Bookishly Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  Em ran through the front doors of the school and cursed at the empty parking lot. “I swear, this lack of transportation thing has to be illegal.” She dug in her bookbag for her phone and searched though her contacts. “Dad can’t leave early on Wednesdays and Mom’s teaching tonight. Your parents are still at work, right?”

  “Mmmhmm,” I mumbled around the one glove I tried to hold in place with my teeth while buttoning it with my free hand. It was an awesome design, but a pain to put on.

  Em looked at me and shook her head. She went back to her phone. “Wanna wait here and see if we can bum a ride?”

  I’d managed to get both gloves on and wiggled my fingers happily before shoving them into a pair of mittens. Double cozy warmth. “There’s always Alec and his Cinderella license if we can’t find anyone else. You know he’s always dying for excuses to drive.”

  “Right.” She shoved her phone and hands in her pockets and sat down at the base of the pillar she had been leaning against. “God, I hate waiting.” After a barely a second’s pause, she looked around the parking lot and added, “These people are taking forever. Don’t they know that some of us need to bum rides off of them? It’s starting to get Arctic out here.”

  I laughed. “It’s only been a few minutes. Isn’t there a saying about beggars and choosers?”

  “Impatience is a virtue and I’m cold.” She pushed to standing. “Y’know what? Let’s walk to Marrano’s, split a water ice, and bum a ride from there. At least we’re not just sitting around.” Her eyes swept the parking lot again. “And if no one else shows up, which I totally doubt, we can bribe Alec with a cheesesteak.”

  “Or hang out until Mom gets out of work.” Marrano’s was never crowded on Wednesdays, so no one was bound to complain.

  “Or that.” Em said over her shoulder. “We can plan what you’re going to do about Dev. Maybe there’s actually something in your notebook we can use.”

  I dragged my messenger bag back onto my shoulder and followed Em as she cut across the school lawn, the tail of the goldenrod yellow scarf I’d knit for her blowing behind her in the wind like a ribbon. I froze, a flash of inspiration hitting me, and Em nearly tripped because of my sudden stop. “I have an idea. I’m making Dev socks.”

  “What, like ‘I like you, here’s my declaration of love’ socks? Don’t you have, like, a gajillion charity hats still to finish?”

  I ignored her. “It’ll be just like when Maeve gave Aedan the clover.” That was one of my favorite swoonworthy book scenes. “Or when Sara gave Mikhail that brownie pizza in Zero to Forty.”

  “Oh God, let’s get you somewhere warm. Maybe you’ll get some sense when your brain isn’t frozen.”

  I already knew the exact yarn and pattern. “No, this is going to be super cute. He knows I don’t just knit for anyone.”

  She tugged on my arm. “Walk.” Em dragged us out the front gates. “Sometimes you really scare me.”

  “Says the girl who just starts randomly making out with foreign exchange students.”

  “No crazier than the girl who’s planning to knit a weirdass sock thing for a guy or who crushes on people who aren’t real.” She hooked her arm in mine. “Why are we friends, again?”

  “’Cause Osoba sat us next to each other freshman year?”

  “True. Forgot that.”

  We walked on the side of the street towards Marrano’s Deli in silence for a minute before I said, softly, “I’m glad she did.”

  Em squeezed my arm and nodded.

  23

  Night one in Winter Concert hell.

  Em and I propped ourselves onto the windowsill of the art room where they had herded us orchestra people to wait for our turn on stage. The millionth choral song piped into the room on the loudspeaker and half of us cringed as a soprano hit a sour note. “One night of this crap is bad enough. But I swear, if they’re still singing ‘Carol of the Bells’ tomorrow, I’m running in and stabbing them with…” Em reached for one of the woodcarving gouge-y things on the file cabinet next to her, “whatever this is.”

  I resisted the urge to tug at the barrel curls Grace had worked into my hair. She was out in the audience and would definitely notice if I had messed up her work. Instead, I tried to keep my mind off of the concert and how I’d soon be on a stage where people would be looking at me. My nerves also weren’t helped by the knit gift sitting in my flute case.

