Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
“I knew I shouldn’t have tried a new recipe on something so important. I’m so sorry, Kane. Oh my God I’m so embarrassed, this is so embarrassing, you must think I’m like trying to poison you.”
“Relax, Urs,” Kane said. “It’s cool. They still look good.”
Her face turned wondrous. “You called me Urs. That’s what you used to call me.”
It hadn’t been on purpose. Kane shrugged uneasily, feeling no more familiar toward her than before.
Ursula joined him on the table. Sparrows quizzically circled the fallen crumbs. Ursula snapped off bits of cookie anatomy and tossed them to the birds.
“You don’t even like sugar cookies,” she confessed.
Kane held very still. This was true. He thought sugar cookies were for people who had never tasted actual happiness, but he wasn’t about to tell Ursula that.
“Like, the last time I made sugar cookies, you told me that sugar cookies were for people who had never tasted actual—”
“Stop.” Kane couldn’t take hearing his own memories repeated to him. The taut feeling in his heart threatened to snap right there, like a piano string ripping through him.
The silence eased him, but then made it worse. He needed to at least give her the chance.
“Actually, it would help if you told me about us, I think.”
“Hmm, okay.” Ursula handed Kane what was left of his cookie. “Well, for one we used to sit out here in the mornings, and you’d toss food to the birds. I used to hate it, to be honest. Like I was absolutely scared of birds. All birds. And I used to get so mad that you would try to get them to come closer, but then one day you showed up with bread crumbs and showed me how you can sort of conduct them if you throw crumbs to one side, then the other.” She demonstrated this by tossing a handful of cookie bits to one side of the courtyard. The flock burst into a wheeling arc that plummeted through the bright air. She did it again, to the other side, and the birds flowed like water.
“I love that,” Ursula said. “We used to do this a lot, even during summer break. Wherever we went we’d always feed the birds. I miss it.”
Kane cast crumbs too close to the table, and the birds darted so close that Ursula screamed and laughed, tearing backward and dragging Kane with her.
“Jerk.” She punched him playfully. “Good to see you haven’t changed a bit.”