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seven in the morning! And I didn’t know you had hired a…a…shovel boy.”
    “Shovel boy?”
    “You know what I mean. Besides, I don’t really wear much makeup.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s because you got the good-skin gene in the family,” Gretchen complained. “You got Mom’s golden skin. You’re like the perfect Norwegian goddess.”
    “Excuse me?” No one had ever called me a goddess before, and I was pretty sure no one would ever do it again, either. Could she at least do it while Sean was still hanging around? And in a very loud voice, with the door wide open? Just shout it: Kirsten is a goddess!
    “It’s not fair. You get to be the cute one,” Gretchen complained.
    “ Me ? All I ever hear from Mom is about how beautifully you dress and how gorgeous you are and how she wishes I could be put together like you,” I said.
    “Oh. Really?” Gretchen’s mood suddenly perked up a bit.
    “Yes,” I said.
    She laughed at herself. “It’s hard to look put together when all you can wear is sweatpants,” she said. “One, because your other pants don’t fit, and two, because you can’t fit anything else over a cast.”
    “But, ah, you make it look easy,” I lied. Then I ran into the kitchen to fetch a mug of coffee for her. “So. What do you have planned for today? Anything?” I asked when I went back to the living room.
    “I was thinking maybe we could go shopping—check out the New Year’s sales.”
    Why am I not surprised? I thought. “Sounds good. Hey, Gretch. Does Sean—does he live around here?”
    “Two blocks over that way,” Gretchen said, pointing. “Isn’t he nice?”
    “Yeah,” I said, snuggling back under thefleece blanket. Nice and nice-looking, I thought.
    “He’s really sweet, not to mention easy on the eyes,” Gretchen added. She looked at me as if she were expecting something—for me to completely agree or to start telling her how attracted I was to him.
    “He’s okay, I guess,” I said with a shrug. The last thing I wanted to do was let Gretchen know I was interested in Sean. She’d turn it into a project of hers. Or turn me into one, rather. Maybe later, if things worked out…but not yet.

Chapter 4
    G retchen and I hit the Ridgedale Mall running—and, in her case, swinging on crutches—in search of clearance items. Well, at least I was hunting for sales. She didn’t seem to care about the sales as much as having me drive her to the mall and look after Brett while she shopped.
    I was sensing a pattern to my days here that could last for the next month in its entirety.
    Fortunately for all of us, the mall had a play area where Brett could run around and scream, and where that was expected rather than frowned upon. He had several partners in crime.
    I’ve never met anyone who likes to shop as much as Gretchen does. She even drives my mom nuts with as much time as she can spend at a mall, which is saying something. My momand Gretchen were at the Mall of America’s grand opening and consider it a pivotal moment in their lives.
    We met up in the food court for lunch at noon. Gretchen ordered a Diet Coke while I had a burrito and Brett had a quesadilla, which he insisted on ordering himself, only he pronounced it “cheesy-dill-ah” and I had to translate for him.
    Afterward we stopped by a table advertising something called the Polar Bear Plunge when Brett grabbed a keychain off the table before we could stop him. The logo showed a polar bear wearing a scarf, in the middle of doing a dive.
    “Sorry,” I said as I got Brett to put the keychain back.
    “No problem. Have you signed up yet? It’s next week, so you still have time to get lots of pledges,” the guy manning the table said.
    “Pledges?” Gretchen asked.
    “It’s a fundraiser for the Special Olympics,” he explained. “You jump into White Bear Lake, you jump out—you’re done.”
    “And…it’s next week,” I said, the reality ofhow cold the water I would be sinking in…sinking