“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, before I was able to restrain myself. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t seen Lucy home on a Saturday night since her twelfth birthday. “Where’s Jack?”

Had they, I thought, broken up at last? Had seeing me with another guy at Kris Parks’s party finally made Jack realize his true feelings for me?

But the bigger question was, if it had, why didn’t I feel happier about it? I mean, why would it actually make me feel sick to my stomach? Unless that was the result of that one hors d’oeuvres I accidentally scarfed before I realized how gross they were . . .

“Oh, Jack’s in the TV room,” Lucy said in a bored voice. She was, I saw, doing her numerology chart. “He has to read some book for English class . . . Wuthering Heights. The report’s due Monday, but of course he never read it. And they told him if he flunks English, they won’t let him graduate in May.”

I took off my coat and the lace sling and flopped on to the couch beside her. “So he’s reading it now? At our house?”

“God, no,” Lucy said. “It’s on TV He’s upstairs watching it. I tried, and even though it’s got Ralph Fiennes, I just couldn’t take it. What do you think of this skirt?” She flipped to a page in the centre of the magazine.

“It’s nice, I guess.” My mind seemed to be working at a very sluggish pace, even though all I’d had to drink at the International Festival of the Child was 7-Up. “Where’re Mom and Dad?”

“They’re at that thing,” Lucy said, turning back to her magazine. “You know. Some benefit for North African orphans, or whatever. I don’t know. All I know is, Theresa cancelled because Tito broke his foot moving a refrigerator, so I’m stuck here making sure Miss ET Phone Home doesn’t blow the house up. Oh my God.” Lucy lowered the magazine. “You should see it. Rebecca has a little friend over, spending the night. Remember when you used to have Kris Parks spend the night, and you two would play Barbies until the crack of dawn, or whatever? Well, guess what Rebecca and her friend are doing? Oh, just creating a DNA strand out of Tinkertoys. Hey, what about this suit?” Lucy showed me the suit. “I was thinking we could get you one like it for your medal ceremony. You know. We’ve only got about two weeks left to get you a really hot outfit. I told Mom we should have hit the outlets on the way home from Grandma’s—”

“Luce,” I said.

I don’t know what made me do it. Talk to my sister Lucy, of all people, about my problems.

But there it was, all coming out. It was like lava, or something, pouring out of a volcano. And there was absolutely no way I could stuff it all back up once it came oozing out.

The weirdest part of it was, Lucy put the magazine down and actually listened. She looked me right in the eye and listened, and didn’t say a word for like five minutes.

Normally, of course, I don’t share details about my personal life with my big sister. But since Lucy is an expert on all things social, I thought she might be able to shed some light on David’s weird behaviour—and possibly my own. I didn’t mention anything about Jack, you know, being my soulmate and all. Just the stuff about the party, and how mean David had been to me at the International Festival of the Child, and the weird frisson and stuff like that.

When I was through, Lucy just rolled her eyes.

“God,” she said. “Come to me with a hard one next time, OK?”

I stared at her. “What?” I mean, I had just revealed my soul to her—well, most of my soul, anyway—and she seemed disappointed that my problems weren’t juicier. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s totally obvious what’s going on with you and David.” She swung her slippered feet up on to the coffee table.

“It is?” Strangely, my heart had started speeding up again. “What, then? What’s going on between us?”

“Duh,” Lucy said. “I mean, even Rebecca figured it out. And her own school admits she has like zero people skills.”

“Lucy.” I was trying very hard not to scream in frustration. “Tell me. Tell me what is going on between David and me, or I swear to God, I’ll—”

“God, chill,” Lucy said. “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise not to get mad.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I swear.”

“Fine.“ Lucy looked down at her fingernails. I could see that she’d just gotten a new manicure. Each nail was a perfect oval, with a clean white tip. My own nails, of course, had never looked that clean, being almost constantly embedded with pencil dust from drawing.

Lucy took a deep breath. Then she let it out and said, “You love him.”

I blinked at her. “What? I what?”

“You promised not to get mad,” Lucy said warningly.

“I’m not mad,” I said. Though of course I was. I had poured my heart out to her, and this is what she came up with? That I was in love with David? Could there be anything further from the truth? “But I don’t love David.”

