Fan Art by Sarah Tregay

not my date.” More like, I wish he was my date.
    The salesman lowers his voice. “Too bad.”
    I look back at Mason. He has the orange jacket on over his black They Might Be Giants T-shirt and is tugging at the lapels. He tilts his head and does a bad Elvis impression in the mirror. He looks ridiculous.
    “He sure is cute,” the salesman says with a tsk.
    My head jerks in his direction and back to Mason. And, yes, in his own geek-in-black-plastic-glasses way, he is cute. I feel a now-familiar tug at my heart. “Yeah.”
    “So,” sales guy says. “Let’s get you measured.”
    His fingers touch my shoulders as he holds a tape measures to the seams of my shirt, then they brush my skin as he measures my neck and arms, and by the time he’s measuring the outside seam of my jeans I find myself humming “I Remember Clifford” to divert my attention from the process. Then I shrug a black jacket over my shoulders and the sales guy smooths it into place. He checks the length of the sleeves and nods as if he’s satisfied.
    I look in the mirror. Smile so my teeth show—perfectly straight and still strange to me, even though it has been two years since I got my braces off. The jacket looks good. I button it, then unbutton it. I put on a serious faceand say to myself, “Bond, James Bond.”
    Mason appears in the mirror behind me. He has on a white jacket this time and a blue bowtie flopping over his shirt collar. He draws a fake pistol from the waistband of his jeans and aims it at me in the mirror.
    I reach out, grab his wrist.
    And he bursts out laughing and wriggles free. “Very 007.”
    “Like you can talk?” I tell him, and sing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg. . . .”
    He puffs up his chest, straightens his jacket in the mirror, and ignores me. “I think I look good in cornflower.”
    I stare at his reflection. He could wear any color with that jacket and look amazing. The crisp white fabric makes his shoulders look broader, his skin glow like warm honey, and his curls shine inky indigo. Sales guy was right. He is cute. Dreamy even.
    Even if I shouldn’t be thinking about it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
    SEVENTEEN
    I am armed with a sixteen-ounce caramel mocha when I show up at my mom’s office on Thursday afternoon. I am eager to put Gumshoe to bed—i.e., getting the files ready for the printer—tomorrow at four p.m.
    But first, I have to give it a good long look. The group of us has been editing onscreen, and with how puny my laptop is, we could have missed a comma, an apostrophe, or a dozen. I don’t want to hear about that from Dr. Taylor, so I’m printing a copy and inspecting it under the fluorescent lights.
    “Hey there,” Mom greets me. She has a pencil behind one ear and a roll of blueprints under one arm. “You look ready to work.”
    “Gonna finish it tonight if it kills me.”
    “The back office is all yours. Let me know if you need the big table, okay?”
    I nod. Mom doesn’t usually let me do school stuff here during office hours, but today is an exception. “Thanks.”
    I plug in my computer, connect to the network, and select print. The printer hums to life in the next room and I hear the first page spit out. The cover, with its painting of a koi pond populated by tangerine-colored fish, is vivid, whereas the image on the back—a photo of a girl sitting on a pedestrian bridge over the Boise River—is more subdued. The paint on the bridge had faded in the sun, almost matching her copper-colored curls. Both the fish and the girl had been voted favorites, but the fish won out because of the title of the piece, “Decoys.” It went with our detective theme. And, in the end, the fish were a better cover.
    I run my finger over the date and price. Four dollars. That alone was depressing. A year’s worth of killing ourselves for four dollars—four thousand dollars if we sold