by Claire Ray
Once I tended to all the other customers, I pulled out a pair of small dishes and filled them with the girls’ favorites. Sweet cream and berries for Abby and black-licorice mint for Erin.
“Ice cream for lunch. Awesome,” Erin said before shoving in a huge mouthful.
“Are you going to have any?” Abby asked me.
“No.” I looked around the shop, then at each of the tubs sitting in the horizontal cooler. Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, mint, peanut butter, pistachio, red velvet cake, sweet cream, cookie dough. Nothing looked good. I hoped that being single didn’t mean that I’d lost my taste for ice cream!
“How do you feel today?” Erin inquired matter-of-factly.
“Terrible.” I plopped my head into my hands and blew the bangs from my forehead with a steady stream of depressed air.
Abby reached across and rubbed my shoulder. “At least you have us.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’m so depressed, I found myself wishing that I had homework to do.”
Erin’s face was one of complete horror. “Homework? What?”
“Well, at least it’d be something to do, so that my mind would be occupied.”
“Oh, God, you are in a bad way.”
“Jess, I’m going to tell you how I got over it when Cam started dating Sabrina.”
Erin arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t gotten over that yet.”
Abby ate a spoonful of ice cream. “Well, Erin, he was my first love, even if he didn’t know it. You fall in love and see how it hurts when they abandon you. Oh!” Abby looked at me. Her mouth was in a pitiful expression, an O of sorrow.
“God, I’ve been abandoned.” I could barely lift my head from my hands when the little girl came back to the counter to ask for napkins.
Erin finished her black-licorice mint and pushed the empty cup toward me. “So, I did some digging,” she said as I refilled her dish.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah. Mrs. Stewart was at the front desk this morning and she sure was talkative.” She slid forward on her stool, and Abby followed suit. I looked around at the customers inside Snow Cones, to make sure nobody could overhear whatever it was that Erin was about to tell me.
“You sure you want to hear?”
“How bad is it?”
“Nothing major, just some basic biographical intel.”
“Give it to me.” For some reason, the fact that Erin had investigated on my behalf spurred my appetite. As she talked, I spooned some lavender ice cream into a clean dish, taking the last bite from the scooper even though my mother would fire me if she saw me do that.
“Evie Stewart. She’s eighteen, from Boise, Idaho.”
“We knew that already,” Abby said.
“How does he know a girl from Idaho anyway?” I stabbed my spoon into my lavender ice cream.
“Her father went to law school with Jake’s dad, and they’ve been friends, like, forever. They’ve been planning this joint family trip for years.”
“For years?” Abby asked, her voice a squeak. I understood what she was asking. She was asking if that meant that Jake and Evie had been dating. For years.
I continued to take it all out on my lavender ice cream. “That rat-fink jerk bastard.” My voice got very, very loud on that last word, and the mother of the young honey vanilla ice-cream eater covered her daughter’s ears and gave me a dirty look.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“Language!”
I was terrified that my mother would appear so I quickly scooped two free dishes of ice cream and brought them to her. “I’m really sorry, ma’am,” I began to explain. “My boyfriend just dumped me. Have some free ice cream.” The woman looked at me like I was handing her cups full of poison. I couldn’t say I blamed her. I felt unhinged. Lord knows what impression I was making.
Then, the bells attached to the front door rang out, signaling that my horrible day was about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. In walked Sabrina, Hannah, and Stephanie, like three teenage Minions of Doom. There were few things that could make me feel worse than I already did, but having the unfortunate circumstances of my newfound singledom on display certainly was one of them.
My instinct for self-preservation kicked in. “Get out!” I snarled.
Sabrina only laughed, and that’s when I heard the footsteps of my mother. I swear the woman has bad-daughter-behavior radar.
“Hello, girls,” my mother welcomed them.
“Hello, Mrs. Whitman!” Sabrina spoke the way she did to the principal of our school, like she was honored to be just talking to my mother. “We were just shopping in town, and the three of us thought, ‘We can’t go on without a delicious treat from Snow Cones.’”
