I decided, fuck it! Just give them the update now. So here it is guys, The big date part dos. Hope you enjoy.

I snapped my head up and tried to gauge what she'd meant by this. I couldn't tell, because she wouldn't meet my gaze. Which was probably a good thing. I could feel myself flushing as my heart pounded.

I as attracted to Emily. Not as much as I was attracted to Katie, of course. That would never happen. But Emily had been so sweet and fun, teaching me to drive. Tangling with me as we switched places in the truck didn't hurt either. Or carrying me on her back. I really enjoyed her carrying me on her back.

Did she mean, Why does it have to be Katie instead of me? And if she did...

Good God, what was the matter with me? Emily didn't like me that way. She just hated Katie. She wanted to know why I was so stuck on Katie, of all people.

And I didn't like Emily that way, either. Not really. Flirting with her was fun, but that's all it was, and I was getting carried away. I needed to remember I was on a mission. I would tell her the whole truth about the mission. I owed her that much, since she'd agreed to help me by faking a relationship with me.

I munched a crisp and thought about Katie sashaying her way through the school lunchroom last spring, Grace on one arm, Mini on the other. Everyone turned to watch as she passed. People called out to her from the tables. All she needed was the paparazzi behind her. Also Grace or Mini needed a very small dog that got sick when it ate too much protein. I said simply, "Katie lights up the room."

Emily still wouldn't look at me. "I can see why you'd want to watch her, listen to her. Not why you'd want to get together with her. She lights up the room so bright that you would just be sitting there blinking, blinded."

"I've always wanted to be with her," I said, "Yeah, I can see the drawbacks, but I don't think you or anyone could argue me out of it. I need to find out for myself, because I've wanted to do this for so long."

"Always," Emily muttered, tossing up a bit of crisp and catching it in her mouth.

"Almost always. Actually, I can remember the very day it started." The mud field in front of us dissolved into a sun-splashed view of the lake through shady branches. The roar of the monster trucks faded, replaced by birds chirping, and my mother's voice. "It was before Mum died. We were all really little. But I remember it so clearly. Your whole family was at my house for a cookout in the summer. I was with Mum and Jenna up on the deck. I'd wanted to play with you guys, but Mum wouldn't let me.

"Your mum said I was such a lovely little girl, so ladylike and polite. That's what pricked my ears up, of course: the praise. But I kept playing like I wasn't listening in. Then your mum said I didn't always have to stay home. I was welcome to come over to your house to play whenever Cook came over. She called him James. Whatever. Now I was really paying attention, and holding my breath to see what Mum would say. All I'd dreamed about my whole little life was playing with you guys."

"Why?"

I snapped out of my daydream. I'd almost forgotten Emily was sitting there.

She put one hand on my knee, watching me, and didn't even turn to look when Freddie purposely spun his tires, coating one side of the pink truck in mud. "Why did you want to play with us?" Emily asked. "At that age, we were basically squirting each other in the face with water guns."

"Compare this to sitting in my room by myself, dressing and undressing the Barbie."

"Oh." She nodded.

"Anyway, of course I was disappointed, as always. My mum said your mum was so nice to offer, but she didn't want me playing with Cook's friends very often. That we needed our own friends."

Those frown lines appeared between her brows. She moved the plate behind her on the bench, slid over until her leg touched my leg, and put her hand on my knee again.

Strange how her touch made it easier for me to talk. I went on, "Just as Mum was telling Jenna no, Katie came up the stairs crying. You and the others had dared her to stick bread between her toes and put her foot in the water. A fish mouthed her and she freaked out."

"Er-" Emily started.

I waved her off, because this was the most important detail. "My mum took her chin in her hand, turned her face toward me, and said 'Just look at those eyes. She's going to be a heartbreaker.'"I found myself smiling at the memory. But when I turned to Emily and saw the look on her face, I stopped smiling.

"That sounds like a bad thing," she grumbled.

