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“Ohh, there is no need Mrs. Campbell ...” this time Derek's the one protesting, but she waves him off.

“Nonsense, you have to join us.”

Then she wanders off to the kitchen, and before the minute is up she is back with two 7ups and a plate of homemade cookies, pushing us upstairs.

When we climb, Derek stops at the top and looks back downstairs before returning his gaze to me.

“What the hell just happened?”

“My Mom.” I shrug standing in front of the door of my room.

I don’t want him to come inside—it’s too intimate, too telling—but I don’t have much of a choice. In just a few seconds, Derek King will enter my sanctuary and I know nothing will ever be the same again.

Derek

Her Mom is like a hurricane. Apparently, there is no stopping her once she starts, but that is fine with me. I get to see Amelia's bedroom, and I’m invited to stay for dinner, which means more time I can spend with her.

I follow her to the second door on the right and stop at the doorway.

Her bedroom is small and so girly. There is a huge bed in the center of it all with a lot of pillows on top of it. There are also a ton of books, everywhere, on the shelves, on her messy desk and nightstands, and there is one on the floor in front of the bed. I start to close the door, but she stops me. “Leave them open.”

I do as she requests, without saying a word. Entering slowly, I squat down and take the book from the floor. Putting a finger between the pages where it fell to, I close the book and look at the cover.

“Pride and Prejudice?” I look at her, chuckling.

“Something wrong with Jane Austen?”

She doesn't look at me but keeps on arranging papers on her desk.

“No, but it's so like you.”

That makes her turn and look at me. “Why would you say that?”

“Just saying.” I shrug. “You don't have to do that for me. I can sit on the floor or bed or whatever.”

Her dark eyes narrow at me, and all I want to do is laugh at how pissed she looks. Her hair is pulled up, but few wild strands don't want to be tamed by the hair tie so they are curling around her face. It's the first time for me seeing her this way. She always wears it down in the school, it closes her off, makes her more guarded. But this, it’s cute—messy, girly, and fragile.

Her outfit is a completely different story. She is probably going for comfy, but those leggings are so tight they stick to her like a second skin. When she opened the door, all I could hope for was not to swallow my tongue at the sight of her. But, then there are her socks. All furry and soft and colorful, like something a little girl would wear. That’s Amelia—a living, breathing, and walking contradiction.

She stands in front of me and carefully pulls the book out of my hands. “Then you go and sit wherever. We have work to do.”

After she quickly skims through the pages and finds one where she left off, she produces a bookmark and puts it in its place before putting the book back on the nightstand.

“You really are a witch,” I say half-amazed, half-scared.

“What?” She scowls at me.

“Nothing.” I laugh, shaking my head at the silliness of my thought, and sit down on the floor, reclining on the bed. As soon as I touch the floor her dog waggles to me, turns three times and settles against my side. “What are we doing?”

“Well,” she starts and then goes back to her desk, picks up one soda and plate with cookies, and puts them next to me. Her gaze lingers on her dog for a while, but she shakes her head slightly before turning away. I was hoping she would join me on the floor, but no such luck. “I was thinking that we make a plan today. Do a bit of research on the interesting subjects we could mention in our project and write them down. Then we can divide them between the two of us. Each person does his work and we meet up to put the work into one and make a presentation.”

I know what she’s doing; I’m reading her like an open book. She wants to divide the work so we don't have to actually do anything together until the very end. If she could, she would probably tell me she’ll make a presentation and to just send her written part of my half of the project.

“Why don't we do the outline today, and then we'll discuss other things as we go on?”

She frowns at me but doesn't comment further. “We got Argentina, so we should probably start with...”

And so for the next forty minutes, I let her talk about our project. We talk about geography and history, about culture and language and everything in between that makes Argentina the country that it is today.

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