The Fifteen-Minute Rule

PROLOGUE

Julia

Sometimes, Ace Kelly is the most annoying best friend in the whole wide world.

I don’t care if he gave me the last purple popsicle yesterday or told everyone at school that I’m the bravest girl in the second grade because I touched a worm on the playground.

None of that matters right now because I am so mad at him.

He just made his stupid Hulk action figure rip the hair out of my favorite Barbie’s head.

“She didn’t even do anything!” I yell, holding my partially hairless Barbie up in the air. “She was trying to do some yoga, Ace!”

“I’m sorry, Lia!” Ace exclaims. “But the Hulk gets mad sometimes! He can’t help it!”

“Well, the Hulk has anger issues,” I snap, scooting to the edge of the rug in his bedroom and turning my back to him. “And so do you. I’m mad at you, Ace Kelly. Really, really mad.”

Instantly, he goes quiet because he knows the only thing he can do when I’m upset with him is to wait it out.

We have a rule called the fifteen-minute rule. It’s not, like, a law or anything. We made it up. But between us, it’s nonnegotiable.

Ace wanted to choose sixty-nine minutes because he says his dad tells his mom he likes that number all the time, but I told Ace that sixty-nine minutes is a really long time. Like, I’m pretty sure that’s more than a whole hour, which is, like, forever long.

I guess we could’ve chosen the five-minute rule or ten-minute rule, but we both think fifteen is a cool number, so it won two to nothing when we took a vote.

Now, we’re not allowed to stay mad at each other for longer than fifteen minutes, and it all started over my sidewalk chalk drawing last summer.

Ace added a gross stream of boogers and snot to the pretty girl I drew on my parents’ driveway, ruining all my hard work. One minute, she had beautiful long purple hair and big pink eyes and a yellow dress, and the next, she had a face covered in green slime because boys are gross.

The only problem with our rule is that Ace isn’t very good at telling time yet, so I’m the one who always has to say when the fifteen minutes are up.

“Is it time yet?” Ace asks, scooting a little closer to me.

See?

I huff out a breath, but I don’t answer him, concentrating on brushing my Barbie’s blond hair in a way that will hide her new bald spot instead.

“Lia?” he tries again, quieter this time. “Has it been fifteen minutes?”

I sigh and glance down at my pink Hello Kitty watch. Only three minutes have passed, but when I look up, Ace is sitting there with big brown sorry eyes. He’s not even playing with his action figures anymore, and his resemblance to Puss in Boots is growing by the second.

I cross my arms tighter and look away, determined to hold out until the time runs out or my Barbie grows her hair back—whichever is shorter—but when I glance back at Ace again, he looks even more pitiful. I crumble.

“Yeah,” I lie. “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

“Really?” he perks up.

I nod. “I forgive you.”

“Thank goodness, Lia. Fifteen minutes is so freaking long.” His face breaks into a giant smile as he scoots right next to me again. “Wanna play action figures?”

“No,” I say and quickly move my Barbie away from his angry Hulk and rise to my feet. “Thanks. You can play action figures. I’m going to play dress-up.”

“You can borrow my Batman costume,” he offers. “It’s in my closet.”

That might not seem like a big deal, but that Batman costume is Ace’s favorite. He never lets his little brother Gunnar wear it. And one time, Ace had Kyle Collins over at his house to play with us and Kyle wanted to wear his Batman costume so bad, but Ace said no.

It’s basically an honor. It’s also one of the reasons why Ace Kelly is my best friend. He’s always doing nice things for me that he would never do for anyone else.

I rummage through his closet, but instead of a superhero costume, I snag one of Ace’s favorite T-shirts.

With the white fabric draped over the back of my head, I swing side to side in front of the mirror on his door and imagine myself in a big, fancy church with a handsome groom standing across from me.

I’m more grown, of course, like a full-fledged woman with boobs like my mom’s and lipstick and eye shadow and all the makeup my dad tells me I’m not allowed to wear.

I also have a big smile on my face because it’s the happiest day of my life.

I don’t know why wedding days are so happy for girls, but I’ve seen enough movies to know it’s supposed to be the happiest.

I close my eyes and picture the whole thing.

My imaginary guy looks a little like a prince and mostly like Ace, and the flowers are so bushy that’s all I can see other than my groom.

He has Ace’s warm eyes and Ace’s big smile, and he’s tall like Ace’s dad.

I lick my lips, trying to transport myself to the day enough to know why the guy looks so much like my best friend, but I can’t quite get there.

Though, it feels good. Like, comfortable and stuff.

“Ace, we should get married,” I say over my shoulder as my best friend sends his Spider-Man action dude flying into the wall.

“Married?” he complains, now in the middle of the Hulk attacking a block city instead of my poor Barbie’s head. Spider-Man rolls and flips back into the action, and Ace makes punch, kick, and explosion sound effects with his mouth. “Why would you wanna do something stupid like that?”

“Stupid?” I ask, offended. My mom’s magazine shows brides all the time, and girls at school were just talking about it because Mia Crawford got to go to her uncle’s wedding and she said it was the most exciting thing she’s ever been to.

She even got to be the flower girl and wear a pretty white dress like the bride, and she said, after the wedding, there was food and cake and dancing.

“Getting married isn’t stupid, Acer! There’s a pretty dress and a big cake, and you get to dance with your friends and stuff.”

