“You look awfully proud of yourself,” I said. “When you said to come outside, you didn’t mention the part about offering myself up for target practice.”
Another snowball hurtled toward me and I lurched to avoid it and almost face-planted in the steep drifts, but it hit me in the back. Moving through such deep snow was like trying to run through the ocean. “Truce,” I yelled.
“All bets are off in a blizzard,” he said, lobbing another snowball at me.
This one I dodged. Frantically, I began packing snow into my mittened hands, watching Will approach out of the corner of my eye. I launched a fat snowball in his direction that shattered into a million icy sparkles midway between us, not even close to hitting him.
“Come on, Rose. You can do better than that.”
“Hey,” I protested, already packing more snow. “You lured me out here with the promise of building a snowman. I even brought a carrot.”
“You would’ve come out regardless,” he taunted.
“You think?” I swiveled around so the snowball left my hands like a shot put, and this time it smacked into Will’s chest. I threw my hands up in victory.
“I do,” he said, and pitched another back at me.
“You’re dreaming if you believe I would have left my comfy bed for this.”
He smiled. “I’m not dreaming. You’re standing right here.”
“Don’t you have other driveways to plow or something?”
He looked up into the sky, the storm thick and white above us, tiny specks of snow pouring down. “Not for a few hours. I saved your house for last.”
“So you could pelt me with snowballs on your time off? How sweet.”
His eyes sparkled. “So you think I’m sweet?” He took a swipe at the snow, sending an arc my way, and I shifted in time to avoid most of it.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, and pitched another snowball like I was throwing a strike past a batter at home plate. It went wide and missed Will entirely. I immediately scooped more to form another. I took a step. “Careful, Mr. Hockey Star.”
“So the truth is finally out: you think I’m a hockey star.” He took a step closer. “Interesting.”
“You know you’re proving my point, right?”
He laughed. “You’re the one who said I was sweet.”
“Since when did you get so forward, Will Doniger?”
He shrugged and waded toward the beginnings of the snowman rising up from the steep drifts.
I waded after him, calling out, “Maybe it’s the blizzard. It’s acting like alcohol or something. Making you say things you wouldn’t normally.”
He began pushing armfuls of snow onto the base. “I thought you wanted to build a snowman,” he said.
“I did. I mean, I do.”
“So get over here.”
We watched each other through the snowfall, icy flecks drifting down around us. I didn’t move.
“I promise I won’t use you for target practice anymore. Truce,” he said.
“Okay,” I relented, and made my way toward him, slowly, each step an effort.
Will and I began packing snow higher and higher, until our snowman reached up to my chin. Occasionally we broke the silence with a word or a laugh, but for the most part we were quiet, concentrating on our icy masterpiece, and I was reminded of that day when we dug the peony bed, back when we hardly knew each other. Now here we were in the middle of the night enjoying this magical landscape and building a snowman of all things.
“What are you smiling about?” Will asked.
“I didn’t know I was.”
He smoothed the head with his hands. “Tell me.”
I took the carrot from my pocket, broke off the end, and gave the snowman a nose. “First you become forward, then you get demanding,” I said, and removed the extra scarf from my pocket, walking it around the snowman’s neck, careful not to twist Will into it. It was blue-and-white striped, our school’s colors. “Look at that. She’s a Lewis fan. Maybe she’s one of your groupies.” I grinned, pulling the two ends through the loop I’d made, and took out the hat, plopping it on the snowman’s head. I arranged the pom-pom so it would fall forward in a fashionable sort of way. “We need something for the eyes.”
Will turned and took off in the other direction. “Hey, where are you going?” I called out.
“You’ll see.” He walked until he reached the edge of one of the gardens, disappearing behind a high snowbank. Only a few bushes were tall enough to clear the drifts. When he returned, his jacket and jeans were dusted with white. He opened his hand and in his palm were two wood chips.
“What do you think?” He looked at me for approval.
“Perfect,” I said, and he pushed them into the face just above the nose, wide enough apart for the eyes. Snowflakes were already scattered across the hat and scarf and I wondered if our snowman would be gone by morning, buried in the storm, all evidence of this dream erased. I didn’t know if it was the snowflake that came to rest on Will’s cheek, the part that rounded up from his smile, or the way his eyes shone blue in the reflection of the snow, but I reached up to brush that flake away with my mitten.
And then I kissed him.
I leaned toward Will until our lips were barely an inch apart, put my hand on the back of his neck, and pulled him close until there we were, kissing in the middle of a snowstorm, his lips soft against mine, arms wrapped around my waist and his hands on my back. “Hey,” he whispered after a while. His warm breath felt like heaven in the cold air.
“Hey,” I whispered back.
“I thought—”
“I know—”
“Are we—?”
I wasn’t sure what this meant or what would happen tomorrow. All I knew was that right now, kissing Will was the best idea in the world.
So I kissed him again.