Erin pretended to gag, and Abby put her head down to keep from laughing. My mother walked forward to where Sabrina and her crew stood. “Is that right?” Her voice was dripping with disbelief. “How about some lavender for you then, or our special of the day. It’s chocolate with a hint of basil.” These were the moments when I felt lucky to have my mother on my side. She was selling them the two most expensive flavors.
“I’ll have the lavender, please.”
Erin stood on the rung of her stool, picked up my cup of half-eaten lavender ice cream, and tossed it into the trash.
I stood back with my arms crossed while my mother waited on the Minions. I refused to give them any joy, even of the dairy variety. My mother got them their ice cream without another glance, then turned to me as she headed back to her office. “Try not to use words like ‘bastard’ in front of the customers.” She kissed my head and I could feel my face getting hot. I hated when she treated me like a little kid in public, especially in front of girls like Sabrina, who could drive and probably had gone all the way and whose mother lived half the year in a whole other state!
Once my mother left, Sabrina made a big show of choosing a stool to sit on. Stephanie and Hannah flurried to her side, and together, the three of them pretended to eat their ice cream, while making vicious eyes at me the whole time. I tried to ignore them, and stood by Erin and Abby.
Finally Sabrina put her spoon down, and began to talk loudly to her two stupid friends about the Northern Lights Ball. “Mom sent me the prettiest pair of shoes to go with my dress. They’re blue satin.” She looked at me pointedly. “Jessie, do you have your shoes yet? Or was the seamstress here”—she pointed at Abby—“going to make them for you? Carve them from wood maybe?”
Then Stephanie chimed in, “You don’t even have a date anymore, so you won’t be able to go, will you?”
Then they burst into laughter. They were still entertaining themselves with conspiratorial laughter when the door opened. At the sight of Will Parker, Sabrina sat taller on her stool. She didn’t even try to hide her admiration of him when Cam strolled in after him. What was going on? Why were the coolest kids in school descending on the shop on what was possibly the worst day of my life?
“Hey, Will,” Sabrina cooed as Cam walked to where she sat, and put a foot up on the lower rung of her stool. Erin gave him a very dirty look, and he began to blush when he saw Abby.
“Hey, Abby,” he said quietly. This caused Sabrina to scoot closer to Cam, even though she quickly returned her gaze to Will, who stood in the middle of the floor looking at Sabrina and her girls before settling onto the stool next to Erin.
“Gimme some of that,” he said, taking Erin’s spoon and proceeding to eat her ice cream. Abby flashed a quick look at me. Right then and there I decided that if Abby and I couldn’t have love in our lives, I was going to make sure that Erin had some, even if I had to kill Sabrina to do it.
Sabrina didn’t take too kindly to Will sitting with the enemy. Her lovely face drew itself into a frown, and Stephanie and Hannah grew deathly quiet.
“Will, we were just talking about the Northern Lights Ball,” Sabrina said out loud, placing a hand over Cam’s. Will smiled at me easily, and pushed Erin’s empty dish in my direction. I filled it with chocolate. My break
up was bad for my mom’s bottom line. I was giving ice cream away.
“Yeah?” Will asked.
“Yeah,” Sabrina cooed. “You’re going to ride in our limo, right?”
Erin snorted, and I couldn’t help myself. “There’re no limousines in Willow Hill, Sabrina.” Erin and Abby both smirked, and Sabrina gave me a death stare.
“You going?” Will poked Erin in the ribs. Abby’s eyes grew wide.
“Please,” Erin snorted. “I’d rather ride in a limo with Sabrina.” Then she quickly looked back and forth between me and Will. I recognized that look. It was the look she got when she was about to come up with a masterly sinister plan. “But you know what? Were you going?”
“I don’t know. No date,” he said with a giant, gleaming white smile. Sabrina’s spoon clattered onto the floor.
“You should go with Jessie.” Erin’s voice got very excited.
