Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by Sherri L. Smith Page B

garage. “Grandma and I made this.”
    WELCOME, GRADUATES , it reads in big red letters painted on the cleaner side of an old bedsheet.
Ah,
thinks Ana,
that was the special project.
Hard to believe it was done by the same grandmother who just drove her so crazy.
    “How beautiful,” Jamie's mother says.
    Ana blushes. “Thanks. Um . . . have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
    With orders for iced tea for Mr. and Mrs. Tabata, and lemonade for Jamie and Sammy, Ana returns to the house. She steps into the hallway rather than straight into the kitchen, unsure how to face her family. She's not wearing a sundress, and she's not exactly speaking to her relatives, but the backyard turned out perfect. She shakes her head and rubs her temples. It just doesn't make any sense.
    The back door swings slowly open. Jamie sticks his head in. “Oh, Ana.”
    She starts, then pulls herself away from the wall. Her heart pounds unreasonably loudly.
    “Hey, Jamie. Um, I was just about to . . .”
    “Yeah, uh, I came to help with the drinks. Oh, and to give you this.” He holds up a pink pastry box tied with a bit of string. “I wanted to make something, since everyone else was cooking. But my dad thought these would be better.”
    “Oh. Thanks. You didn't need to bring anything.” Ana takes the box with only slightly trembling fingers and slides back the string to look inside. Little translucent pink- and green-frosted cubes with sugared flower petals on top sit on a sheet of wax paper. They look like something you'd serve at a tea party.
    “They're whatchamacallits,” Jamie says. “Petits fours. Like little cakes.”
    “Great. Thanks.” She smiles and tries not to worry about serving them alongside her mom's giant sheet cake.
    They stand there in the hallway staring at each other. Ana's heartbeat pounds even more loudly in her ears. Her face must be shaking, her heart's beating so hard.
    “So,” she says, and clears her throat. “Iced tea, right?”
    “And lemonade.”
    The hallway that seemed so long a few minutes ago feels tiny now. Ana is close enough to Jamie to feel the heat coming off his body.
    “Thanks for having us over, Ana. I'm really—”
    Ding-dong!
The doorbell chimes so unexpectedly that Ana almost drops the petits fours.
    “Yikes. That's probably Chelsea,” she explains. “I'll get it!” she calls out. She hands the pastry box back to Jamie and leads the way to the front of the house.
    “Chelsea, thank God, I—” Ana stops in midgreeting.
    Amanda Conrad is standing there, all five feet and seven inches of her, a breezy blue and green sundress billowing around her long legs and the sun setting like a freaking halo right behind her Honey Blonde TM hair.
    “Amanda?” Ana stands there like a kid with a geometry problem she has to solve in front of the whole class.
    “Hi, Ana. Jamie!” She squeals his name. “Surprise! Jamie's dad invited me. Isn't that great? Oh, this is my mom.” She jabs a thumb at the woman standing by the sidewalk, finishing a cigarette. Mrs. Conrad is an older, tired-looking version of Amanda. She waves and stubs out her smoke on the sidewalk with an astonishingly high-heeled shoe. “Sorry. Nasty habit. Hi.”
    “Ooo, are those petits fours?” Amanda pushes her way past Ana and winds one of her long arms through Jamie's. “I adore petits fours!” she exclaims, dragging out the word
adore
in a way that makes Ana want to punch her in the stomach. And kill Jamie's dad.
    “Congratulations, Hannah,” Mrs. Conrad says.
    “Ana,” Ana corrects her.
    Mrs. Conrad laughs. “Oh. Hannah's such a pretty name. So, this is the great Jamie Tabata.”
    She smiles charmingly. Ana bristles. Mandy and her mother are cut from the same golden California cloth, but Mrs. Conrad's had some nipping and tucking to keep her edges from fraying.
    “Hi, Mrs. Conrad.” Jamie shakes her hand. Ana groans inwardly. Turns out the real vampires never ask to be let in. They just show up.
    “We