The snow fell around us like a dream and it didn’t feel real, spending this night with Will, a boy I’d barely known less than a year ago, who had since become someone I couldn’t imagine life without. He took my hand and pulled me along through another drift and I thought about the crystal heart. When he stopped and drew me close again, I took it from the pocket of my jacket and slipped it into his, wondering if he’d find it later and know it was mine. He put his arms around my waist and I wrapped mine high around his neck, pressing my lips against his in another kiss, and I was utterly and perfectly happy.
After Will left, I went back to bed. I couldn’t sleep and for the first hour I lay there, curled up under my down comforter, eyes closed, going over every single kiss, wanting to pinch myself. Between the snow and the quiet and the dark and the beauty and the surprise it felt like maybe I’d imagined everything.
I fell asleep smiling.
When I woke, the sky bright with morning light and the snow tapering off, there was one more text from Will waiting for me. It was a photo he’d snapped of us. My arms were wrapped around his waist, his left arm pulling me close and the other holding the phone out to take the picture. Even then his eyes were on me, and I wasn’t looking at the camera at all. I was gazing up at him because I couldn’t tear myself away, which seemed about 100 percent right.
I looked like a girl in love.
I thought about how I’d given the crystal heart away to Will and knew with every fiber of my being that this was the right thing to do. My heart, the real one at the center of my living, breathing body, belonged to him.
30
LAST NITE
In the morning, when I entered the kitchen, Dad was working on his laptop at the table. The white light of snow against the glass door shone down on my father. He looked up from typing. “What’s the big smile for?”
I poured myself a cup of coffee, surprised Dad had made a pot on his own. “Oh, I don’t know, it might be the snow.” I felt giddy, so happy I might burst, and I was starving. “Do you want some breakfast?”
“Sure.”
“How about pancakes?”
“Whatev
er you’d like.”
I went in search of ingredients and came across a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard. “Hmmm, we can have chocolate chip pancakes. There’s nothing like dessert for breakfast,” I said, and my father laughed. I took out a bowl, poured in the flour, and added a teaspoon of baking soda and some salt, and mixed everything together.
“You get more like your mother every day,” Dad said, shaking his head. “Chocolate chip pancakes after a snowstorm.”
I savored this compliment as I whisked the egg in a separate bowl, measured the buttermilk, and folded everything together, trying to smooth the flour into the mixture. With one hand I dribbled chocolate chips into the batter and began to ladle little round pancakes on the griddle.
“Did something happen, sweetheart? Something good?”
I stared at the round splotches of batter as they bubbled up from the heat. “Game two of the state championships is tonight and I’m going,” I said, and poked underneath a pancake to see if it was brown enough to turn.
Dad grinned. “So who’d you bribe for tickets?” he teased.
I rolled my eyes. “Will Doniger, like you didn’t already know.”
“I remember when I was your age and Lewis was playing in the championships. Those games were a lot of fun. I remember how your mother loved it when they got in fights. I’d have to pull her back down into her seat.”
“You and Mom went to hockey games?”
“Everyone in Lewis goes to hockey games, but your mother and I starting going to them our senior year, right around the time I was trying to convince her to date me.” He sat back in his chair, suddenly lost in thought. I waited for him to say something else about Mom, but he didn’t. One by one I flipped the pancakes. “You know,” Dad said after a while, “Will is having a phenomenal season. He’s been all over the sports section. That kid is good enough to go pro, I think.”
With the syrup and butter balanced in one hand, I brought a plate piled high with pancakes over to the table. “Yeah. I’ve heard that, too,” I said with a smile. Then, Dad and I ate breakfast together like a normal family for the first time in almost a year.
When Will came to pick me up for the final game I was nervous.
“Hi,” we said together, our faces pressed close inside his truck. Quickly, we both looked away and laughed. I stole another glance at him, but his eyes were on the windshield. He was smiling.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
We took off, the wheels of the truck sending snow into the air as Will navigated the icy roads. When we arrived at the arena, I broke the silence. “I can’t believe this is the last time we’ll do this.”
“Me neither,” he said, and pulled into the parking lot. He stopped in front of the entrance to let me out.
“See you on the ice,” I said, and was about to hop down to the pavement, but before I could lose my nerve, I leaned over and planted a kiss on Will’s lips. At first he looked surprised but then he smiled. “Good luck,” I added, and left before he could respond, focusing on the sound of my boots crunching in the snow, my face bright red. I couldn’t stop grinning.
When the game was about to start and Will took off his helmet for the national anthem, there was a grin on his face, too.
All night, as the players crashed into the boards, my eyes followed Lewis jersey number six on the ice. The score stayed zerozero for most of the night, until well into the third period when Will checked another player hard and took off behind the puck. The crowd got to its feet as he raced toward the opposing team’s goal, then slapped the puck to a teammate who passed it right back. Will was almost on top of the goalie, both of them wrestling with the puck, shoving each other, their skates and legs and arms clashing hard. Then Will hit the puck straight into the back of the net and thousands of hands went high into the air, screaming and whistling and cheering and stomping.
