She shrugged a single shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before.”

“Sucks ass?”

“Yeah.”

I grabbed another tissue. “I’m not a prude, you know,” I said defiantly.

She shot me a look and, oh, who was I kidding? I was. Sure, not as uptight as some of my Christmas classmates. Kimmy Bunting, for example—whose Evangelical parents kept watch over her and her younger sister, Kayla, like they were the CIA and the girls were a potential terrorist cell—was infamous for telling teachers whenever she heard anyone say “a four-letter word.” Which endeared her to no one. I wasn’t like that.

Though, since I spent almost all of my spare time studying or accruing extracurricular activities that looked impressive on a future college application and played chess with my insurance-agent father, I shouldn’t have been surprised this was how Ayisha, the World’s Coolest Person, viewed me.

And to my surprise, I found I didn’t like the idea of her seeing me like that.

“You think I’m a prude?” I asked, not able to hide the wounded tremor in my voice.

“You wanna know what I think of you?”

“Yeah,” I responded with more conviction than I felt, because there was no way this was going to go well for me.

Her eyes narrowed, then I could almost read an “all right, you asked” in her expression. “I think you’re snooty.”

I blinked, surprised. “Snooty?”

“That’s what I said. Snooty.”

Well, that was ridiculous. I was a lot of things but I knew for certain that, “I’m not snooty.”

“You asked my opinion and I gave it to you.”

“Yeah, but . . . snooty?” Maybe she and Arthur were suited for each other, because “snooty” sounded like his kind of word choice.

“Mmmm-hmmm. In that always-had-it-easy kinda way.”

The phone at the front desk rang and Ayisha answered it before I could challenge that offensively wrong assessment.

“Hoyden Inn, front desk, this is Ayisha, how may I help you”—she glanced at the readout on the computer where the name of the guest presently checked in was kept next to their room number (105)—“Mrs. Yablonski?”

I had to wait about ninety seconds until the call was completed (yes, we could make sure Mrs. Yablonski and her husband had apple-walnut pancakes for breakfast, and no, there would be no extra charge, happy to help) and she hung up before I could continue.

“You think I’m spoiled?” I demanded the moment the receiver hit the cradle.

“It’s not a bad thing.”

“It’s a terrible thing,” I countered hotly.

“It means your folks and your grandma care enough to make sure you’re protected from the shitty side of things, and that’s good. But it also means when shitty things happen, you’re not ready. And things always get shitty.”