  “Dev wasn’t in class today,” I said, trying to sound casual. My fingers fumbled as I put together my flute and piccolo.

  Em turned her head so that one heavily lined eye peeked out at me. “I heard he has to leave before break starts and was taking his midterms in the guidance office. Wil saw him in there during fourth period.” She rotated slightly so she faced me completely but still managed to look like a tortured soul.

  “That makes sense.” I slipped the knit into my palm and held it under Em’s nose. “What do you think?”

  Em sat up quickly, grabbing the two mini socks out of my hand. “OMG, these are so fucking cute!” I had knit them out of our school colors and she danced the little flame-colored socks on the drafting table. She squinted at the note I had pinned to one of them. “‘As requested’?”

  “Cute, right? I’m thinking of sneaking these onto Dev’s music stand before the concert.” The thought made my nerves tick up another notch.

  “Not how I’d flirt, but I guess it works.” Em flipped one of the socks inside out and I had to fight to keep from grabbing them back.

  Instead, I blew air through my lips. “I’ve tried hints. I’ve texted. I’ve worn cute clothes around him. I have a notebook full of the best flirty ideas from a ton of books. Seriously, Em, I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “Um, you could just ask him out.”

  I frowned at her. “Hello? Shy, bookish knitter here. I don’t ask people out. The thought of doing that gives me hives.”

  She made the little socks twirl before handing them back to me. “You’re a lost cause.”

  I slipped the socks into the sleeve of my dress. “I just need to figure out how to get this out there without Osoba killing me for getting out of line.” I hummed the Mission Impossible theme song. “At least I’m wearing black.”

  “Y’know, I heard that Kris is supposed to be in the audience today.”

  I deflated ever so slightly and stopped my silly little spy dance. “Really?” The mini socks burnt my arm, reminding me that I was betraying my feelings for Kris.

  “Just kidding. You know he doesn’t do anything that won’t help his student council standing or GPA. The jerk even said they’d have to pay him to listen to the hand bells.” She fiddled with her flute and grinned wickedly at me. “I just wanted to see your reaction.”

  “That was mean.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to admit that Dev has risen to higher crush status than Kris? A situation of which I fully approve, by the way.”

  I wasn’t going to dignify that comment with a response. Em never understood my undying crush from a distance on Kris. Instead, I looked around the crowded room, squinting my eyes at the clarinet section. “I just want to get this whole night over with.”

  Em waved her hand in front of my face. “You’re so boring when you go into freak-out mode.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” I said, biting my lip and twisting the mouthpiece on my flute again.

  A pair of black-and-white Converse caught my attention, followed by a familiar voice.

  “Who’s freaking out?”

  I followed those Converse up to a pair of black suit pants and Dev, looking cuter than I’d ever seen him in a black dress shirt and tie. All of the other guys in band were wearing white dress shirts and black ties, making him stand out even more. He twirled his clarinet nonchalantly.

  “Feebs. She’s always like this before a concert.” Em jumped off of the windowsill and grabbed her purse, the spangles on her sparkly black flapper dress playing music of their own. “I’m going to go check my
makeup before we start. You calm her down.” She skipped off before either of us could answer.

  I looked back down at my flute before he could think I was staring. When he slid into Em’s former spot, I had to work to ignore how his shirt just barely brushed my arm. Marissa would smile up at him and slide closer, telling him how good he looked, but I could barely talk.

  “I like the black shirt idea. Really different.” I stopped twisting my mouthpiece for a second and looked up at him, quickly adding, “In a good way, I mean.” Darn, he smelled good. Like a mix of soap and spice. I dropped my eyes back down to the linoleum floor.

  He started swaying very slightly in time to the choir’s medley of some medieval carols and I was acutely aware of every miniscule touch of his clothing to mine.

  “Thanks. Mom nearly had a heart attack when she saw me, but Osoba said black and white. She didn’t say how to wear the black and white.”

