Read YA The Boy on Cinnamon Street for Free Online

outside?”
    “Yeah,” goes Reni, “of course you can tell. You’re, like, all pale and weird-looking. I think we should try to get ahold of some of Benny’s notebooks to see if he’s writing your name in the margins.”
    “No, Reni. This doesn’t feel right. This is something different. It can’t be a crush. And how would we find any notebook of his anyway?” I say.
    “Well, Benny probably lives around here. Everybody lives near here,” Reni says. “We can take a walk and maybe if we see him you’ll be able to tell how you feel.”
    I sit up and wrap my arms around my legs. I put myself in a little ball. I need to do some flips. Fifty flips would straighten everything out. Followed by a bunch of fast aerial cartwheels and a string of handsprings. Henderson walks by the room outside, still with the book over his head. He stops in the doorway. Reni points to me and says, “A basket case.”
    Henderson peers out at me from under some pages. I feel like a specimen in a zoo.
    “What kind of a basket?” says Henderson. “Indian sweetgrass or pine needle?”
    “Ha ha and good-bye, Henderson,” says Reni. Then she slams the door and flops down on the rug and stares up at the ceiling. “You know what? Loving Justin Bieber is a one-way street,” she says. “I do all the giving and get nothing in return, not even a form letter. You, on the other hand, have a handwritten, handmade, one-of-a-kind real letter. The only thing wrong with your situation is you. You’re on the fence. You’re waffling.”
    “I’m not really on the fence,” I say. “I like Benny, I think. I mean, maybe a lot, for all I know. It just doesn’t feel like it, that’s all.”
    Reni hops up suddenly like a big happy exclamation point. “Of course you do! Let’s go ask Annais where this poor adorable lovesick boy lives,” she says, looking sweetly, joyously at me. Then she starts jumping up and down and squealing. The Elliots all jump up and down and squeal a lot. Except Henderson. He frowns when they squeal. But he also smiles and laughs when he’s sleeping. Reni told me, when they used to share a room, she had to throw stuff at him in the night to keep his laughter level down.
    Reni bops into Annais’s room and I follow her. “Guess what,” she says with a smile as big and wide as the South Pottsboro I-95 bridge. “ She got a love letter.”
    “No way,” goes Annais, giving a corner of her painting a scrub with a sloppy-looking paintbrush. “From who?”
    “It’s so cool,” says Reni, still bouncing up and down. She’s so happy, she reminds me of a second grader on her way to a sleepover. “It’s from Benny McCartney. You know? We think he might be lovesick slash embarrassed slash desperate. She hasn’t seen him recently. He may be in hiding. If he doesn’t show up at school, we’ll know he’s hurting because she hasn’t responded.”
    Annais’s face begins to match the color on the end of her paintbrush, a dark boiling red. “No, Reni. You are an inexperienced dope. He’s an older guy. He’s in ninth grade. Are you kidding me? You’re encouraging Louise to stalk him. Stalkers get in trouble, big-time.”
    “Thumbelina is her name. If you call her Louise, she’s not going to answer you. Right, Thumbelina?”
    “This is the real world, girls,” says Annais, “and it sounds to me like you’re both a couple of potential stalkers.”
    “Do you think I’m stalking Justin Bieber?” says Reni, rolling her eyes up toward her eyebrows, as if there might be an answer to that question sitting up there.
    “No, Reni, how can you stalk someone when you don’t even know where they live?” I say.
    “Exactly,” says Reni. “She’s not stalking Benny, because we don’t know where he lives. Do you know where he lives, Annais?”
    “Look, girls, I need to paint,” Annais says, stepping back with one hand on her hip, looking at her crazy messed-up canvas from a distance. She’s wearing a cool painting smock