by Claire Ray
The only time he didn’t run when he saw me was when he came into Snow Cones. Evie, it turned out, liked herself some ice cream. The first time the two of them came into the shop, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I would think that my family’s shop would be off-limits for their daytime rendezvous, but apparently Evie’s desire for sweets trumped his desire for avoidance. Each time, she’d order vanilla peppermint and he’d have strawberry. The first visit, I put whipped cream on his in the shape of a heart. He shook his head at me, and I raised my shoulders as if to say, “Whoops!” After that he specifically ordered his with no whipped cream.
After three days of this, I decided that I’d had enough. I couldn’t keep living like this, hoping that his kiss had meant something but knowing by all the evidence, especially the “you broke up with her” comment, that it probably hadn’t. The problem was that while I had even a shred of hope, I had hope.
On the fourth day, I was determined to cut work and find Jake, and if I couldn’t, then I’d have to show up outside his window again that night.
Unfortunately my mother didn’t seem too thrilled with my plan of ditching work. It was either Snow Cones or babysitting. I chose babysitting, something normally on the bottom of the list of things I’d agree to do for my parents. But Brian was desperate to visit Mr. Winter’s new litter of puppies, and if we had anything in common, it was our love of animals. I wanted to see them too.
And honestly I needed a break from Snow Cones. I was eating too much ice cream and I needed to fit into Abby’s dress. Also, I couldn’t take any more Evie sightings.
“Hey, kids!” Mr. Winter called out to me and Brian as we walked around the side of his barn to the pen at the back. He was a big bear of a man, not quite as huge as my dad but big enough that you knew he was born here. He wore overalls with suspenders over a thermal undershirt. He had a red plaid cap on his head and was bending at the waist, petting six small yipping bundles of fur.
Brian broke out into a run and hopped over the pen fence in one fluid motion.
“Easy, big guy!”
“Can I hold ’em? Please? Please? Please?”
Mr. Winter handed him a red-coated little furball and said, “Be gentle now, they’re babies yet.” Then he walked to the pen door and opened it wide for me.
“Hi, Mr. Winter,” I said, walking to where Brian was holding the puppy. He had slid down into the mud by this point, and was talking to the baby dog as he were a general giving orders to his troops. “My mom says we’re not allowed to take one home.”
Mr. Winter laughed a great belly laugh and placed two black puppies with shiny noses into my right arm. I cuddled them against my cheek. “They’re not going anywhere yet. I think the whole lot will be my next team!”
Mr. Winter bred Iditarod dogs, and every year, with every litter, he expected that they’d all be good running dogs. He was the only man in our area to have won the Iditarod three times, and his family ran this farm the rest of the year, letting tourists pay to visit with the dogs and to walk through the makeshift museum he set up in another barn building toward the back of the estate.
“This one’s your next lead!” Brian shouted, and raised the dog he was holding over his head.
“I think you’re right!” he said. “Jessie, you two want to stay and help me with the next tour group?”
I checked my watch. Brian started jumping up and down. “Can we? Can we? Can we?”
“Oh, look, some of ’em are early.” Mr. Winter pointed to the driveway at the front of the house.
“Damn it!” Brian shouted.
“Brian!” I scolded, sounding like my mother. “I’m sorry, Mr. Winter. Brian, what is wrong with you?”
“You won’t let us stay now.”
I looked to the driveway, and sure enough, the car that had pulled in was a giant black Escalade, a car from out of town. The front door opened, and the blond goddess that was Evie descended from the passenger seat, followed by three miniature versions from the back of the car. Then, a man who wore a shiny suit and shoes that would get soaked from the snow made his way from the driver’s side and locked the door of the car with the squeaky beeping sound from his key chain. He didn’t look like any of my friends’ dads. His hair was slicked back and he had one of those little phones in his ear and his teeth were unnaturally bright. I guessed this was Evie’s father.
“Jessie! Hi!” Evie saw me and waved frantically. I didn’t say anything, just smiled halfway and nodded my head at her. She came over to the edge of the pen and leaned against it.
