Any Boy but You (North Pole, Minnesota)

by Julie Hammerle

  “What do you want?” He flicked his notecards to the ground.

  “Just checking up on you, seeing how you’re doing?”

  “I’m fine.” He rolled over and faced the wall where he’d hung a poster of Wizard War, which he also wasn’t allowed to play right now. His entire universe was taunting him. “No thanks to you.”

  “I’m the one who’s trying to keep your game afloat. Some gratitude would be appreciated.”

  He sighed, focusing on the young wizard in the corner of his poster. That guy was having a better day than Oliver, and he was about to have his head blasted off by a spell.

  “Anyway,” Regina said. “‘How are you, Regina? What’s going on in your life?’”

  “How are you, Regina? What’s going on in your life?” Oliver muttered.

  “I’m in a bit of a romantic pickle.”

  Oliver groaned. Regina was always using him as a sounding board for her relationship problems. She never expected him to give her advice or anything—not that he’d even be able to give many words of wisdom. He wasn’t very experienced at the whole dating game. He just got the impression that Regina liked talking to him mostly because he was a warm body in the room, like she believed it’d look weird if she hashed this stuff out on her own. “What kind of romantic pickle?” he asked.

  “Well, I hooked up with someone on the ski trip.”

  “Fine, I’ll play along,” Oliver said. “Who did you hook up with?”

  “Harper.”

  “So, you’re dating Harper.” This wasn’t a total shock to Oliver. His sister had been out to him as bi for a long time now. He’d heard all about her various romances in Florida, and now Minnesota. She was good at falling in love, and out of it. She and Oliver were complete opposites that way. Every person Regina came into contact with was a potential story, a potential adventure. Everyone Oliver met…usually wanted to hang out with Regina instead.

  “No, I’m not dating Harper,” she said. “That’s the problem. I was in kind of a bad place on the ski trip. I don’t know if you noticed.”

  “I did not.” Oliver only recalled seeing his sister running through the lodge lobby laughing and chatting while he was working away on the Stash Grab app.

  “Well, I was. I told somebody right before break that I liked him, and he said he wasn’t interested. So when Harper kind of made a move on the ski trip, I went along with it because I was sad and we were on vacation…”

  Oliver flipped over so he could see his sister. Her knees sandwiched her hands. She reminded him of a dog with his tail between his legs. “Harper’s your friend.”

  “Yeah.” Regina frowned.

  “You hooked up with your friend. That’s never a good thing. I know virtually nothing about relationships—friendships or otherwise—and even I know that.”

  She frowned and scrunched up her face. “Believe me. I know it was stupid. I knew it was stupid before it happened.”

  “You didn’t talk to her beforehand? You didn’t hash this out?”

  She shook her head. “It just kind of happened. I figured—I hoped—we were on the same page, but…” She groaned. “So, so stupid.”

  “Have you told her you just want to be friends?” Oliver’s romantic experience was so limited, he wasn’t sure if any of the advice he’d give would be the right advice. But, hey, he was trying.

  Regina winced and shook her head.

  “Regina.”

  “I know. It’s just, Harper’s really cool and I do like hanging out—as friends. I want to stay friends, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. It’s a total ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ situation. The guy I liked, well, right after break he came here and said he couldn’t stop thinking about me while I was gone. Ever since then, we’ve been seeing each other.” She grinned like she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Who?” Oliver asked.

  “It’s new and fragile. I don’t want to talk about it. Let me have my secrets, Ollie.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll still be here in five minutes when you want to tell me all about this relationship, too.” He sat up. “And, besides, it’s Stan Stashiuk, isn’t it?”

  “That obvious?” She beamed.

  “You need to talk to Harper.”

  “I was afraid that’s what you’d say.”

  “That’s literally what anyone would say, Regina. This is a no-brainer.” He tapped his hands on his knees. “Sooooo…”

  “I’m not talking to you about the game,” she said.

  “Come on. I talked to you about your love life.”

  “Barely.”

  “Fine.” Shrugging, he stood up, picked up his index cards from the floor, and put them in his backpack. “Tell me, don’t tell me, I don’t care. This is a temporary situation.”

  “You’re going to pass your Latin quiz?” she asked.

  “I am,” he said, Tarquinius Superbus facts running through his head. “I’m going to show Dad that I’m working hard and that I can balance everything. Then he’ll give me the passwords and let me control the game again. Circle of life.”

  Regina shook her head.

  Oliver shook his head back at her as his shoulders dropped. “What?”

