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attitude. If Bo says hi to you in the hallway at school, you are to walk by him without so much as a nod. Do you understand?” He still didn’t wait for me to answer. “You’re grounded until further notice, and from here on out, any friends who can’t produce proof that they’re on the honor roll will not have access to your phone number.” 43/356
    I didn’t point out that none of his punishments mattered because I wouldn’t have friends now anyway.
    He went on berating me about everything I had done ever since I moved in with them. He had a whole list. I wondered why he didn’t come out and say he didn’t want me. It was more than obvious. By the time we reached our house, tears pinched the back of my eyes.
    When the car stopped, I opened my door and choked out, “What gives you the right to tell me how to live my life?”
    “I’m your father,” he shouted, emphasizing every word. “And that boy deserted you at a crime scene!”
    “Yeah, and you deserted me a long time before that!” I slammed the car door, ran into the house, and didn’t stop running until I reached my room.
    For a while I lay on my bed, hugging my pillow to my stomach and crying. The real problem behind all of this, I decided, was that I kept looking for someone to love me. My father. Bo. All those guys I dated in Queens—I had gone out with some gems there. The guy who hit on my best friend. The guy who wanted me to do his math homework. The guy who was always too busy playing computer games to talk on the phone. Actually, that described a lot of them.
    When was I going to learn that trying to pry affection out of people just made me vulnerable? I always ended up getting hurt. Love was a liability. I wouldn’t look for it anymore. I would give up on love and become one of those high-powered career women who crushed people beneath her stiletto heels.
    My mom called. She yelled at me about being involved with vandals and then for telling my father he deserted me. I took it stoically. It was par for the night.
    A half hour later my cell phone beeped. I opened a text from Bo.
    His message consisted of four-letter words—except for the part where 44/356
    he said he never wanted to see me again. I supposed that meant the police had found him.
    I put my face back down in my pillow and tried to fall asleep, tried to stop the emotions that squeezed me. I made myself think of the positives: having no friends would make it easy to move to my grandma’s in December.
    Well, not really. Grandma didn’t want footprints, let alone boarders, in her house. After she found out about tonight, she was going to harp on my criminal past for as long as I lived with her. She would probably count her possessions every night to make sure I didn’t pocket something.
    There were no positives to this.
    I heard a noise, like something tiny clearing its throat. I looked up. The room had a dim glow that hadn’t been there before, and when I glanced at the end of my bed I saw what looked like a six-inch leprechaun doll standing there.
    A voice with a thick brogue accent said, “I must be at the right place. There’s the damsel crying her eyes out, but no bloomin’ fairy. I should have known that dosser would be late.” My first thought was that Nick had come into my room and was hiding at the end of my bed with a puppet in an attempt to cheer me up. He used to do that sort of thing with Kendall when she came for visits. Her Beanie Baby cat would have conversations with her about his plans to conquer the world. I wasn’t twelve though, and I wasn’t in the mood for these sorts of games. Even if I was glad that Nick cared.
    “Just what I need right now,” I said dryly, “a leprechaun.”
    “I’m short on gold,” he said, “so it won’t do you any good to ask for it.”

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    “Of course you are. You wouldn’t be my leprechaun if you weren’t broke.” I picked up my pillow and chucked it toward the end of the bed.
    The leprechaun ducked as the