Winning Over Skylar

by Julianna Morris

  “The team could use another good player. I like soccer better than football,” Nick admitted when she still didn’t say anything. “But I’m hoping to get a scholarship and thought it would be easier playing football.” He kept sending quick looks at Melanie and Karin nudged her friend forward.

  “Uh...this is Melanie. She saw the World Cup a couple of years ago.”

  “Wow, that must have been awesome. What was it like?”

  Mellie’s cheeks got pink. “My dad took me. We were—”

  “I wondered where you’d gone to, Nick,” interrupted a voice, and Karin could have screamed. It was Tiffany Baldwin. Tiffany checked the line of people waiting behind them and pouted. “Would you mind awfully letting me cut in with you, Nick?”

  He seemed embarrassed. “Well, uh, that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.”

  “I guess you’re right.” But she didn’t step away. Instead, she hugged his elbow and focused on Melanie. “Did you hear Nick is being scouted by the biggest schools? I’m so proud—he’s going to get a fabulous football scholarship.”

  “Cool it, Tiff,” Nick growled. “That isn’t for sure.”

  “It’s what my dad says, and he should know.”

  Tiffany enjoyed reminding people she was the coach’s daughter, and it was doubly annoying to have her butt in when they were talking to Nick.

  Well, he’d mostly been talking to Mellie.

  Karin wrinkled her nose. Her chest still hadn’t developed, so guys didn’t check her out the way they checked out girls like Tiffany and Melanie. But Mellie wasn’t smug about being pretty, and Tiffany was full of herself.

  They moved closer to the front of the line—her mom and grandparents knew how to feed a bunch of people fast—and Karin saw Grandpa Joe wink at her as he took money from a customer.

  “You’d better go get a place in line,” Nick told Tiffany.

  “Whatever you say, Nick.” She’d obviously hoped he would forget and let her stay with him. “Maybe we could take a ride on the Ferris wheel later.”

  “Maybe.” When he got to the counter, Nick took out his wallet. “We’ll take three burgers and three fries,” he said to Grandpa Joe. “Is that okay with both of you?” he asked, looking back at them.

  Both Karin and Mellie nodded, dumbfounded.

  Mellie started to open her purse, but Nick shook his head. “Naw. My treat.”

  The pink in her cheeks got brighter and Karin had a hollow feeling in her stomach. If Mellie got a boyfriend, would she still care about moving in with them?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “MOM, DAD, THANKS for the help,” Skylar said as they were finishing the cleanup following the carnival.

  Her father-in-law grinned. “It was fun.”

  “Right. Fun. Five hours of hard labor.”

  “It was fun doing it together. You need to tell us when you’ve volunteered for these things,” Grace scolded. “We wouldn’t have even known about it if those two employees hadn’t gotten sick at the last minute.”

  “Besides, you were going to give them overtime, and we work cheap. Now pay up.” Joe held out his arms and Skylar walked into his hug. As long as she’d known the Gibsons, she’d never stopped marveling at what decent people they were.

  “I love you, Dad,” she whispered. Never in her life could she remember saying that to her own parents and meaning it the way she cared for Grace and Joe.

  “You’re our girl,” he said gruffly. “Don’t you ever forget that. You and Karin.”

  “I won’t.”

  They went back to work, sorting out the few remaining bits of food and putting the equipment in the back of her pickup. She’d park it in the garage for the night and deal with getting everything back to the Nibble Nook early in the morning. They counted up the proceeds and Skylar was pleased to see the total. She had sold out the way she’d hoped, but you could never tell what teenagers would decide to eat.

  “How did you do?” asked Mrs. Torval a few minutes later. She was the chairperson of the event and was going from booth to booth, collecting preliminary totals.

  Skylar showed her the figures, minus the cash she’d brought to make change, and Mrs. Torval beamed in delight. “That’s amazing. Do you have any idea how much it will be once your expenses are taken out?”

  “There aren’t any expenses,” Joe Gibson declared. “The Trident Nibble Nook Too is donating the supplies.”