  I felt his eyes on me and I looked up in time to see him take in my black heels and dress in the same slow, sweeping motion I had used. Heat ran up my body following the path of his gaze and suddenly the room felt too warm. “You look really nice, too.” His grin revealed a dimple I hadn’t noticed before. I was screwed.

  I wiped my sweaty palms on the skirt of my dress, praying that I wasn’t also wiping streaks of pastel chalk onto the velvet. “Thanks.”

  I loved this dress. It was sleek and figure-skater-y with a deep u-neck and a short, full skirt that threatened to twirl on its own. I was torn between the urge to jump up and demonstrate the swirly-ness, and shrinking and hiding in my flute case. I racked my brain for something to say next, too wound up to even remember anything Maeve would say. Don’t babble on about the dress.

  I swung my legs, my heels making a metallic sound against the old radiator. “Em told me you’re leaving early for winter break.”

  “Yeah, my cousin’s getting married in Mumbai, so the school’s letting me take my midterms early.” He said Mumbai in the same offhand way I would have said Massachusetts.

  I blinked, forgetting how close we were sitting. “Whoa. Mumbai, as in India?”

  A grin flitted across Dev’s face. “That Mumbai. We’re leaving Monday and I’ll be back on the thirtieth.”

  “That’s, um, a long flight, isn’t it?”

  “Eighteen hours straight from Newark.”

  The choir stopped singing and the chime of hand bells playing their own version of “Silver Bells” piped into the room. Ten more minutes before it was our turn to go on. My heart jumped into my throat to choke me, and it had nothing to do with Dev. “Wow.” I managed to say. My fingers nervously tapped out the notes on the flute’s keys.

  Dev’s gaze drifted down to my fingers. Amusement danced across his features. “Nervous?”

  I forced my fingers to still, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. The spicy-soapy scent just made my heart beat even faster, like I had pressed the accelerator on an already speeding car.

  “No.” I tasted the lie and tried to come up with something to say that wasn’t about me. “You’re going to spend Christmas over there? It must be really different.”

  Dev blinked at me. “Uhm, I guess, sort-of. I’m not Christian, so no birth of a savior or Silent Night or anything like that for me.” Oh, crud. “But I guess you could say I celebrate Santa Claus day.” He winked. “And I’m sure my uncle will be putting up a tree like he usually does.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “Ohmigosh, I didn’t mean to assume anything.” But I had. And automatically wished I could melt into the vents like a wet wicked witch from Oz.

  It didn’t seem to bother him, though. The dimple in his cheek grew larger. “My mom’s Hindu and my dad is Christian, so I was raised Hindu. I don’t celebrate Christmas, really, but Diwali and Holi make up for it.”

  Holi. Right, the festival of colors. That had been in a Bollywood film Em and I had watched last summer.

  “Holi must be awesome, with all the color and stuff.” The handbell/madrigal choir started some old song. Five minutes left. Over Dev’s shoulder, I saw Em mouthing “ask him out” and pointing to an invisible wristwatch. I pulled straight from one of Maeve’s lines in Golden. “That means we won’t have time to hang out before you leave, will we?”

  “Actually, I was thinking—”

  But before he could finish, Osoba hurried into the room and clapped her hands. “Get organized into your lines, now,” she shouted over the general din. Everyone started talking again. “Now. Without a peep.”

  Dev jerked his chin towards the other clarinets and whispered, “I’d better get over there before she threatens to throw me into the orchestra pit.” He reached over and squeezed the hand still clutching my flute. “Relax.”

  Em reached me while I was still watching Dev push through to the clarinet section and poked me in the arm.

  “Okay, if you’re going to do this ridiculous thing,” Em whispered, “which I still think is crazy as hell, go right after we tune. I’ll bring your flute and sheet music. Osoba usually doesn’t check our lines.” Her whisper was hidden by a blare of tuning oboes.

  I brought the flute up to lip-level. Osoba would be over soon to tune us. “You’re right, this is stupid.”

  She waited until the clarinets hit their C in unison. “Yeah, it is.”

