“The evil sister, I know.”
I snorted, then slapped my free hand over my mouth. Lauren’s jaw dropped, and she shot me a WTH look.
“Christopher is coming with us,” I told her.
“This guy?” Lauren pointed across her body at Christopher, her eyes on me. “The one who just called me evil?”
“Well, you are a little evil,” I joked.
Lauren smirked.
“Yeah, and we’re gonna need a van, probably,” Christopher pointed out. “So I can prop up my leg.”
Lauren’s eyes trailed from his sock-covered foot, sticking out of his cast, all the way up his body to his green, green eyes.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “But by the end of the day, you’d better take back that evil comment.” She put her sunglasses back on and pointed at me. “You get him his coffee and meet me in the garage in ten minutes. By the time you get there, I’ll have a van for us.”
She turned and flounced away, leaving me shaking my head. I should have mentioned Christopher from the very beginning. The fastest way to my sister’s heart was with a hot guy.
Downtown Evergreen was like something out of a dusty classic picture book featuring stories from a simpler time. Main street was a wide, two-lane road lined with flowerpots (currently holding decorated evergreen shrubs) and old-fashioned lampposts, each of these hung with a ball of holly and festooned with red ribbon. Colorful awnings adorned the mom-and-pop shops, which included an actual five-and-dime store, a stationery store called Write or Wrong, and a barbershop with the classic swirling striped barbershop pole. There was a Starbucks, and a couple of banks, but otherwise, it was as if time had stopped, and everyone who lived and worked there meant to keep it that way. The plate-glass windows shone, the wrought-iron trellises were freshly painted, and there wasn’t a stray bit of garbage anywhere. The only speck of anything on the sidewalks was the leftover salt from when the store owners had dealt with the ice that morning.
“Where is this place, anyway?” I asked, following my sister up the hill, past where most of the shops lived. I kept looking back at Christopher, who was bringing up the rear, gamely navigating around other pedestrians with his crutches. The place was so jammed, Lauren had been forced to park in a municipal lot a couple of blocks outside of town, but Christopher hadn’t complained once.
“It’s in an old Victorian house up here. It’s so cool. Wait until you see.”
Lauren actually seemed excited. Maybe the way to my sister’s heart was actually through shopping. Could it be that there was more than one? Maybe I should stop waiting for my sister to stop treating me like crap and start offering to do the things she liked to do. This was, at least, more pleasant than most of the time we’d spent together lately. Although, it wasn’t like she ever offered to hang out with me at the bookstore or had come to one of the plays I worked on without being bribed by a parent.
“We’re here,” Lauren announced finally, slightly out of breath. She clomped up the steps of the small home, which were painted a light lavender, and opened the door with a flourish.
I looked up. The words SWEETS AND TREATS were painted on the front window of the pretty, gingerbread-style house. In the window display, shoes, purses, and jewelry were positioned on little glittering ski slopes, as if they were taking morning runs. “Isn’t this the place Loretta basically forbid us to go?”
Lauren rolled her eyes, and I flinched, waiting for the put-down that I knew, from experience, was on the tip of her tongue. But then Christopher arrived behind me—I could smell the fruity scent of his shampoo—and Lauren stopped herself. Clearly she didn’t want to look like a jerk in front of him. Hanging out with Christopher was turning out to have so many benefits.
“Come on,” Lauren said. “They have the cutest stuff. Unless you want to buy a pair of sensible pumps from one of the middle-aged-lady stores downtown.”
“You definitely don’t want to do that,” Christopher offered, eyes twinkling.
I went up the stairs and held the door for Christopher, who made his way ever so slowly toward us. He winced with each step, and I started to feel very guilty about this whole endeavor. But then, he was the one who’d insisted on coming along. Almost as if he wanted to spend time with me and would endure anything to do it.
My heart did a little pitter-patter dance at the thought.
“You’d think they’d be required to install a ramp,” he muttered under his breath as he finally arrived, a sheen of sweat across his forehead. “Isn’t that, like, a law?”
“Are you all right?” I asked. “We don’t have to do this. I feel like you should be home in bed.”
“Probably.” He gave me a heart-stopping grin. “But why the heck would I want to do that when I’m about to watch you try on shoes?”
The weird thing was, it was clear he really meant it.
* * *
• • •
Half an hour and about twenty pairs of painful shoes later, I was about ready to give up. Why? Why did high-heeled shoes exist? And why did anyone want to wear them—ever? My calves ached and my toes were pinched and there was a blister forming on the back of one of my heels. And this was just from trying them on. I honestly couldn’t believe Loretta walked around in shoes like this all day. Were her feet made of steel?
Lauren was texting on her phone, and Ainsley—the salesperson who had been gamely running up and down the stairs to the stockroom for new pairs—looked desperate as I kicked off the latest pair—strappy torture devices covered in silver glitter. Honestly, it felt as if someone had taken a hacksaw to the tops of my feet.
“I think you’ve tried on every pair that’s lower than three inches,” Ainsley said, biting her bottom lip, which was painted a deep shade of purple and outlined in black. “If you were willing to go a bit higher, I could—”
“No. She can’t handle higher,” Lauren said, shoving her phone away. “Trust me on this. You ever seen a baby giraffe video?”
Ainsley’s plucked eyebrows rose. “Oh, really?” she said, and scrunched up her face. “That bad?”
“That bad,” Lauren confirmed.
“Hey, I am not a baby giraffe,” I grumbled, and they both looked at me hopefully. “But I really don’t want to go above two inches,” I said with an apologetic shrug. Honestly, if I’d only tried on two-inch pairs so far, I was pretty sure three inches would actually kill me.
“I’m sorry,” Ainsley said. “I really don’t have anything else I can show you.”