  “Dad, you can’t do that. You worked, that’s more than enough,” Skylar said, spinning around. She hadn’t told them she planned to donate the cost of her supplies in case they tried to do it instead. It was also one of the reasons she hadn’t told them she was doing a booth at the carnival in the first place...knowing they’d go overboard. They always went overboard; it was their favorite thing.

  “We can, too,” Grace Gibson asserted. “Our granddaughter attends school here, so we have to support it, as well.”

  “At the very least we’re splitting it.”

  “Nope.” Grace had the stubborn look she got whenever her family was involved.

  Mrs. Torval didn’t care who was donating what, she simply looked ecstatic and added the preliminary figure Skylar had given her to the clipboard she carried. Each vendor at the carnival had a special bag to leave in the night depository at the bank, and Skylar methodically counted the money again, with Grace cross-checking the amounts and completing a deposit slip.

  “Looks good.”

  They each signed the slip and sealed it in the bag. Since Skylar closed out a cash register every day and wasn’t subtracting anything, she was reasonably certain her figures would stand firm. Some of the others—the service organizations and churches and school clubs—would probably take a while to come up with final amounts. There were always the stragglers, the folks who hadn’t yet provided the receipts of what they’d spent for supplies and would take days to discover the pocket or jar or car glove compartment where they’d left the slip of paper.

  She peeked into the cab of her truck, parked at the back of the booth and saw Karin was sound asleep, her head pillowed on her backpack. It wasn’t any wonder she was exhausted. She’d overeaten, mostly junk food, ridden every ride on the midway, played every game...and could be on the way to getting her heart broken.

  Skylar sighed as she remembered the fearful, happy look on Karin’s face when the tall football player had bought her and Melanie a burger. From the little she’d seen, he seemed like a nice enough kid. Stories about him were common in the Cooperton Chronicle—all about his talent on the field and how he was going to help them win the state championships. The newspaper saw him as a town hero.

  Yet Skylar doubted a seventeen-year-old football star was romantically interested in a fourteen-year-old freshman—no matter how sweet and terrific that fourteen-year-old might be. Three years was a lot when you were a teenager. Melanie, on the other hand, was a different case—she was sixteen and becoming a beauty. And Nick’s expression when he looked at her was decidedly different than when he looked at Karin.

  Skylar herself hadn’t developed until she was a year older than Karin, possibly the only thing saving her from becoming a mother at a younger age, considering how wild she’d been. She had drawn the line at indiscriminate sex, but that was practically the only line she hadn’t crossed. And as it turned out, Aaron hadn’t been interested in her in the first place—he’d just made a bet with his toadying buddies that he could get inside her jeans.

  A shiver went through Skylar.

  She’d smoked in the girls’ restroom, cut classes, gotten arrested for joyriding, nearly flunked out, partied hard...and generally done her best to live down to her parents’ low reputations. Getting pregnant had been a wakeup call. Except it didn’t matter that she’d turned her life around; Aaron could use her past against her and Karin would think she was
a hypocrite.

  “Are you okay?” Grace asked as she put a box in the bed of the truck. “You got quiet all at once.”

  “I’m fine, just concerned about that football player and...” Skylar gestured toward her sleeping daughter inside the truck. It was partly true—the only part she could discuss with her mother-in-law. “If she has a crush on that boy, and her friend Melanie does, as well....”

  “I know. Try not to worry.”

  Both Grace and Joe had commented on Nick Jakowski buying fries and burgers for Melanie and Karin. They’d looked pleased and concerned at the same time, probably mirroring Skylar’s expression. Their little girl was growing up enough to notice the opposite sex, though Skylar wasn’t foolish enough to think it had just happened; it was simply the first time they’d been confronted with it. For that matter, it probably would have come up earlier if Karin hadn’t been preoccupied with her father’s death.

