Page 108

“Oh. Well.” Wendy looks at her stack of books and shuffles them around, flipping a few covers over until she apparently finds the one she’s looking for, which she hands to me. It’s one of her Girls Who Kicked Butt books, that much I recognize, but that’s about it. On the cover is a pretty Asian lady with a big jeweled pin in her hair and a pink robe-dress thing, staring out at the mountains like they owe her money. I wouldn’t cross her, that’s for sure.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’m looking at,” I say, dragging a finger under the words at the top—the name of the Girl Who Kicked Butt, I guess. “Is that…” I take a wild stab at it. “…Mulan?”

“Oh, duh.” Wendy shakes her head and reads for me. “No, that’s Princess Shanyin. She was the sister of a Chinese Emperor in the 400s.”

“Okay,” I say. “And?”

“And…” Wendy giggles and looks around as if she wants to make sure no one can hear us. Which, I’m sure the winos sleeping in the main reading room don’t care. “And do you know what a concubine is?”

“Um,” I say. “Not really?” I think I’ve heard the word before, somewhere, and if it means what I think it maybe means, then it’s basically a fancy term for…what the Mermaids do. But I’m not about to say that to Wendy.

“It’s like, an official professional girlfriend,” Wendy says matter-of-factly. “Or”—she lowers her voice—“boyfriend.”

“Okay,” I say again. “And…this princess had one?”

Wendy grins. “Huh-uh. Guess how many she had. Guess.”

“Uh…” Shit, I have no idea. “Two?”

“Thirty!” Wendy says, delight on her face.

I blink. “Whoa.”

“You see what I’m saying?” Wendy says. “People do it.”

I look down at Princess Shanyin. I don’t really know what Tink has in common with a Chinese lady from hundreds of years ago—well, unless that lady is actually Mulan, in which case they have one big thing in common—but they do both look like they know exactly what they want.

And what’s more important, I realize, is that…is that Wendy doesn’t think it’s weird. Or wouldn’t be weird. If Tink liked all of us.

And weirdly, her not thinking it’s weird makes me think that it just…isn’t weird. Or wouldn’t be, or at least doesn’t have to be. If it shook out that way.

“So you’re saying this is the first one I should read,” I say, lifting Princess Shanyin in the air.

Wendy considers. “Maybe we can get something you’re more…interested in to start. Something that doesn’t say Girls Who Kicked Butt on it?” she adds lightly.

“Hey, I like girls who kick butt,” I say. But she has a point. I glance at the nature magazine for babies—hoping it’s not that—then back at Wendy. “What did you have in mind?”

Ten minutes later, we’re at the Pancake Hut—also Wendy’s idea—and I’m paging through a giant shiny-paged book with tons of pictures of motorcycles and bikes. Also cars and boats and stuff, but obviously, I’m gonna look at the bikes first. It has photos of a bunch of kinds of bikes—historical, modern, the whole family tree—plus all the parts inside, and then all the words next to them. Kind of embarrassing because it’s technically for kids, but also pretty cool because, well, Wendy’s right. I do like bikes.

“Here you go,” the waitress says, plopping down a short stack of strawberry syrup pancakes for Wendy and a Pancake Hut Garbage Plate for me. “Cramming in all that last-minute summer reading, huh?” she says, nodding at Wendy’s stack of books. “My kids are the same way. I told them school’s starting next week, and they had all summer to read, but did they listen? Course not.”

“Oh, um.” Wendy smiles and nods a little awkwardly. “Yeah.”

A look I can’t quite read flickers across the waitress’s face. She glances at me.

“That’s what the pancakes are for,” I say quickly. “Big brother bribery, right?”

The waitress relaxes, like now she knows where to map me on the territory of Wendy’s life.

“Hey, if it works, it works,” she says, sliding her pencil behind her ear. “Y’all need anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Wendy says politely, and unwraps her silverware.

I shake my head. “Thanks, though.”

The waitress sweeps off, and we dig into our food.

It’s like a billion degrees because the air conditioning is broken. At least, that’s what Wendy said the sign on the front of the door said, and there’s only one ceiling fan noisily spinning around. The tables are also a little sticky, and the windows have that filmed-over, greasy look to them. But Wendy wanted to come here, so who was I to say no?