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  “RRRrr,” Kelli growled from the other table.

  “Let’s go before someone gets really hurt,” Jonathan said. He stood up and slowly his guys followed his example. They went over to the actors’ table and picked up Kelli, who was now lying down and purring for the camera.

  “Sorry, boys,” Arno said. “If I can’t have her, only a quarterback in St. Louis can.”

  Arno and David and Mickey and Jonathan each took one of Kelli’s limbs and carried her out of the restaurant. Though they did get some stares, Kelli wasn’t recognizably famous, so everyone assumed she was drunk or something.

  “She just got blown away by the city and she wouldn’t stop,” Jonathan said, in explanation to Ezra, who held the door to the Escalade open as they put Kelli inside.

  “Shut up,” Kelli said. “I’m coming back here and you can’t stop me.”

  “Be nice to Jonathan,” Arno said. “He just got completely and unexpectedly played.”

  “To LaGuardia Airport,” Jonathan said. “And hurry.”

  fernanda, or flan?

  “It wasn’t any one thing about Kelli,” I said to Fernanda.

  “I don’t get it,” Fernanda said. “What was the problem?”

  “She was like, desperate for attention.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Yeah, but we don’t double-cross everyone we meet to get it.”

  We walked quietly for a moment. We were on Fifth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, in front of the Paul Smith men’s store. Out of habit, I stopped and stared in the window. I’m not normally partial to Paul Smith, because the clothes tend toward the frilly, but I kept looking, just to see if they’d changed or anything. There was a pair of reddish velvet loafers that very, very few men could have pulled off. They did have a nice cut to them, though, very long and angular. Not a JM Weston or a Crockett and Jones shoe cut, not that nice, but nice. And when I looked down—and I must’ve been staring at those shoes for a full minute—I was holding Fernanda’s hand.

  “Let’s walk over to Otto and get some pizza and ice cream,” I said suddenly.

  “You don’t want to go in here and try stuff on?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Fernanda smiled at me. We kept walking on Fifth. It was nearly seven on Tuesday evening and the street was quiet and kind of cool, in a really good end-of-October way.

  “The thing is,” I said, “I’ve got these friends I have to take care of, and when I do a lousy job and forget one of them, they disappear.”

  “You know that’s crazy, right?” Fernanda said.

  “Yeah, it is,” I said. “But I lost track of Patch again and now no one knows where he is.”

  “What do you mean? He’s living with Graca. His parents are annoyed, but he’s going to school and just sort of hanging with her. The whole family was driving him crazy. All those F names. It was too much. We all know that.”

  “Sure, we know that. But …”

  I looked over at Fernanda. Since we’d been basically inseparable for the last couple of days, there was definitely a way to think of her as my girlfriend, if I wanted to be comfortable with that, which I’m pretty sure I did want.

  And further, I was happy that Flan had hooked up with that Rickenbacher kid, whom I still didn’t much like. I mean, good for her. And good for Liza for also being totally over me.

  But about Flan … she wouldn’t speak to me. Wouldn’t even return my calls. And I didn’t necessarily think that was a bad thing. Not that I thought we should ever go out or anything. I didn’t. But it was nice to know she wasn’t treating me like a big brother. And I figured I’d call her again, just to see if she wanted to hang out sometime or something. Because, I figured, we still should be able to be friends. And I missed her.

  “Are you thinking of that kid, Flan?”

  “No,” I said quickly.

  We kept walking, down toward Otto. A guy and a girl on a bright red Vespa went hurtling by. They were laughing and weaving, and the girl had a long red scarf that made a whistling noise in the wind. It was Mickey and Philippa. They were still in love.

  “Right now, I don’t want to keep track of anybody but you,” I said to Fernanda. I held up her hand and kissed it.

  Don’t miss the next instalment of The Insiders …

  Rumors are spreading fast about Jonathan and his friends.

  Who will hook up?

  Who will get dumped?

  And what happens when the guys betray each other?

  While you wait for the next book, check out what’s new with the Insiders at www.insidersbook.com.

  Copyright © 2004 by J. Minter and 17th Street Productions,

  an Alloy company

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,

  50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

  Electronic edition published in June 2012

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  Produced by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company

  151 West 26th Street

  New York, NY 10001

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the

  British Library

  ISBN 978-1-59990-991-2 (e-book)