Okay, okay. I think that this just might be my absolute favorite chapter...Just saying.

DECEMBER 3

I could sense somebody leaning right over my face. Sure enough, when I opened my eyes, somebody was right there. But it wasn't who I'd been expecting. I'd expected one of the twins – or both. Or maybe even my mom. She liked to wake me up in weird ways sometimes.

I did not expect my girlfriend.

"Happy birthday!" she said, pressing a kiss to my lips. Then she pulled away with a grimace. "Ugh. You have morning breath."

I chuckled. "What did you expect? I just woke up."

"Well, you'd better go brush your teeth if you want another kiss from me."

She moved off the ladder as I climbed down from my bed. I went into my bathroom, noticing a large paper bag on my desk. "What's that?" I asked, before I started brushing my teeth.

"Birthday breakfast. It's diabetic-friendly, too. Mostly. A ham and cheese omelet, which is carb-free. Two waffles, which add up to thirty grahams of carbs. Syrup. It's sugar-free, but it still has some carbs. About eight, I think, if I measured correctly. Fifteen grahams of orange juice. And a mini cupcake that's seventeen grahams, including the frosting. It's a grand total of seventy grahams, which I know is a little more than you're advised to have at a meal. I think you're supposed to have sixty, right? But it's your birthday. You should be able to splurge a little."

I finished brushing my teeth and smiled at her. "Thanks. Does my mom know you're here?" I asked, washing my hands.

She shrugged. "Your dad does. He was the one who let me in." I was sure that he'd told Mom, then.

We went back into my room and sat on the couch together. She pulled a tray from the bag and set that on my lap. As she started placing food on the tray, I looked at her. "Don't tell me you didn't bring any for yourself. It'd be totally awkward for me to be the only one eating."

"Of course I brought double of everything. Except the cupcake. That's just for you."

"Can you hand me my test kit from my desk? And my insulin is beside it."

"The needles?" she asked, getting to her feet.

"Top drawer, right side."

She gave me my supplies, watching me prick my finger and squeeze a small drop of blood onto the test strip. The thing I really didn't like about testing my bloodsugar – besides the poking – was the fact that it created slight calluses on my fingertips. But there really wasn't anything I could do about that.

After a few seconds, a number flashed on the screen.

137

"That's good. You're in range," Willow said. "Hey, can I poke you?"

I looked at her sideways, as I twisted the needle onto the end of the pen. I loaded the pen with the amount of insulin I would need, but I didn't give myself the shot just yet. "You get way too much enjoyment out of stabbing me."

"Please?"

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. Whatever. Just don't bruise me like you did last time!" She was really good at it, but there were times where she got it in just the wrong spot or at the wrong angle, and it caused a bruise. I did it, sometimes, too. It wasn't completely unavoidable. I just liked to give her a hard time about it.

"I said I was sorry about that! Where do you want it? Your butt?" she asked, with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

"Oh my gosh. No!" Really, I could take the shots anywhere that I could pinch the skin. The doctor had informed me that the "posterior" was sometimes a good place to get a shot. Yeah, my mom had thought that was pretty funny, too. She got a kick out of joking about giving me a shot in my butt. Um, no thanks. "Do it in the arm, please."

"You're no fun." She gently pinched the skin at the back of my upper arm and injected the insulin. I gave her a hard time, but she was actually really good at it. She'd only bruised me a couple of times – certainly no more than I'd bruised myself. I'd let her do it several times now.

"There," she said, placing the cap over the needle. She took the needle off the pen, putting it into the hazardous waste bin on my desk.

I grinned, and started eating the breakfast she'd brought. "Did you make all this?"

"Yeah."

"How'd you keep track of all the carbs?"

"Most of it was made from boxes, so I just made sure to keep track of exactly how much I was making, and I read the nutritional facts on all the boxes."

"It's really –"

"Jaxson!" I heard Mom holler from somewhere upstairs. "Cayson! Boys, how many times do I have to tell you not to use your magic to make Kensley float in the air!"

I froze, about to take a bite of a waffle. I looked at Willow. I hadn't quite gotten around to telling her that my mom and twin brothers had magic.

Her expression was a cross between amusement and shock. "Did your mom just say…magic?"

"Um…" I gave a nervous chuckle. "Yeah. The twins have a very active imagination. They like to pretend that they have magic. They insist that everybody else in the house pretend that they do, too. They've been doing this for about a…week now. We've given up trying to argue with them."

"But floating in the air?"

"Some kind of device, I'm sure. They're pretty smart for their age."

She nodded, seeming to buy it.

I sighed in relief. I wasn't quite ready to tell her about the magic in my family.

But then the twins decided to race into my room, using their magic to create small creatures out of soap bubbles – where they got the soap bubbles, I don't know. They were making the bubble creatures dance and sing, "Happy birthday."

I was going to kill them.

They stopped halfway through, and stared at Willow. "Oh," they said together. Then they yelled, "Mom! Stryker has a girl in his room!"

Willow folded her arms, arching an eyebrow at me. "Imagination, huh? So what was that just now?"

"Uh…" I didn't have a good explanation. It wasn't like they could have hooked up soap bubbles to a string or anything. There was absolutely no way to explain this one.

She looked at the twins, and their soap creatures, which were slowly fading away. "Jaxson, Cayson. I have a very serious question for you, and I want you to tell me the truth. Is magic real?" she asked.

"Yes!" they exclaimed. "And we have it!"

"Huh. Cool," she said, leaning back against the couch. "Just the twins? Or do you have magic, too?" she asked me.

I was stunned. I really was. I didn't even think to try to lie, I was so stunned. "Just the twins and my mom. That's all in my house. But Aunt Maddie has magic, and Mamie. Some of my cousins. How are you so chill about this?"

She shrugged. "The world's a strange place. Come on, I believe in things like ghosts. Why wouldn't I believe in magic, when I can clearly see that it's real? I mean, your brothers just made soap bubbles sing and dance. If that's not magic, I don't know what is. Besides, I love you."

"You love me?"

She rolled her eyes. "Don't pretend like you don't love me, too. I know you do. You loved me when you asked me out."

I stared at her.

"Stryker? You can say it out loud, you know."

"I love you," I told her sincerely.

She smirked. "I know."