  I took a deep breath. “But I can do it.” I still felt the ghost of his fingers on mine, and where his pants had brushed my tights. My skin tingled, like it was stretched a little too tight in those places. It was impossible to even imagine concentrating on anything but those feelings. “I’m Maeve. I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “You are completely and totally insane.”

  After we tuned, I hurried backstage, pushing past stagehands as they finished setting up our seats and stands. Maeve would be so much more stealthy than this. Marissa would probably charm a stagehand into doing it for her, but I was Phoebe. Clumsy, not stealthy, and too short on time to play superspy.

  Dev was the third chair from the end on the front row, almost exactly opposite Em. I hurried around the edge of the stage, trying to keep to all the shadowy areas. The curtain was touching the first seat of the front row, so I slipped into the second row to keep from bumping into it.

  Keeping to the shadows, Maeve crept through the castle hall, her every movement a whisper. As she got closer to her target, she quietly nocked an arrow and held her bow at the ready. She only had one chance to get Carman’s scroll and couldn’t mess it up.

  When I was positive no one was around, I slipped around the second-row music stands and leaned over the back of the Dev’s chair, stretching as far as I could to reach the stand. I almost lost my balance in my stupid heels, but, like Maeve on Carman’s windowsill, I caught myself last minute and touched the lip of the stand without knocking it over. Exhaling, I slipped the socks onto his stand and ran out, almost crashing into Em as the flutes started filing on stage.

  “Good timing,” she mouthed at me, handing me my things. After I had settled, I looked up to watch as the clarinets filled in their spots. Dev started putting down his sheet music and paused, staring at his music stand.

  I held my breath as he picked up the socks and studied them, reading the tag with a quizzical look on his face. Then, he started laughing and his eyes raised up to meet mine. I tried to appear cool and composed as my heart went completely arrhythmic and my neck felt like it was bursting into flames, but a wide smile snuck through, anyway. The socks weren’t a clover, but it looked like they were good enough.

  As we were making our way out afterwards, I felt a tug on one of my curls. “These are awesome. I think you made the wrong size, but I’ll deal.” Dev jogged up next to me, a mini sock on each pointer finger and his clarinet and sheet music under his arm.

  I forced an indignant expression on my face as I slicked my hair back into place, but knew I failed miserably. Probably even verging on goofy-grin territory. “You never said they had to fit.”

  “
Thank you, anyway.”

  I mocked a little midstep curtsy. “You’re welcome.” Emboldened, I poked at the heel of one of the socks. “Now that you have those, no more teasing me about socks, right?”

  In the dim lights backstage, his eyes reflected back a brighter shade of green than usual. “Nope. I think you need to make me a sweater next.”

  Maeve would keep up the witty repartee, and I tried to make my response lightning-fast. “Get in line, sock-boy.” At his laugh, I knew that worked.

  Dev walked a little slower down the hallway, bumping his arm against mine every now and then, just enough that my arm was constantly tingling. I could have avoided him by walking closer to Em, but I didn’t. And he kept veering close. “I have to take my history and physics midterms tomorrow morning, so I have to go study, but are you coming with us to Marrano’s after the concert tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Dev grabbed at my hands and turned to face me. “C’mon, I need someone to keep me company with all of these band geeks.” I was frozen in shock and I guess he took it as indecision because he gave me a pleading look. “I’ll cover your milkshake? It’s my last chance to hang out before I fly halfway across the world.”

  I finally shook awake and forced a wan smile. “Sure. I’ll try.”

  “Good.” He dropped my hands and started walking backwards. “Gotta go study.”

  “Kick some midterm butt,” I called after him, then covered my mouth and turned to Em. “That was a little loud, wasn’t it?”

  “That was unbelievably awesome. And lame at the same time.” Em pulled me aside. “When a guy you obviously like asks you to hang out, you don’t say ‘maybe.’ Sometimes, I swear, you’re like Sandra Dee on steroids.”

  “Ooohh, a Grease reference. Now I’m really worried.”

  Em shook her head in an ‘I love you but I can barely tolerate you’ way. “Let’s work on dropping some of those super holy virgin habits of yours before tomorrow night, okay?”