Twilight by Meg Cabot Page B

MISSION AUCTION , and I hadn’t really thought about it again.
    When he held it up now, I saw it winking in the afternoon sunlight. Someone had washed and polished it. And now Andy was going on about how it was an artifact from when our house had been the area’s only hotel—a fancy way of saying what it had really been a boardinghouse— and that the Carmel Historical Society had put its age at close to 150 years.
    About as long, actually, as my boyfriend had been dead.
    “What’ll I get for this sterling silver buckle?” Andy wanted to know. “A real piece of old-fashioned craftsmanship. Look at the detail in the ornate D carved into it.”
    Shannon, sitting beside me, suddenly went, “Does your brother ever talk about me? Dave, I mean.”
    I was idly watching my stepfather. The sun was beating down on us kind of hard, and it was difficult to think about anything except how much I wished I were at the beach.
    “I don’t know,” I said. I could understand Shannon’s pain, of course. She had a crush on a guy. All she wanted to know was whether or not she was wasting her time.
    As the sister of the object of her affections, however, all I could think was… ew . Also, that David is way too young to have a girlfriend.
    “One of the members of the historical society—don’t think I don’t see you there, Bob,” Andy went on laughingly, “even ventured that this belt buckle might have belonged to someone in the Diego clan, a very old, very respected family that settled in this area nearly two hundred years ago.”
    Respected, my butt. The Diegos—or at least, the ghosts of the two members of the family I had had the misfortune to meet—had all been thieves and murderers.
    “I believe that for that reason and not just because of its intricate beauty,” Andy continued, “this piece is going to be highly sought after by collectors someday… and, who knows, maybe even today!”
    “David doesn’t really talk about girls at home all that much,” I said to Shannon. “At least, not to me.”
    “Oh.” Shannon looked dejected. “But do you think… well, do you think if Dave did like a girl, it’d be, you know, someone like me?”
    “Let’s start the bidding for this fine piece of authentic period jewelry at a hundred dollars,” Andy said. “A hundred dollars. Okay, we have a hundred. How about a hundred and twenty-five? Does anybody bid a hundred and twenty-five?”
    I thought about what Shannon had asked me. David, a girlfriend? The youngest of my stepbrothers, I could no more picture David with a girlfriend than I could picture him behind the wheel of a car or even playing soccer. He just isn’t that kind of guy.
    “Three fifty,” I heard Andy say. “Do I hear three fifty?”
    But I supposed that one day David would drive a car. I mean, I could drive now, and there’d been a time when my whole family had despaired of that ever happening. It made sense that someday David would be sixteen and do all the same things that his older brothers Jake and Brad and I were doing…. You know, drive. Take trig. Make out withmembers of the opposite sex.
    “My goodness, Bob,” Andy said into the microphone. “You weren’t kidding when you mentioned how important you thought this piece was going to be to our auction today, were you? I have seven hundred dollars. Does anyone— Okay, seven fifty. Do I hear eight?”
    “Sure,” I said to Shannon. “I mean, why wouldn’t David like you? I mean, if he liked anyone better than anybody else. Which I’m not saying he does. That I know of.”
    “Really?” Shannon looked worried. “Because Dave’s really smart. And I think he’d probably only like smart girls. But I’m not doing all that well in math.”
    “I’m sure David wouldn’t care about something like that,” I said even though I wasn’t sure of it at all. “So long as, you know, you’re a nice person, and all.”
    “Really?” Shannon flushed prettily. “Do you really think so?”
    My God,