“Do you work here, too?” she asked, puzzled.
Mr. Winter answered for me. “Nope. She just stopped by with Brian to see the pups.” Then he walked out of the pen toward Evie’s dad, who still stood by his car. I noticed that after he shook his hand, Mr. Stewart wiped it on a handkerchief he produced from his pants pocket.
Two of Evie’s sisters hung back, hovering by their father, but another one, who was gaptoothed and freckly and about the same age as Brian, crowded around Evie’s legs and began hanging on her. “Tiffany, get off!” she shouted. She wrenched her hand free of the girl.
“I want to go in!” the girl said demandingly.
“Fine, go. Geez.” Evie pushed her toward the gate and the girl hopped it, like Brian had. She walked right over to Brian, who eyed her suspiciously.
“These are babies,” he said to her. “You have to be quiet and patient.”
She stuck her hands in the pockets of her rainbow-embroidered denim jacket and said, “What do you think? I’m stupid?”
Evie and I watched this exchange carefully. “Tiffany!” Evie begged. “Be nice!”
The little girl wedged herself in next to my brother and commanded, “Show me.” He looked at her sideways, then up at me for permission. I raised my shoulders in confusion. At that moment, I wouldn’t have minded if he threw a fistful of dirt at the little girl. Because that’s what I wanted to do to Evie, even though she’d always been nice to me. Going against all my brother’s tactical instincts when it came to girls, he gingerly placed the puppy in Tiffany’s lap and then picked up one of the puppy siblings and started pretending that it was attacking the others.
“Your brother’s cute,” Evie said to me.
I didn’t say anything. What I wanted to say was “Are you going to try to steal him, too?” but I didn’t. And I was a little proud of myself for my restraint.
“This place is amazing!” Evie went on. “Can you imagine living here year-round playing with puppies and dogs and deer and moose? Well, I guess you can, because you do live here year-round!”
I exhaled. Her happy tourist routine was seriously grating. “Yeah,” I said, trying to make my voice sound friendly.
Evie must’ve sensed my quietness, because she bit her lip and then said to me in an entirely different tone, “Hey, listen, I hope we can be friends, okay?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, not that you need a new friend, I know you’ve got friends, and I mean, I may not be here for long—”
“That’s right. This is just a vacation.”
“Well, actually, my dad is buying one of the cabins, the empty one near the Reids’.”
I nearly dropped the dogs I was holding. All this time, I thought that maybe this was a onetime visit, that maybe Evie would disappear from Jake’s life once this trip was over.
“So we’re going to be around more often. Which I can’t wait for.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I was just thinking that I’d like to have some girlfriends to hang out with when I’m here.”
“Oh,” I said, dreading what was coming next.
“And you and Erin and Abby seem so cool, so, you know…I just wanted to say that I’d like to hang out with you.”
“Well, er, I mean, Erin can be kind of, um, unsure about new friends.”
Evie just looked at me. “Jessie, I know that you and Jake went out and everything.”
My face did that funny hot thing it h
ad done when Will mentioned kissing, and I put the dogs on the ground. She said “went out.” Past tense. Which, I mean, hello? How stubborn was I that I would not acknowledge the fact that Evie was Jake’s new girlfriend? I didn’t say anything but I didn’t seem to need to, what with Evie’s running-at-the-mouth disorder.
“And I think it’s really cool that you guys remained friends. And I think Will is really cool, and maybe it’d break the ice if we all went out together, like a double date.”
“What? Will?”
“Yeah, you know, so that you won’t feel weird around me anymore, and then we can all be friends.”
I stared at her, unable to think of anything polite to say. It was just that I couldn’t imagine anything that would make me feel weirder than going on a date with her and Jake. Wait. Yes, I could. And that would be going on a date with Will Parker.
“You cannot, cannot do that.” Abby emphasized her point by slamming her fist onto the table.
It was later the same day, and I had called an emergency meeting of the troops to discuss whether or not to double-date.
