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need to know them now that she was living in the States. She laughed, ruffled Mason’s hair, and said he was just like their brother Pedro. He’d shrugged off her comment, thinking he was nothing like Pedro. Pedro, he imagined, was more like Gabe, a tall, muscular teenager interested in cars and girls. Or maybe girls, then cars.
    But when he met Pedro the awful summer that followed, he learned Clara was right. Pedro wasn’t much older than Gabe like he had thought he would be. He was fourteen—just a year older than Mason and me. And the math was off. Seriously off.
    Gabe confirmed Mason’s suspicions—that Pedro was their half brother and, yes, his father had cheated on theirmom with Clara’s mother. Pedro was the result. Mason asked Gabe why no one in the family ever told him about the affair. And Gabe said, “You’ve always known about Pedro. I just didn’t know you thought he was eighteen.”
    In Mason’s mind, Pedro’s age changed everything.
    He had heard the family story that his father wasn’t there when he was born—a month premature. He knew that his mom had named him Mason and that his father didn’t like it—he had planned on naming him Diego so all five of them would have Spanish names. Now Mason knew about Pedro, and—according to Londa—that their father had been in Mexico with Pedro instead of at the hospital with their mom.
    Mason is his mother’s maiden name, and it fits—because he is pretty brick-headed sometimes. That summer, Mason built a wall between himself and his father. He stopped speaking Spanish. Not a word. He signed up for French the following year, even though he could have tested out of all the foreign language credits, like Gabe and Londa did. And now? Exchanges between Mason and his father sound pretty much like what just happened in the kitchen.
    “Do you think Sal would hire me?” Mason asks, breaking the silence.
    “You want to mow lawns?”
    “More like I don’t want to work for my dad.”
    “Probably,” I say. “I’ll tell Frank you’re interested.”
    “Thanks,” he says, and takes a bite of his burger. When he’s finished chewing, he changes the topic. “You should ask that art-geek girl to prom. I think she likes you.”
    “Challis? She’s a lesbian. And pissed that she didn’t get into Gumshoe ,” I say, even though Challis would be a perfect prom date. If she wasn’t mad at me.
    “No. The other one. The one you sit with?”
    “Eden O’Shea?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Eden likes me?” I never got that vibe from her. I mean, we’re strictly platonic.
    “In a googly-eyed-fan-girl way, yeah.”
    “It’s not like that.”
    Mason presses his lips together, but the corner of his mouth curls up in a grin.
    I elbow him.
    “Sooo . . . ,” he drawls. “You’re just friends, huh?”
    “Yeah. Just friends.”
    “Girls don’t want to go as friends, though,” Mason says. “They want romance, slow dancing, hotel rooms.”
    “Hotel rooms?” I hadn’t thought of that.
    “Yeah, duh. Why do you think prom is at the Riverside Hotel?”
    The color has probably drained from my face. There is no way I’d be caught dead in a hotel room with a girl.Okay, well, maybe if I were dead.
    “Kidding,” Mason says quietly, bumping my shoulder.
    I bump his shoulder back and let the silence fall around us once again. We don’t talk, just eat. Our elbows brush each other’s on occasion, but neither of us moves away.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
    FIVE
    Michael has a date. Mason has a date. The popular guys like Brodie and Kellen have had dates since elementary school. I still do not have a prom date.
    But this doesn’t stop me from marching up to the prom ticket table after school. “Two please,” I say to Bahti.
    “We’re sharing a limo,” she says in her British-tinged accent.
    “Yeah.” I hand her the money.
    “Who’s your date?” she asks,