“God, Sam,” she said, rolling her head against the back of the couch with a groan. “Of course you do. You say when he smiles at you, your heart feels like it’s flipping over. And that when you’re around him, your face always feels hot. And that since he’s been so mad at you for parading him around Kris’s party like a prize trout you’d caught in some dating fishing stream, you’ve felt miserable. What do you think all of that is, Sam, if not love?”

“Frisson?” I suggested, hopefully.

Lucy picked up one of the satin sofa pillows and hurled it at me. “That’s what love is, you idiot!” she yelled. “All that stuff you feel when you look at David? That’s what I feel when I look at Jack. Don’t you get it? You love David. And if I am not mistaking the signs, I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say he feels the same way about you. Or at least he used to, before you, you know, screwed it all up.”

I couldn’t tell her that she was wrong, of course. I couldn’t tell her that it was impossible for me to be in love with David, since I’d been in love with her boyfriend from almost the first time she’d brought him home.

But I had to admit, it did sound a little . . . possible. I mean, given the whole frisson thing. Much as I loved Jack, I had to admit my heart didn’t start beating faster when I saw him. Not like it did with David. And I never had trouble meeting Jack’s gaze—even though his pale-blue eyes were every bit as beautiful as David’s green ones. And while I blushed around Jack, well, the truth is, I’m a redhead: I blush around everybody.

But the person I blush around most is David.

And what about that thing David had pointed out? I mean about Jack’s urban rebellion being kind of ... well, bogus? Because it was bogus, now that I thought of it, for him to shoot out the windows of his dad’s medical practice in protest of something that, yeah, might hurt animals, but which helped sick people.

And the time he’d skinny-dipped at the Chevy Chase Country Club? What had he been protesting then? The country club’s restrictive bathing-suit rule? You know, I bet there are a lot of people at the Chevy Chase Country Club you wouldn’t want to see swimming nude. So wasn’t a bathing-suit policy a good thing, then?

So what did it all mean? Was it possible Lucy was right? Was such a thing even remotely likely? That I had somehow fallen out of love with Jack, and into love with David, without even being aware of it myself . . . until now?

And how could I, Samantha Madison, who for so long had thought she’d known everything, have turned out to know so very, very little?

I was still trying to figure it out when, five minutes later, I’d left Lucy (feeling satisfied that she had solved all of my problems) in the living room, and gone into the kitchen for a snack, since the food at the party had hardly been satisfying.

You can imagine my discomfort when, as I was biting into a turkey sandwich I’d just made (with mayo, nothing else, on white bread) Jack came in.

“Oh, hey, Sam,” he said, wandering over to the refrigerator. “I didn’t know you’d gotten home. How was the party?”

I swallowed the hunk of sandwich I’d been jamming into my mouth just as he’d walked in. “Um,” I said. “Fine. Wuthering Heights over?”

“Huh?” He was busy peering into the fridge. “No, not yet. Commercial. Hey, so what’s the deal, Sam?” He took a carrot out of the vegetable crisper and bit into it noisily. “Is my painting going to New York or what?”

I had known I was going to be having this conversation sooner or later. I’d just hoped it would be later.

But I might as well, I figured, get it over with.

“Jack,” I said, putting down my sandwich. “Listen.”

Before I could get the words out of my mouth, however, Jack was going, with a look of total disbelief, “Wait a minute. Wait. Don’t say it. I can tell by the look on your face. I didn’t win, did I?”

I took a deep, steadying breath, preparing myself for the pain I knew was going to come flooding in when I said the word that would hurt him so much.

“No,” I said.

Jack, who had left the refrigerator door hanging wide open, took a single step backwards. Clearly, I had hurt him. And for that, I would be eternally sorry.

But incredibly, no hurt came. Really. I’d been ready for it. I’d been totally prepared for it to come pouring over me, this intense sorrow for having hurt him.

But it didn’t come. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I was sorry to hurt his feelings, but doing so caused me no hurt whatsoever.

Which was weird. Very weird. Because how could I hurt the man I loved—my soulmate, the man I was destined to be with for ever—and not feel his pain throbbing along my every nerve ending?

“I can’t believe it,” Jack said, finding his voice at last. “I cannot freaking believe this. I didn’t win? You’re seriously telling me I didn’t win?”