“Whoa. Ab. Watch it there,” Erin said, kidding our gentle friend who rarely displayed such a fiery temper.
We were at the Mountain Diner, the closest thing to a restaurant in Willow Hill. The diner wasn’t on the resort premises; it was in the actual downtown area, which really wasn’t much of anything. There was a post office here, and a small grocery store that looked like a house on the outside, and a hunting-and-camping/outdoor-needs store. There was also a gas station, a pharmacy, and this diner. Willow Hill didn’t have fast-food restaurants or chain stores or even a Wal-Mart. The girls and I would take a drive into Anchorage every week or so for a McNugget fix and a whirl around the aisles at the Kmart in town for kicks. And Evie thought this was such a great place! I’m pretty sure she could get McNuggets in Boise if she wanted to. I made a mental note to mention that the next time I was standing in awkward silence with her.
“I think you should go,” Erin said, taking a fry off my mostly untouched plate.
“Why exactly?” I asked both of them, wanting to know their reasons for their opposing advice.
Erin gestured that Abby should make her case first. Abby began by also taking a fry from my plate. “It’ll break your heart to have to sit there across the table and watch them all gooey-eyed over each other.”
“Abby! I can handle that. It’s nothing we haven’t seen since they got here.”
“She has some self-respect, Ab, or else she wouldn’t be all over Will Parker right now.”
“Erin!”
“What?”
“How in any way am I all over him?”
She pointed at the coat I had worn to meet them—it was rolled up in the corner of the booth, but the large, red X was clearly visible.
“It’s a coat, Erin. It’s warmer than anything I have.”
“Whatever. I respect it. He’s way cuter than Jake anyway.”
I looked at Abby out of habit, but she was looking past my shoulder to the doorway. Sabrina and Cam Brock were being shown to a table.
“Great,” Abby whispered under her breath. She then shoveled a fistful of French fries into her mouth.
“Uck,” Erin said. “You know what? We should get you a fake boyfriend too. Maybe when Jake leaves, Will can just move over to you.”
“Will’s not my fake boyfriend,” I said.
“What do you think Evie thinks? Double date. She means with you and your new boyfriend.”
I sipped a drink and thought about that.
“Besides, Jake’s totally jealous, I can tell.”
“How?”
Erin scooted closer to the table and beckoned Abby to lean in. “Okay. News. Today, when Agnes went on her break, you know, when she’s gone for like an hour and then gets back and pretends that she only went to the ladies’ room? Whatever.”
“Just, what’s the story?”
“Right. Well, I was behind the desk, and Jake came up, asking for a flyer for Mr. Winter’s farm, you know, to check the schedule for the sled rides.”
“But that makes no sense. Evie was already there.”
“I know! I didn’t think anything of this until just now. But I handed it to him and said, ‘Jessie loves those dogs.’”
“Please tell me you didn’t say that.”
“Oh, I said it.”
“Oh God.” I dropped my head into my hands.
“Anyway, I said, ‘Jessie loves those dogs,’ and he looked at me funny, and said, ‘Yeah. We took this sled ride once. I thought it might be a good thing to try again.’”
Abby and I just looked at Erin, who was grinning like she ate a whole pie in one sitting. “So? He’s thinking about you.”
I looked at Abby. “Erin, he was talking about Evie. About taking Evie.”
“I don’t think he was. He specifically said you had had such a great time out there.”
I looked over at Sabrina and Cam.
“He’s having buyer’s remorse. I can tell. That guy’s never satisfied with what he has.”
I ignored this because Sabrina got up from her booth, and Cam caught my eye. Then, when Sabrina walked past us, she pinched me. “Ow!” I shouted. “What is your problem?” She didn’t even look back or pretend she hadn’t done it.
“Are you okay?” We looked up from our table, into the nut-brown eyes of Cam Brock. Abby squeaked.
“Um. Yeah,” I said, shocked to see him there.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, um. Sorry about that.”
“Okay,” I answered, dumbfounded.
“Okay. Well, see you around. See you later, Abby.”
