Heavenstone 01 - The Heavenstone Secrets

to that sort of thing,” she said, nodding. “You don’t see as many making fools of themselves when they’re older. There are some who do, of course, but not as often as men.”
    How do you know all this?
I wanted to ask her.
You never go out on a date. You’ve never had a boyfriend or, as far as I know, even had a crush on a boy. Did you learn it all from books?
I didn’t ask these questions, because I was sure she would see it as some disagreement, and I didn’t want to do anything that would bring unhappiness into our home right now. Even I, who didn’t know half as much as Cassie knew about the emotional and physical changes a woman goes through when she is pregnant, could see that Mother was often on the verge of tears for what looked to be no real reason whatsoever.

    “We simply have to hope Daddy comes to his senses and reins in this wastefulness and unnecessary expense,” Cassie concluded, but everything went contrary to what she hoped, especially when Mother and Daddy were told there was no questions about it: she was going to have a boy.
    When they came home that day, it was as if they had won the biggest lottery. Daddy was practically floating, and Mother’s face was so radiant she really did look twenty years younger. They talked about having a party to celebrate but agreed to be cautious and wait.
    However, they now decided they were going to renovate one of the upstairs bedrooms to create Asa’s nursery. Not only were carpenters, electricians, and plumbers brought in, but Mother decided, with Daddy’s approval, of course, to hire an interior decorator.
    “An interior decorator for a baby’s nursery!” Cassie cried when she heard about it. She came rushing into my bedroom one Saturday morning to tell me.
    I was seated at my vanity table, brushing my hair and thinking about Kent Pearson, who was in all of my ninth-grade classes except home economics. We had been classmates since the seventh grade, but suddenly, one day, when I looked at him, I saw him differently. He seemed to have become this handsome young man behind my back. He caught me looking at him with interest and blushed, but since that day, he had begun to pay more attention to me, finding every opportunity he could to talk or walk with me.
    This caused me to wonder more deeply what it was that actually happened between a boy and a girl.Was it something magical, mysterious, or was it, as Cassie would probably say, simply the burst of hormones? If that were true, however, I’d have feelings like this for almost any boy, but I didn’t. I thought only of Kent, dreamed only of Kent, and was excited to be only with Kent. Were we too young to have experienced love at first sight, even though it wasn’t really our first sighting of each other?
    “Did you hear what I said?” Cassie continued. She stood beside me with her arms folded under her breasts, her shoulders back.
    Although Cassie was only two years older than I, she was nearly five inches taller and had what I had heard referred to as a full figure. She wasn’t at all matronly-looking, even though she often acted as if there was not even a foot left in her journey to maturity. However, no one simply seeing her would think of her as anything but a pretty teenage girl. She didn’t spend as much time on her hair and makeup, nor did she care as much for what was in fashion, as I did, but she never looked unkempt, and she did have our mother’s perfect facial features, with the same exotic speckled green-blue eyes and light brown hair that glistened golden in the sunlight. She kept her hair shorter than mine and Mother’s and wasn’t fond of wearing earrings. She didn’t want to pierce her ears, but when she heard Daddy compliment Mother on a pair of pierced earrings, she went ahead and had hers pierced and now always wore earrings.
    “What?”
    “What? What? How can you sit there for hoursand look at yourself? The way you brush your hair makes me think you’re in some kind of a trance.”
    “I’m not sitting here for hours. Mother brushes hers this way and this much every day.”
    “Whatever. That’s hardly important. Didn’t you hear me? I said they’ve hired an interior decorator for the nursery. All they really have to do is put a crib and some other things in the bedroom, but now they’re going to change the wallpaper, the floor, maybe even the ceiling, and definitely all the lighting fixtures. I heard them say that they may even replace the windows to