Krupa squeezed my arm. “That was amazing.”
“I know,” I said, and wished with all my heart that I could bottle this happiness so I would be sure not to lose it again. I didn’t need the crystal heart around my neck any longer to remind me what it felt like to be in love.
Lewis ended their season as state champions.
Krupa, Kecia, and everyone else went ahead to the afterparty while I waited for Will with his family. Celebration was in the air and I couldn’t stand still. Will’s sister Emily was twirling around in circles. I focused my excess energy on braiding Jennifer’s long brown hair, weaving it so the locks that shone a lighter brown would stand out.
“Beautiful,” I told her as I twisted a rubber band around the end. This left me again with fidgeting hands and I grasped at the wooden lip along the boards, picking at the peeling red paint.
“You seem happy,” Mrs. Doniger remarked.
I smiled. “They won.”
“Will’s happy lately, too.”
I was trying to think of how to respond when Will emerged from the locker room. A part of me wanted to dash through the waiting parents and his teammates to see him.
Mrs. Doniger rushed forward. “I’m so proud of you,” she said to her son, and threw her arms around him. “Your father would be, too.”
He rested his chin on her head and blinked a few times. “Thanks, Mom.”
Mrs. Doniger pulled back, her eyes shining, and Jennifer and Emily squeezed between them. As much as this win must feel great, I also knew it must be bittersweet, too, to have played a season like Will had and not have his father there to witness it. After whispering something to his mother, Will came over to say hello.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Thanks.” He shifted from one foot to the other. A puck lay on the ground between us and he kicked it against the boards, where it made a hollow thud. “So, you want to get out of here?”
“Are you sure? I mean, you should enjoy this. Take your time.”
“Well, if you want to stick around—”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m ready if you are.”
“Then let’s go.” He turned and headed toward the back exit, only stopping to pick up his gear.
I followed, my heart pounding. “That could be worth money, you know.” I gestured at the hockey stick in Will’s left hand, and he gave me a curious look. “It won the state championship,” I said, and he laughed. Outside the air was cold and crisp and snowflakes floated lightly to the ground. Will’s keys jangled as we neared his truck, and the moment we disappeared around the passenger side he pulled me into a kiss. When we stopped to catch our breath, I noticed how he’d parked in a corner against a concrete wall. “You chose this spot on purpose, didn’t you?” I accused, but drew him toward me again before he could answer.
“Maybe,” he said after another while.
“That was smart thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve barely been able to think about anything else.”
“Other than …” He waited for me to finish.
“Kissing you, dummy,” I said.
“Really?”
“You shouldn’t be that surprised,” I said.
He grinned. “I’m just glad to know we’re on the same page.”
“You, too?” I asked, and shivered.
He wrapped his arms tighter around me. “You’re cold.”
“I don’t think it’s the cold.”
“We should warm up inside the truck, and besides, we have to meet up with the team at the party.”
“I know,” I said reluctantly. Really, I didn’t care about the wintry cold or going to a party or anything else. I leaned in to kiss him again but he shifted away. “Hey,” I protested. “Where are you going?”
“We should get in. If I keep kissing you we’ll never get out of the parking lot.”
“I am liking this parking lot.”
“Me, too. But,” he said, practically picking me up and moving me to the side so he could open the passenger door. “Come on. We can continue this—”
“Conversation?” I finished, trying to be helpful.
“Yes, we can continue this conversation later. I promise.”
“Can you believe,” I said, “that you and I used to not even talk to each other?”
“Rose—”
“Seriously, we used to ignore each other. If I had known then what I know now …” I trailed off.
This stopped him a moment and he looked at me. “And what exactly do you know now?”
“Oh, all kinds of things.” I grinned.
“Tell me.”
“We should get in the truck, remember?”
Will made a frustrated, choking sound at my lack of an answer as I climbed up into the cab, careful not to touch him. Only about ten seconds passed after he got into the driver’s side before we were kissing again. We didn’t even pull apart when a group of his teammates passed by, whistling and yelling and banging on the back of the truck. Will waved them away through the cab’s back window, but this only sent them howling louder. “You’re like a drug or something,” Will said long after they were gone.
“So are you.”
He took a deep breath.
“I wish I could bottle this,” I whispered.
“And drink it every morning.”
“And every day at lunch, and then again at dinner, and before bed.”
“You’d get sick of it,” he said.
I shook my head. “Never.”
“Seriously,” he said. “I want to freeze this moment.”
“Good thing you don’t need to.”
“No?”
“Will Doniger, there is nothing in the entire universe that could make me stop wanting to be with you. And so on and so forth ad infinitum.”
“Really.”
“Cross my heart,” I said. I thought about the sparkling crystal heart that I’d left in his jacket pocket and wondered if he had found it yet.
“We should go,” he said. “Shouldn’t we?”
I sighed. “I suppose so.”
SURVIVAL KIT Page 17