"People mean it as a good thing," I said, suddenly not as sure of this as I'd been for the past twelve years. But I couldn't really expect her to understand. Talking about Katie around Emily was like throwing Evian on a fire. "And then Mum said, 'Naomi, just wait until you're eighteen' She was stuck on the eighteenth birthday. We made a scrapbook with pictures of all my baby events, and spaces for when I would turn six and eight and ten and twelve, and a supermondo sequined space for when I turned eighteen. She wanted me to have what she'd had, a great eighteenth birthday, exactly what any teenage girl would want. Her parents gave her a special grownup ring, and she wore a wonderful dress that's hanging in my closet."

We'd moved away from talking about Katie. Predictably, Emily took a deeper breath and relaxed against the bench. "Are you going to wear the dress on your birthday?"

"Are you kidding? It was so long ago. Uncool."

"I'll bet it's pretty. You could wear it wake boarding on your birthday, during the Crappie Festival show." She was back to her old self.

I chuckled. "Unfortunately, you and I are the only two people in the world who would think that was funny."

"What does that have to do with Katie?"

I squirmed a little under the gaze of her eyes. I felt her disapproval even though I hadn't told her what she should disapprove of yet. But she was helping me with Katie, and I'd committed to telling her the whole story. "Mum died not long after that. I took it as a free ticket to Disneyworld. Yay, Mum wasn't around to stop me! I got to play with you guys! Only I always felt guilty about being the least bit happy she was gone, even when this was the one good thing about it. And I felt guilty I didn't tell Dad or Kieran that Mum wouldn't have wanted me over at your house. It went against her wishes for me. I promised myself I'd clean up by the time I was eighteen. And if I could finally convince Katie to ask me out by my eighteenth birthday, I would know I'd turned out okay after all.

Emily nodded. "Because you think your mother picked Katie out for you."

"No, not exactly-"

"Like an arranged marriage," Emily interrupted. "That's very 2011."

"No, not like that. Mum knew what was best for me, and if she were still around, she would have taught me how to get it. She's not around, so I have to figure out for myself. I'm transforming myself from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. There's much preening to be done. It's actually pretty time consuming. I have to run my beak down every single feather to distribute the oil evenly and make myself waterproof."

"Naomi-"

"And I've almost perfected my Mini and Grace imitation. At least, I though I had, until the mud riding started."

"You think going out with Katie will turn you into Mini McGuiness?"

"Sort of. If I hooked up with Katie, everyone would treat me differently. Everyone loves Katie. If Katie chose me, they'd think they'd always overlooked something special in me. Then maybe I really could become that girl. I know you hate Katie, but you understand why everyone else loves her, right?"

I took Emily's stony silence as a yes.

"Girlfriend/Boyfriend love is totally different from sisterly love. But the effect would be the same, Like standing in her aura. Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like if Katie loved and valued you as a person?"

"I'd know Armageddon was coming. I'd brace myself for the locusts."

"I'm serious. If she just looked at you the right way, that alone could probably carry you through for a month. But if she loved you..."

Emily shifted on the bench. I thought she was standing up to stalk away, disgusted. Instead, she placed her arm around my waist. Lightly her finger stroked valentines on my side, which gave me the shivers all over again.

"Every word out of Katie's mouth is meant to hurt me," she said. "And it's always been like that. Effy says Katie changed after I was born. She went from the adorable, cute newborn that existed only a few minutes earlier into something much worse, nastier almost. When I was a baby and Mum wasn't looking, Katie threw blocks at my crib."

I almost laughed. The idea was so ridiculous. It was even more ridiculous for Emily to be angry about something like that when she was eighteen years old.

I managed not to laugh. I believed her. I knew Katie.

"But that's you," I said. "I'm sorry she treats you that way, but I'm the one who's going to get together with her, and she doesn't treat me that way."

