ierra Jensen stuffed the last of a granola bar in her mouth and surveyed the airport waiting area that had become way too familiar during the past hour. She brushed back her long, wild blond hair and asked her friend Jana, “When do you think the guys will be back?”
“I don’t know,” Jana said, her brown eyes looking past Sierra’s shoulder for the hundredth time. “Maybe the airline they went to check on doesn’t have any openings on its flights to Montana.”
“Then what do we do?” Sierra asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Jana said. “I’ve never been the victim of an airline strike before.”
Sierra tapped her foot in time to the song that had been stuck in her head for several hours. “Why did they have to go on strike on a holiday weekend? There should be laws against that.”
This was the first time fifteen-year-old Sierra had traveled anywhere without her parents or one of her four brothers or her sister. The plan had been a simple one. Jana’s parents were driving to their family cabin on a lake near Glacier National Park to spend some time alone. A week later Jana, her older brother, Gregg, his friend Tim, and Sierra would fly up for the Fourth of July weekend.
None of them expected the connecting flight in Seattle to be rerouted to the central terminal in Minneapolis. Now the group was on its own, trying to find a flight to Montana.
“Isn’t there a big mall in Minneapolis?” Sierra asked. “If we can’t catch a flight, we could hang out at the mall.”
Jana looked wary. Her short brown hair was tucked behind her ears and off her face, which meant her thoughts were easily read in her open expression. Jana was physically larger than Sierra and six months older. They had been friends for several years in their small northern California town of Pineville. Sierra and Jana were both top students in their class, and they both loved sports—although Jana often complained that Sierra had an unfair athletic advantage because she was thinner and faster. The friendly competition they shared was one of the foundation stones of their friendship.
Jana was the cautious one of the two, and she didn’t seem to think the mall was such a great idea. “All I know is that we’re supposed to wait here for Gregg and Tim, and when they come back, we’re supposed to call my parents to tell them what we found out.”
“Do you think it would be okay if I went to that café over there to buy something to drink?” Sierra asked. She ran her tongue over her back teeth, releasing bits of oats left over from the granola bar.
“I don’t know if you should leave,” Jana said.
“I’ll only be gone for a few minutes, and you can run over and get me if the guys come back.”
Jana looked around, as if calculating all the factors, before nodding to Sierra.
“Do you want anything?” Sierra offered.
“Lemonade, if they have it. No sugar.”
“What if the lemonade already has sugar in it?”
“That’s okay. Just don’t add any.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.” Sierra grabbed her backpack and took off mumbling to herself, “Like I would go around slipping sugar into her lemonade!” Sierra knew it wasn’t fair to be critical of Jana’s concern over calories just because Sierra had never had to concentrate on her weight.
Walking around relaxed Sierra. She decided to make a quick detour into the bookstore next to the café. An interesting magazine might help her friend relax a little too. Who knew how long they might be stuck here.
The bookstore was small, and the space was so tight Sierra took off her backpack and balanced it at her feet. A tall, good-looking guy walked in and stood next to Sierra at the magazine rack. He had sun-bleached blond hair and was wearing a white T-shirt with a surfing logo on the back. While Sierra flipped through one of the magazines, she decided to conduct an experiment with this unsuspecting guy. She had tried this before but never with satisfying results; maybe today would be different.
The goal was to see if the guy would notice her without her trying to draw attention to herself. She felt ready to move beyond her image of a freckle-faced tomboy and to be noticed by guys the way her gorgeous older sister, Tawni, was. The tricky part was figuring out if guys thought she looked interesting enough to pay attention to her.
Sierra flipped through the magazine and tossed a subtle, sideways glance toward the guy. About two minutes into the experiment, the results were zilch.
Then Sierra heard a girl greet the guy. “Hello” was all she said.
Sierra kept her head facing the magazine while doing her best to see what was going on out of the corner of her eye. The guy didn’t respond to the teenage girl’s hello.
Then Sierra heard the girl say, “Hi,” in a more decisive tone. Sierra couldn’t see the girl’s face, but she could see that the guy had turned to look at her. When he did, the girl broke into a string of stammering words. It appeared to be a case of mistaken identity.
Sierra had to look. She turned nonchalantly toward the guy just as the girl hurried away. The tall girl had long, nutmeg brown hair, and a tagalong boy beside her was loudly giving her a hard time. The boy reminded Sierra of her two younger brothers and how they often acted around her.
She was glad that even though she was stuck at the airport, she was with her friend and not her younger brothers.
Just then the guy next to Sierra tried to move past her and said, “Excuse me.”
Sierra stepped aside and kicked her backpack out of his way. So does that mean he just noticed me? At least he was polite. I’d score this experiment as a three out of ten. Maybe a four. No, a two and a half. Yeah, a two and a half. I still have a long way to go before I catch a guy’s attention—and not because I’m in his way.
Sierra gave up on the magazine. Jana would have to come pick out what she wanted. As Sierra reached for her backpack, her bracelet caught on a thread in her skirt, and she had to stand there a minute trying to untangle it. Her mom had helped her make the skirt, but her sister thought it was dreadful, which was probably one of the reasons Sierra liked it so much. Made from a collection of her dad’s old ties, the skirt was distinctive. Each of the wide ties was opened up and sewn together at the sides so that all the pointed ends came to just above her knee. Sierra liked being unique. But more than once her bracelet had caught on the worn-through part of a blue tie on the right side.
With her bracelet released, Sierra headed for the café. She had just stepped outside the bookstore when she heard her name called from across the open area. Looking up, she saw Gregg waving from the entrance of the waiting area where she had left Jana.
Gregg had dark hair like Jana’s. His eyes and eyebrows were darker than hers were and more striking so the first thing a person noticed about him were his warm eyes. Even if his mouth was serious, his eyes made him look as if he were about to start laughing.
He was four years older than Jana, just like Sierra’s brother, Wesley, was four years older than she was. It was another one of the similarities Sierra and Jana shared. Sierra thought Gregg was good-looking. She liked his quick wit and casual approach to life.
Gregg’s buddy Tim was more serious and, according to Jana, more intelligent than Gregg was. He appeared easygoing because he dressed in loose shorts and old, beat-up sandals. Tim’s strawberry blond hair would be a lot curlier, Sierra decided, if he let it grow longer. But he kept it short and often hidden under a baseball cap, as it was right now.
“What did you find out?” Sierra asked, catching up to the two guys.
“We exchanged all four tickets at no charge,” Gregg said, “but the flight leaves later tonight. We won’t get to Kalispell until a little after midnight.”
“Does Jana know?” Sierra asked.
“No,” Gregg answered. “I happened to notice your skirt as we were going by, and since there probably weren’t two of those in the airport, I figured it was you.”
“There probably aren’t,” Sierra said brightly. She noted Gregg’s sarcasm, but it didn’t bother her.
“We better break the news to Jana,” Tim suggested. “It’s going to be a long day and night.”
“Unless,” Sierra said, grabbing both guys by the arm before they had a chance to walk away, “we make a little detour out of the airport. We could all pitch in for a cab and go to the mall for the day.”
“The Mall of America?” Tim asked.
Gregg’s eyes lit up. “Perfect! I like the way you think, Sierra.”
Sierra smiled. “Good. Now you get to convince Jana.”