Then the doorbell had rung, and I’d started to believe in Santa all over again, even though I’d found out the truth about that when I was seven and Garret had broken my heart by forcing my eyes open to the fact that magical beings like Santa and the tooth fairy weren’t real. But I’d been given the only gift I could ever possibly want or need with the appearance of my best friend on our front porch, and I’d almost looked to the sky to see if Santa and his reindeer were in the vicinity.

Instead, I’d been too busy throwing myself at Ryan, and like he always did, he caught me and twirled me around, making me laugh even more.

“How was your flight?” Mom asked Anya from where she was sitting beside Dad on the couch. “I heard there was a huge snowstorm over the Midwest.”

“We flew around it,” Anya told her with a smile. “It put an extra two hours on the trip, but it was an uneventful flight.”

“Great. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to make it.”

That caught my attention, and I turned my head to look at my mom. “You knew they were coming?”

She and Dad both nodded, but Mom was the one to speak. “Well, Anya asked us if she could give you a special gift and needed our permission to make it happen. Plus, you needed a bag packed, sweetheart.”

I frowned at her. “I don’t understand. I opened the gifts they sent this morning.” The pillow that had one of my favorite pictures of Ryan and me on it was already on my bed, ready for me to snuggle up to it that night. Then there were the books Anya had sent. All the travel books she knew I loved and collected from St. Petersburg and all the cities I wanted to visit in Italy one day with Ryan.

“This is something different,” Anya answered. “With you getting older and becoming more…” Her blue eyes traveled over me, taking in the boobs I was starting to develop and my long blond hair. I was still the shortest person in my grade, possibly even shorter than the smallest kid in the grade below me, but there was no denying that I’d been growing in other areas. “Of a woman.”

Mom and Aunt Raven said I would be a pocket Venus one day, small but curvy. Dad had only grunted when they’d been talking about it over dinner one night, saying he needed to buy more guns. I was the mirror image of Aunt Raven in all those pictures of her from when she was the same age, but I felt…lacking. My height sucked because I was always having to look up at people.

“Mom wants to take you to Paris. Get you a full wardrobe for this spring and summer,” Ryan told me when I just sat there frowning at Anya.

I jumped to my feet, already bouncing from one foot to the other in excitement. “We’re going shopping in Paris?” I whisper-shouted the question.