person.”
“Who is Jamie Whitsitt?”
He heard her sigh, the kind of sigh he usually heard when she seemed convinced he was too stupid to live.
“Jamie Whitsitt is the lead singer of the ‘Best Boys.’ He is gorgeous but I couldn’t care less. I’m not working with him.”
Remarkably, Stevie had heard of ‘Best Boys,’ if only because he had heard the girls in his class oohing and aahing about them at lunch time. “Aren’t those guys a lot older than us?” he asked.
“He’s eigh