  “They say broken hearts are part of growing up, but it’s a lousy lesson to learn. Especially when your best friend is involved,” Skylar said, wiping down the counter of the booth so it could be disassembled by the volunteer fire department in the morning. Community fund-raisers were common in Cooperton, and the town kept the booths stored in one of the maintenance sheds.

  “And almost as hard for a parent to watch,” Grace murmured, “because you can’t do anything about it. Fortunately, Jimmie never really broke his heart...except over a milk shake.”

  Skylar remembered Jimmie telling her about his first love...a cute little number whose affection for him was largely driven by her passion for the Nibble Nook’s strawberry malts. They’d been eleven. Jimmie had been philosophical about it—after all, the Nook really did serve great milk shakes—but he’d added he was happy that Skylar didn’t care for strawberry malts.

  She smiled and touched her wedding band, remembering her husband’s teasing wink.

  “Of course, that young man is blind if he doesn’t prefer our Karin,” Grace announced, sounding very much the biased grandmother. “Karin is much lovelier.”

  “And three years younger. At any rate, I’m not ready to be the mother of a dating teenager. As a matter of fact, I want to lock her in a closet until she’s forty.”

  “Oh...I hadn’t thought of that. All right, if that boy is looking for a blonde, blue-eyed girl, he’s better off with Melanie. Let her brother keep tabs on the situation.”

  Skylar’s face went stiff. Melanie and Karin bore an uncomfortable resemblance to each other with the same dark blond hair, blue eyes and wide grins. Actually, Aaron and his father both had the same smile as the girls, but since Aaron wasn’t prone to good humor these days, maybe no one else would spot the similarity.

  “I’m not sure Aaron Hollister is the right person to keep tabs on a teenage girl who’s starting to date.”

  The only thing Aaron seemed to care about was whether Melanie was at the Nibble Nook, and that was because he thought Skylar might be a bad influence and didn’t want her around his unhappy employees or the rest of the people who ate there.

  “Oh. Maybe you can slip a word in with Melanie.”

  “I’ll try.”

  She gave her in-laws another hug. They were dropping the receipts at the night depository and she was grateful to avoid the stop on the way home.

  Karin wiggled upright and yawned when Skylar started the truck. “What time is it?”

  “Almost midnight. We’ve been cleaning up. Put on your seat belt.”

  But her daughter just yawned again and rested her head against the window.

  “Seat belt,” Skylar prompted. “Now.”

  “Mmm.” Karin wiggled and pulled the belt across her body, snapping it into place. “Do you know that Melanie never had a corn dog before?” she mumbled. “How weird is that? Can we have them for snacks on Monday?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Skylar smiled and headed for the house. It was a quiet moment, perhaps the calm before the storm, but it was nice. Karin hadn’t broken her heart and maybe wouldn’t; her friend was still her friend, and they had tomorrow to relax.

  * * *

  MELANIE GULPED HER lunch on Monday and hurried outside with Karin to a far corner of the school’s front parking lot.

  “Are you sure you still want to live with us?” Karin asked. “I don’t want to push or anything.”

  “More than ever. Aaron is pretty nice, but I’m only supposed to be here until next June, and if I’m not there, he could move into that apartment over the factory offices. Then he could work, like, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Awesome. I got a list of names and numbers. We have to keep phoning until we find someone who will help, even if we have to hire someone as far away as Sacramento or San Francisco.”

  The first call didn’t last longer than Melanie’s first few words. “We do not represent children. Don’t waste our time,” said the woman who’d answered, sounding annoyed. “If you really require an attorney, have your parents call someone.”

  Melanie was mortified, but Karin just rolled her eyes. “Let me talk to the next one, I’ll put it on speakerphone.” She read over the list she’d brought and picked out a name that had something scribbled next to it. “Hello, I want to speak to Mr. Newman,” she said when a man answered. “My friend needs a lawyer and I’m helping her.”

  “You don’t sound old enough to need a lawyer.”

  “I’m old enough to read Mr. Newman’s advertisement in the phone book. It says, ‘free one-hour initial consultation.’”

