“The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his brain out, but it struck me that losing intelligence was not something he was worried about.”

“I made it until the threes before a new problem, in addition to my possible haunting, came up. I had to pee. Three hours fifty-two minutes. I tried crossing my legs and thinking dry desert thoughts. I wasn't going to make it until six a.m. No way. That left me two choices:1. Stay here and pee the bed. This option was fraught with a whole load of downsides, not the least being forced to sit in a puddle of my own urine for hours (three hours forty-seven minutes to be exact). Then there would be the morning humiliation to consider. Dick's great-grandmother probably made this bed by collecting feathers off her pet goose. He would shit if I peed in it. He would make me sleep on rubber sheets as long as I lived here. Plus Nathaniel would know. I would be his spastic stepsister with an incontinence problem.2. Leave the bed and make a run for the bathroom. This had the upside of not getting me a year's subscription to Bedwetters Anonymous. The downside was obvious. I had to leave the safety of the covers and risk the dead girl grabbing ahold of me.”

“Nicole put on a frowny face and leaned forward for maximum cleavage exposure. Nathaniel looked. Of course he looked. She practically was shaking her breasts in his face. If he wasn't careful, a wayward nipple was going to take out one of his eyes. Okay, so it would have been impossible for him not to notice. However, he didn't have to keep noticing. It was like his eyes had homing beacons on her boobs.”

“Besides, I thought it was kind of cool that you noticed I have good dexterity." he waved his fingers in front of my face. "I like the idea of you thinking about what my hands can do." He winked before turning to leave. I flushed even redder. "I wasn't thinking about your hands," I called after him."Sure you weren't.""I wasn't. I was trying to be nice."Drew turned around to face me, leaning against the doorjamb. "Admit it. you're thinking about it now." He saluted and left.I kicked the cart Darn it. Now I was thinking about it.”

“She was still getting organized, trying to get the books she'd taken out to fit into the shelf under the stroller. She would shove a book in, and then something, a juice cup, a Binky, or one disturbing Barbie-doll head, would fall out the other side. She would shove that back in, and then something else would leak out the other side. Her stroller was like a poorly designed clown car.I went over and helped. It was a good thing spatial relations were a strength of mine, because it required the geometry skills of Newton to get everything slotted into place.”

“We reached to shake hands, and as soon as we touched, it felt like a current ran between the two of us. My heart sped up. Our eyes met. Nathaniel cleared his throat, and I realized he was trying to take his hand back and I was holding on to it with a death grip. I dropped his hand like it was a burning log. Oh God, I was turning into a stepbrother groper. He was nice to me, and the next thing he knew, I was hanging off him like a parasite. He was most likely grateful I hadn't thrown myself at his face for a tongue kiss.”

“There was no doubt about it. I was falling for my stepbrother. Long term this would likely result in my ending up on a tacky daytime talk show with other people who had an unnatural love for their relatives.”