by J. Minter
I took a deep breath, and for a minute I thought I might cry. Whatever mangle of emotions I had experienced with Suki on the beach, this was much, much more intense.
“What are you, my therapist?” I said, smiling suddenly out of sheer relief.
“I’m sorry, man,” David said, giving me a very earnest look. “I’m glad you’re back, but we can talk all this shit out later. Right now, you better go find Flan.”
I stood up, still not entirely sure how to feel about anything. David reached out his hand and we shook in this really stilted way. I felt something cold and metallic in his hand, and when I pulled my hand away I saw that he had palmed me a watch. My watch, the Tiffany’s one with my initials engraved in the back.
“How did you get this?” I asked.
“Don’t ask,” he said. And even though the whole thing was improbable, I was so overcome by the miraculousness of it all, that I threw my arms around him and we hugged in a really sincere way.
“I missed you, dude,” I said, “and I’ll see you really, really soon.”
“Go,” he said, and I went off to find Flan.
But I don’t go to Flan’s room, not straightaway
I took the stairs two at a time up to the roof. It was still kind of early, for New York, and all of February’s friends, and all their friends and friends’ friends, were still crowding the stairwells and most of the rooms on the first floor. It was strangely quiet up on the roof, and you could tell that everybody down below thought it was still winter, when in fact the air was kind of temperate and refreshing and clear. All of the plants were sill brown and leafless, of course, but they looked nice against that pale lavender color that you only get in a city as crazy and twisted and lit up as New York.
There were a few people up there I didn’t know, and then some people I knew really well. Patch and Greta were standing over by the railing looking into the garden. Greta was wearing this white velvet blazer that I think I recognized from Flan’s closet, and it complemented her hair really nicely. She looked kind of sophisticated, which I realized was something that I never really thought of Flan as being. But now, looking at her coat on another girl, I realized that I actually, subconsciously, knew this all along. Arno and Suki were leaning up against another part of the railing. He had his coat spread over both their shoulders, and he was nibbling at her ear. As I looked at them I realized I didn’t feel weird about Suki at all, and also that they looked great together. Farther down the railing, February and Rob were doing something disgusting with their tongues. They didn’t exactly make as beautiful a couple, but it was something I guess I was going to have to get used to.
“What are you doing up here?” Greta had turned and was calling out to me. I walked over to her and Patch, and Suki and Arno came over, too.
“I don’t know, I just wanted to say good night, I guess. In case you guys all disappeared. I mean, where’s Mickey gone off to already?”
“He got lonely, I guess,” Patch said, and he pointed across the gardens to the Fradys’ roof, where Mickey and Philippa were … talking.
“Yeah, you just can’t keep those crazy kids apart.”
“Speaking of which, what are you doing up here?” Arno said, giving me that look he always gives me when he thinks he can teach me something about girls. I didn’t mind, though; it was just in his nature to act like that. And he probably had taught me a lot about girls, so who could blame him?
Suki disentangled herself from Arno and walked over to me. She laced her arm in mine, and for a minute I thought she was going to do something really embarrassing, like confess her love to me or tell all my friends that we’d made out on a beach in the moonlight. (Which was seeming cheesier every time I thought about it.) But she didn’t. She said, “Jonathan, say good night to your friends,” in this very mothering tone.
“Good night, friends,” I said sort of jokily, and waved.
“Good night,” everyone said.
Suki walked me back over to the stairs. “Patch just introduced Greta and me to his little sister,” she said. This felt weird, but I was trying to go with it. “She’s really a catch; we both thought so … Hey, Jonathan? I had some fun with you on our little trip. I even had fun kissing you, but we don’t have to tell anybody that part, right? Because the thing is … I knew, when you told me about Flan, in the hostel in Mallorca, that you really, really liked her. And I think you guys make a good couple. Now go tell her you missed her, you jerk!” Then she ran back over to Arno, and I waved at my friends one last time and walked down the stairs to Flan’s room.
There was no one in the hall now, and I knocked lightly. After a few minutes I hadn’t heard anything, so I knocked again. I waited, trying to breathe steadily, to the point where I was going to have to barge in or give up. But then I heard the soft, sweet voice of Flan Flood, close to the other side of the door. She was saying, “If that’s Jonathan, you can’t come in.”
I put my forehead against the door. “Hey, Flan. I know I said some stupid shit … but I traveled on boats, and slow trains, and shitty cramped airplanes, all the way across the ocean, to see you. And I missed you really, really bad, and …”
The door opened, and there was Flan, with her golden hair undone and wearing nothing but an XL Guns N’ Roses shirt that looked like it used to be black. She shook her head and said, “God you’re hokey.”
But she was smiling, too, in this sweet, mysterious way that was hard to decipher. I took her hand and slipped my watch onto her wrist. It made her wrist look tiny, but it also made her look tough, and older. “You have no idea how hard it was to bring that back here to you,” I said, even though I didn’t really have any idea, either.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, twisting it around her wrist. Then she put her hands around my neck, and kept giving me that smile. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I was sure I wanted to find out.
Don’t miss the next Insiders book—Break Every Rule!
It’s spring in New York and things are heating up:
Jonathan’s torn between his demanding girlfriend and his guys.
Mickey gets into photography—the naked kind!
Arno is named Hottest Private School Boy … but can he handle the title?
Patch is suddenly desperate to reconnect with a girl from his past—if he can find her!
And David falls for the ultimate anti-It Girl. Could it be love?
While you wait, check out what’s new with the guys at www.insidersbook.com.
Copyright © 2005 by J. Minter and Alloy Entertainment
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Published by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
Electronic edition published in June 2012
www.bloomsburyteens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Minter, J.
Take it off : an insiders novel / by J. Minter.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Four wealthy Manhattan teenagers find love and adventure in the Mediterranean when they join an Ocean Term cruise.
[1. Cruise ships—Fiction. 2. Mediterranean Sea—Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.M67334Tak 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2005040532
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
151 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10011
First U.S. Edition 2005
Bloomsbury Publishing, Children’s Books, U.S.A.
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
ISBN: 978-1-61963-079-6 (e-book)
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