“What?” I asked. “No, I’m not going now.” I stage-whispered this, like my mom does when she doesn’t want my brother, Brian, to know that the slopes are still open.
“You have to go with somebody! You can’t let Jake just go to the dance with that girl and not be there to stop it! And you can’t go without a date.”
“She’s got a point, you know,” Abby chimed in. “And I have the dress all set.”
“Will, I don’t want to go anymore. So, don’t worry.”
Will took a bite of ice cream and smiled at me. “Come on, Whitman, don’t be chicken. I’ll take you. It’ll be fun.”
“Jessie, you gotta fight fire with fire,” Cam chimed in. Sabrina hit him in the arm.
I looked back and forth between Cam and Will. I didn’t know what to say. Everything was happening so fast, I couldn’t keep up. I was vaguely aware, though, of how Sabrina and the Minions were staring at me, clearly waiting to hear what I was going to say.
Erin leaned forward and whispered under her breath, “It’ll drive Sabrina insane if you go with Will.”
I don’t know if Will knew that Sabrina liked him, but he heard what Erin said and didn’t dispute it. In fact, his grin became even wider, if that was possible. I looked at Abby quickly, hoping she would give me a sign. We both wanted Erin to date somebody, and Will was the only guy she seemed even mildly interested in. Wasn’t I sabotaging this possible love match if I went to the Northern Lights Ball with him?
“There’s no way you’d want to go to this dance, right, Erin?”
“Please. Not if Johnny Depp were my date.”
Abby nodded at me.
“Okay.”
“Yeah?” Will asked.
“Yes. It’s a date.”
Will stood on his stool and high-fived me. “Yeah, Whitman! One date with me and you’ll forget all about that guy anyway.” He waggled his eyebrows. Erin shot a triumphant look at Sabrina, who choked on her bite of ice cream.
Chapter 5
“Eat your peas. Now,” my mother commanded me and my brother.
I was having dinner with my family later that night, and I wished I had the power to nod my head and disappear. Mothers have a way of talking about inconsequential things, like eating your vegetables, right when your whole world is falling apart. I mean, peas? Peas? Would peas get me Jake back? I mashed a whole smattering of them with the back of my fork, and then choked them down. Nope. Didn’t help. My life was still a heartbreaking episode of a romantic television show.
I sighed and looked around, trying not to yell at my brother even though he was talking about his ice-hockey team as if anyone in the world cared about how many goals he had to score to break the Willow Hill Bantam League record.
At least the house was warm. It was so cold outside, this was the first time I’d felt my toes all day. It was depressing that I was counting being able to feel my toes as a positive thing. I’d sunk so low that I now looked to the fact that I had basic shelter as a silver lining.
In winter, we always ate in our kitchen, a large, pine-paneled room with a wooden island in the middle of it. Next to the table were three floor-to-ceiling glass doors that led out onto a huge deck, a deck my father said was the only reason he agreed to build the house in the first place. In summer, we ate outside around a pine table that was also made by my dad. In the dead of winter, like now, when there was barely any sunlight, we’d sit inside and I’d pass most of our family dinners staring outside at the pine trees and trying to make out the shapes of the mountain in the background.
There was a baby deer and her momma in our yard just now, grazing. That was a positive, yes? God. I was going to start counting the fact that I was breathing as a good thing.
“Look! A deer!” Brian exclaimed, and pointed at the window. When my father and mother turned to look, Brian snuck a handful of peas into the mouth of our shaggy brown dog, Bear. I pushed my food around my plate absent-mindedly.
“Jessie. The food goes in your mouth,” my father pronounced. I looked up to find that he was looking at me. “You’re a growing girl. Eat.”
My father is a typical Alaskan. He’s huge, like, six five and burly. He’s got a beard that used to be really shaggy until my mother made him start trimming it. He always wears flannel and denim and baseball caps. And he’s real outdoorsy. He loves to fish and fly his plane and hike and build things. And he hates it when I’m depressed. He says that he can’t handle sad girls in his house.