"She will," Emily said. "If you ever let her get close to you, she will." The valentines she traced on my arm had turned to shapes with lots of sharp points, like in comic books when the superhero punches the villain.

The tractor arrived then to pull the pink truck out of the mud. Emily took her hands off me, which I regretted more than I should have. She leaned forward to watch and make sure the driver didn't attach the chain to the lose side of the front bumper.

"Why does it have to be Mandy?" I asked.

"It just does," she said without taking her eyes off the truck.

"You might feel better if you talked about it."

"I doubt it."

"What do you like so much about her?"

When she turned to me, she seemed alarmed, as she had with the tennis court the night before. With wide eyes, she searched my eyes for something - which I probably would have given her, if I'd known what she was looking for. I asked, "What are you looking for?"

She shook her head and turned back to the mud pit. "I like her because she's so pretty," she said in her bullshit voice.

"That's no fair. I gave you a straight answer about Katie."

The tractor started forward. The chain to the pink truck pulled tighter and tighter and broke. One end of it flew over the tractor, barely missing the driver.

"She's cute," Emily said. "She has a nice ass. I don't know."

Now I understood. Talking about her hurt her too much. It was easier for her to pretend the ADD had kicked in.

After two more chains and a rope, the tractor liberated the pink truck, and Emily bought the driver a doughnut. Emily and I drove through the mud field for another hour and a half, taking turns. Mostly we managed to forget about Katie and Mandy.

Then we drove into town and hit all the teenage haunts: the bowling alley parking lot and the movie theater parking lot. In theory this is exactly what I wanted. I was being seen out with Emily, in Emily's truck. In practice, Emily had purposely besmirched Katie's pink truck with mud. It was like she wanted to be seen around town in it for that reason.

We rolled home two minutes before my curfew. I'd figured she'd park the truck at her house, and I'd walk home. I was thrilled that she drove over to my driveway to drop me off. Katie wasn't home yet to see us, but maybe someone in the Fitch's house would watch across the yard and mention it to Katie later.

And then, as I was turning to Emily to thank her for teaching me to drive and allowing me to foam at the mouth about my mum, she bailed out the driver's side door. She walked around the front of the truck. I think she would have opened my door, a gentleman on a date, if I hadn't opened it first. It was too strange. I jumped to the ground, forgetting I was wearing my heels again. She caught me just before I pitched over onto the gravel.

"I'll - walk - you - to - the - door," she said slowly and clearly, like talking to someone who didn't speak English. Or didn't go out on dates much, or, ever. She took my hand. We walked toward the lights slanting through the shadows of pine trunks. I shivered.

We climbed the steps to the porch. Dad hadn't turned on the overhead light there, thank God. Emily stood close to me in the darkness, over me, expecting something. I expected something, too. I couldn't have stood the disappointment if we'd done all we'd done that day, hugging and giving each other smoldering looks and all, without something to show for it at the end, even if we were just friends. But my head felt too heavy to raise my chin.

"Hey." She put her hand under my chin and gently raised it for me. "If one of us were in love with the other, if it were uneven in some way, that would be bad." She gave me a long look I couldn't really see. The shadows on the porch were too deep. Her eyes only glittered a little in the starlight.

I tried to give the look right back to her. "But we're not," I said, and what was with that damned squeakiness in my voice or not? I cleared my throat.

"But we're not," she agreed. "We have nothing to worry about. We can do whatever we feel like."

"Right," I said, and meant it.

The kiss was simple. She leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. We stood still except for the pressure on my lips. But inside, every cell in my body turned a back flip to blind.

"Good night, Naomi," she whispered. She bounced back to the pink truck, cranked the engine, drive one hundred meters to her own driveway, waved to me, and went inside her house.

I stood on my porch and stared at her house for a long time, telling myself that I did not like Emily that way because I liked Katie and Emily liked Mandy and I did not like Emily. It was just that Emily was very smart. and was second only to Katie at making confusing things sound simple and death-defying stunts seem like a good idea.