  “Yes, the secretary takes information from a caller, and we decide whether or not there’s a reasonable basis to offer a consultation.”

  Karin’s chin rose. “That’s not what the ad says. Are you telling me you’re guilty of false advertising? I thought there were laws in California against that kind of thing. Besides, your ad was much smaller than everyone else’s, so you can’t be too good at lawyering. I should think you’d be glad to get our business.”

  The man on the other end of the phone began to laugh. “That’s an interesting argument. As a matter of fact, I’m Jeremy Newman. My secretary went home sick and I’ve been answering the phone between appointments. I set up my law practice a few months ago and decided not to spend money on a bigger ad immediately.”

  Karin let out a heavy sigh. “Then how do we know you have enough experience to handle our business? Especially if you aren’t even willing to listen and find out if we have a case.”

  Ohmigod.

  Melanie clapped a palm over her mouth in both shock and admiration. She couldn’t imagine talking to anyone the way Karin was talking to that lawyer. And the lawyer thought it was funny.... He was laughing again.

  “All right, young lady, you get your free hour. Tell me about this problem of yours.”

  “It’s for my friend—she wants to divorce her mother and father so she can live with me and my mom. See, her parents are divorced, too, and her mom keeps dumping her with family she doesn’t know so she can go off and travel. Mellie spends a few months here and there, and it’s really hard keeping up with her classes. She knows all about my mom being strict and stuff, and she doesn’t mind, so if she—”

  “Whoa. Hold on there,” Mr. Newman ordered. “Let’s start over. Is your friend—Mellie—there?”

  “We’re on speakerphone.”

  “Uh...hello,” Melanie said awkwardly when Karin put the phone closer. “I’d really like your help, Mr. Newman.”

  “Hello, Mellie. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Have you ever been in trouble with the police or at school?”

  “No, sir,” she replied. “My mother promises I won’t get in trouble when she leaves me with someone. My grades aren’t great, but I’m really trying and Karin helps. So does her mom. I’m just...I’m just so tired of m
oving around and not belonging to anyone,” she burst out, horrified to find she was almost crying. People seemed to think she had it made because her parents were rich and she had seen a bunch of famous places, but it wasn’t great at all.

  “I understand,” the lawyer said, sounding as if he really did know how she felt. “Maybe we just need to send a letter to change things.”

  “You’ll have to send it to my half brother. My mother and stepfather are in Africa, and my father is...well, I don’t know. He goes all over.”

  “Does your brother have legal custody?”

  “He has some papers from a lawyer. My mother wants to be sure I can see doctors and things.”

  “How do you expect to support yourself?”

  “I have a trust fund.”

  Mr. Newman asked more questions and finally said to call again the next day. Melanie didn’t know whether to be hopeful or worried when they got off, but there wasn’t time to think about it.... They had to hurry or be late for class.

  Something else kept bothering her, though, as the afternoon went by... How would Aaron and her parents react? She felt funny about the idea of divorcing her mother and father—it was the same as saying, “I don’t love you anymore.” She did love them, but they didn’t have time for her, so why should they care if she lived with the Gibsons? Surely it would be easier than convincing different relatives to take her for six months or a year.

  If only her mother was more like Skylar. Mrs. Gibson was really strict and like Karin said, she could be cranky sometimes...but she was a mom from top to bottom.

  “Miss Hollister, are you listening?” asked Mrs. Ramirez, their science teacher. “I asked if you knew the periodic table symbol for neon.”

  “Oh, yes.” Melanie’s ears burned as the other kids giggled. “It’s Ne.”

  “Thank you, that’s correct.” Mrs. Ramirez gave her a kind smile. She was Karin’s favorite teacher and Melanie liked her, too, but she didn’t let the kids goof off.

  She went on talking about neon being a gas, and Melanie tried to listen, but she kept wondering if they should have asked Mrs. Gibson if it was okay for her to move in with them. First. Before calling a lawyer. Karin seemed sure it was all right, but what if it wasn’t?