“She’ll eat when she’s hungry, Bart,” my mother said. “Eat,” she commanded me.
Brian assumed that my parents were too concerned with my eating habits to notice if he fed another handful of peas to the dog.
“Hey!” I pointed at him on purpose to rat him out. He threw his arms up in anger.
“Brian! Go wash your hands, right now!”
My brother did what my mother said. While he was in the kitchen, noisily sloshing water around the sink and making bombing noises—he was pretending that the soap dispenser was an airplane and his hands were the target—my mother turned her laserlike gaze on me.
“Jessie is going to the Northern Lights dance with Will Parker,” she said, staring at me but talking to my father.
“Mom!” I shouted at her. I wasn’t surprised that she knew this. I hadn’t told her, but my mother was omniscient. She knew everything.
My dad stared at me. “Really? What about the pretty kid from the States?”
I threw my fork down with a clatter. “Dad,” my voice sounded really whiny, even to me, “Jake’s not pretty and he’s from Alaska.”
My dad widened his eyes in annoyed disagreement. He didn’t consider Juneau to be part of Alaska, because it was so close to the mainland and because he claimed all the people who lived down there were soft and couldn’t hack it in the wilds of the north.
“Bart,” my mother said in a singsong voice. When my father looked at her, she drew a finger across her neck a few times, to signal to him to let it drop. Even though she was the one who brought it up.
“Mom, I can see you.”
“Well, I’m just saying we don’t have to talk about this.”
“There are no secrets at this table,” my father said as he popped a large piece of steak in his mouth. Just then a large thudding sound came from the kitchen sink, punctuated by my brother’s screeching yell.
“Brian! Clean that up!” My mother shouted, before she could even see what he’d done. She got up to inspect the damage in the kitchen.
“Think he broke anything?” my father asked me.
“Hopefully his face,” I pouted, still pushing peas around my plate.
“Tell me.”
I sighed and looked at my dad without lifting my head from my hand. “It’s nothing.”
My father looked at me and didn’t say anything.
“Just that Jake is going to the dance with another girl,” I mumbled.
He again didn’t say anything and looked anxiously toward my mother, who was still in the kitchen. He talked a good game about no secrets, but heart-to-hearts with me made him nervous. “Annie!�
��
“Give me two seconds, Bart.”
I started laughing. “Dad, you can handle a bear, but you can’t handle talking to your own daughter?”
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Okay.” He folded his hands and placed them in his lap and turned toward me.
“Yeah? You want to give this a crack?”
My father nodded. “You don’t scare me.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling for the first time since I’d been home. “Let’s say you wanted a new, um, airplane.”
My father looked at me like one of us was an idiot. “A new airplane.” He nodded, understanding that I wasn’t talking about airplanes.
“Right. You want a new airplane. Before you got that new airplane, wouldn’t you tell the old airplane that you were getting a new airplane?”
“Would I tell the old airplane?”
“You know what I mean!”
My father took a deep breath and looked into the kitchen. I could tell he was desperate for my mother to return. “Um, I don’t talk to my airplanes.”
“Dad. First of all, I’ve heard you talk to your airplanes.” This was true. He tended to baby-talk them while he flew. “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Now he began slicing his steak into large pieces that were only bite-sized to a man as big as my dad. “Can you just tell me what we’re talking about?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to have to admit to my dad that I might have been dumped. “Forget it.”
My father again looked nervously to the kitchen. “Um. You go to the dance with Will Parker. He’s a good kid. Forget that other softy.”
I just looked at him. He widened his eyes and grinned, then patted me on the cheek. “Don’t tell me your old dad can’t handle your problems.”
After dinner I was lying on my bed, listening to a depressing playlist of songs that Erin had emailed. She’d said that they would make me feel better, but so far they were making me feel sadder. The sound of the female singer wailing into the microphone, in fact, made me want to do myself serious harm.