And with that he was gone.
Poor Abby. I was scared to look at her, and when I did, it was as expected. Her eyes were all misty and her cheeks were pink and she wasn’t breathing.
“Abby, back to earth,” Erin commanded.
“Why did he say that? ‘See you later, Abby.’ Why did he say that?”
“He just did. Forget it,” Erin commanded again.
Abby listened to Erin, but before she took another fry from my plate, she caught my eye and I knew that she hoped that Cam had come to talk to us because of her, not just because he had to apologize for his terrible girlfriend’s behavior.
I walked home from the diner, even though the sun had completely disappeared and it was snowing lightly. Will’s coat was remarkably warm, and I’d wrapped myself in a thick wool scarf that matched the hat I’d bought in Anchorage last year. My toes were sinking into the wintry chill, and I’d have been bothered by the wind hitting my face if my mind hadn’t been so occupied by everything else.
It wasn’t a far walk, really. We lived just over a mile from town, through the woods and past the path to the Winter farm. It was a walk I made often because I didn’t have a driver’s license. Now, I was walking because I wanted to sort things out in my head.
Erin sometimes didn’t say things in the most tactful way, but she hardly ever exaggerated and never made things up. If she said that Jake was planning a sledding trip for us, then odds were good that he was. But this didn’t make any sense to me. One day he was kissing me, then he avoided me for days. His family thought we were broken up and Evie clearly did too. I mean, we were broken up! And now what? He’d show up at my doorstep with eight dogs and a bouquet of flowers? It wasn’t exactly his style.
Not to mention that every time I saw him and Evie together, they looked like they were really enjoying each other. I didn’t know when I’d gone from the girlfriend to the other woman, but I’d gone from feeling special and happy to insecure and invisible.
I had to conclude that Erin was mistaken, and to trust my own mind. From what I saw, Jake wished I would go away. And maybe I should, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to make trouble, I wanted everything to just be settled. But on the other hand, I wanted explanations and apologies.
I just didn’t know how I was going to get them. Maybe I should go on that double d
ate with them. But that meant asking Will for another favor, and I didn’t know if my insides could take it. He made me a little nervous.
God, if Sabrina had been in this situation, she would’ve locked Evie in her cabin, thrown away the key, and cornered Jake until he submitted. I kicked a foot full of snow in frustration. How exactly did good, nice girls get what they wanted? How had I gotten Jake in the first place?
I rewrapped the scarf around my neck, and thought about how excited Jake had been that first winter he was here. Maybe it was just as simple as this: that he’d been up here enough to know that there wasn’t anything special about Willow Hill. Including me.
Chapter 9
When I woke the next morning, I sat up in bed and looked around my room at the empty wall. The day after we first saw Jake and Evie together, Erin had taken down each of Jake’s pictures and packed all the gifts he’d given me into a box. I reached beneath my bed and felt around until I found the stack of pictures—Abby had rescued and organized them and hid them there for safekeeping. I shuffled through them once and then replaced them in their tomb.
He was my ex. He had a new girlfriend. Which meant he had no business kissing me, in his backyard or anywhere else. As I showered and got ready to go to Snow Cones, I thought to myself, So what if I’ll never get kissed again? At least I knew what it was like. Wonderful.
But, other than the lack of kissing, what was really so bad about being single? I mean, really, Jake was my boyfriend by phone and text messages only. I had always gone to school alone and spent my summers alone. So really my life wouldn’t be that different once the winter break was over. And the dance, I’d survive the dance. For one night, I’d be on the popular boy’s arm, Sabrina would be driven crazy with jealousy, and all would be right with the world.
This was it. I was just going to make the best out of my new single life.
I stopped by Snow Cones on my way to Mount Crow and found Madison Reid at the counter with her mother.
“Jessie!” She leaped off the stool and flew into my arms. I picked her up with ease and carried her over to Mrs. Reid, who was drinking green tea. The woman was a stick. I’d be surprised if she’d ever tasted ice cream in her whole life.