“Uh, all that sounds pretty stupid, Lia.” He scrunches up his nose at me. “Plus, don’t you have to be, like, really old to get married?”

I frown, tossing my T-shirt veil behind me and spinning to face him.

His knees are scuffed from playing outside earlier, and his hair sticks up in the front from sweat or slime or something disgusting.

Still, his cheeks are full, and his brown eyes are warm in the same way they always are.

He’ll understand if I explain it to him. He always does.

“Our parents are married. They make it seem pretty cool.”

“Yeahhh,” he groans. “And they’re old.”

“Okay, fine. So maybe you have to be old. But I still think we should get married, and we should plan on it now for when we’re old, so we don’t have to think about marrying anyone else.

I don’t want to be with some stinky man.

I heard my mom and your mom talking one day about guys who were their boyfriends and how they had a big ego or something.

I think that’s got somethin’ to do with BO. ”

“Our moms don’t have boyfriends. They can’t. They’re not allowed because they have husbands. And I’ve heard my dad tell my mom she can’t have a boyfriend.”

I roll my eyes at him. “They had boyfriends before they got married to our dads.”

“Well, I don’t want to marry some smelly girl. I don’t even want to be a boyfriend or a husband. I just want to be your best friend.”

“That’s why we should get married when we’re old people.”

“Fine, Lia.” He tosses his Spider-Man figure onto the floor and picks up the Hulk. “But not until we’re realllyyyy old.”

“Duh, you already said that, Ace. We’ll be old, I promise. Like…twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five?” Ace asks, wowed. “That is so old, Lia.”

Ace is eight and I’m seven, and I think when we’re twenty-five, we’ll have our jobs and money and houses and stuff. Ace might even need to use a cane to walk around then; I don’t know. But I’ll still be his wife, even if he has bad legs.

“I know it’s old.” I put a hand to my hip. I always do this when I need Ace to focus on what I want him to do. “So do you promise or what?”

He stares at me for a minute, but the Hulk is still in his hand, and I can’t tell if he’s going to go back to playing or be serious. “Fine,” he says through a huffy breath. “Yeah, I promise.”

“That means you can date other girls and stuff for a while, but when we’re twenty-five, you don’t date any other girls but me.”

Ace scoffs. “Yeah, no problem, dude. I’m not gonna date girls at all. Besides you, every girl at school is annoying as heck.”

“Hey!” I protest. “Girls aren’t annoying!”

“I said every girl but you, Lia.” He rolls his eyes at me. “You’re different.”

“Why?”

He rolls his eyes again. “Because you’re my best friend. Duh.”

“Okay, it’s settled, then. We’ll get married when we’re twenty-five. What should we do to make it official?”

“Spit shake?”

I groan. “Absolutely not.”

“Well then, what’s your idea?” Ace shrugs. “I can’t do the blood thing because I got in trouble the last time we did that.”

“We’ll make an official agreement. A decree.”

“A de-what?”

“A decree, Ace,” I mutter. “The royals do it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay, whatever. Where’s the degree?”

“Decree,” I emphasize. “Do you have a notebook or a diary or something?”

“A diary?” he questions. “That’s fluffing girl stuff.”

“Whatever.” I sigh. “I have my diary in my backpack.”

“You have a diary?” His brown eyes are huge as he looks at me. “Does it have a bunch of crap in it about girl stuff and sleepovers and, like, tampoons or something?”

“Tam-poons?” I question in confusion. “What in the heck is that?”

“I don’t know. My dad always says they’re a woman thing when we get them for my mom. I think you have to shove them in your butt when you’re a woman.”

“Shove them in my butt?” My mouth is wide open. “Ew. Gross. I’m not doing that.”

“Good idea, Lia,” he says, nodding with very serious eyes. “I wouldn’t want to shove anything in my butt either.”

I’m definitely going to have to ask my mom when I get home if she shoves tampoons in her butt too. But right now, I need to focus on the important stuff. Like marrying Ace when I’m twenty-five.

I pull the pink bound notebook out of my backpack, flip to the last page, and scribble down the rules.

Ace and Julia get married at 25 years old. No matter what.

It’s a little sloppy, but my handwriting is getting better at least. I write my name at the bottom, J U L I A, and hand the notebook to Ace to do the same. “Sign your name at the bottom. That’s your decree.”

He has to concentrate to hold the pencil right, and I roll my eyes at how stupid he thinks school and writing are. His Hulk rests on the floor at his knee, and his tongue sticks out of his mouth as he spells aloud. “A-C-E, right?”

“Yes,” I confirm.

“Julia!” my mom calls, just as Ace puts the pencil to the paper. “Come on, honey, let’s go! Daddy’s double-parked downstairs!”

“Coming!” I yell back, jumping to my feet and hovering over Ace.

It takes him a while to put his letters together still, and I know I need to get moving. “You write your name and then keep the notebook somewhere safe, okay? Then we’ll have our official decree.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Ace Tobias Kelly!” Ace’s mom is now yelling for him too.

“I’ll write my name, Lia. Promise.”

“Okay, good.” I lean down and push a kiss into his cheek quick, grab my backpack, and take off down the hall.

Ace Kelly is my best friend, and when we turn twenty-five, he’ll be my husband.

As weird as it’ll be to be old, I can’t wait.