  “Just don’t get your hopes up, Ollie.”

  “What? I pass my classes. I spend some time with the AV Club or whoever. I show some growth. I get my stuff back.” That was the bargain. That was getting Oliver out of bed in the morning.

  Regina cringed. “I said something to Dad about it, like maybe when Mom’s gone, you can work on Stash Grab for at least an hour a day or something. He said no. Absolutely not. He doesn’t want to piss Mom off.” Her face got serious, even more serious. “I think there’s something going on with them.”

  Oliver shrugged that off, avoiding the emotional conversation Regina was grasping for. Of course there was something going on with them. Anyone could see that. But what could he and Regina do about it? Their parents had been on the outs for years. “Now he decides to listen to Mom? Now?”

  “Oliver, keep focus. What if they get divorced?”

  “What if they do?” Oliver said. “What would change? Mom’s already not here.”

  “What if she wants us to come back to Florida? I don’t want to go back.”

  Where was her concern a week ago? Two months ago? Two days ago, when he still had his computer? “Either way,” he said. “At least in Florida we could be having this conversation by the beach.”

  Regina set her jaw and stood up. “You don’t care about anyone, do you?”

  “I’m a realist, Regina.” He pointed to the door. “All of Mom and Dad’s relationship stuff is out of our control. What can you or I even do about it?”

  “You can talk to me. You can show some emotion about the situation and how it affects us.” Her lip trembled. “You only care about yourself and your computers and your stupid game. I hope you never get any of them back.”

  She barged out and Oliver stood in the middle of his room, alone. Once the aftershock of the door slam subsided, he realized there was no sound in his room. He couldn’t stand it. Usually there was some noise—the computer whirring, alerts chirping, keys clacking. Now there was nothing. He had nothing.

  At least they’d left him his phone. He flopped onto the bed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. The hilarious thing was that his family wanted him to be more social, to talk to more people, but he’d never been spoken to more in his life than after the Stash Grab game started. He was suddenly Mr. Popular—Oliver, where’s this Stash? Oliver, how many Stashes are in the golf resort? Oliver, can you give me some answers? His parents and Regina wanted him to hang out with people in real life, but all the real-life people were hanging out with his game. And he was stuck in this room by himself. It was stupid.

  He went to the app store to download Stash Grab. What if he played? What if he joined the game? He could keep tabs on how Regina was doing that way. He could let his dad know when she screwed up. It’d be a way for him to at least d
o something, to be involved in some way.

  He typed in a random, secret email address he used for spam to create his account, and then he called himself something so North Pole that no one would ever suspect it was him: Stashiuk4Prez. He fashioned his avatar after Bruce Wayne (the Christian Bale Bruce Wayne), because that’s who Oliver was—the Batman of Stash Grab, lurking in the shadows to save the game.

  He checked out the leader board to see how people were doing. Then a message popped up on his screen, a private message from some other player who wanted to chat. The person’s name was proud_hoser. Her avatar was blond, compact, and muscular. He clicked on the conversation, expecting some kind of nice welcome or something.

  Her message said, “Welcome to the party, pal. You’re a little late.”

  “Hey, at least I showed up.” He clicked on her profile. She wasn’t too far ahead of him in the standings. “Big talk for someone about five slots above me on the leader board.”

  “Maybe I’m biding my time,” she said.

  “Until when? The game is over?”

  She sent him back a crying-laughing emoji. “I like you. You’re the first person to trash talk me back. The rest of this town is full of people who are way too polite for this nonsense.”

  “Politeness is overrated.”

  “Absolutely.” Then she said, “Welcome to the game, Stashiuk4Prez. I look forward to kicking your ass.”

  Chapter Five

  “Are you really a guy?” Elena asked. “Because I can’t trust an avatar.”

  “I’m definitely a guy.”

  Elena grinned. She was leaning up against her locker, chatting with Stashiuk4Prez, something that had been happening a lot lately, though the two of them had mostly kept to Stash Grab basics—talking about North Pole and Stash trivia and pointing each other in the direction of various Stashes around town. They had only just started dipping their toes into sharing personal information—his problems with his sister, the annoying dude she “worked” with.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Were you only asking if I’m a guy because you’re not actually a girl?”

  “No, I’m a girl,” she said after a moment. These questions felt like big steps. They were crossing little Rubicons all over the place. “Should we discuss real names at this point?” she asked, flinching.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “How about not yet? It’s more fun this way, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” She was half relieved. No one knew she was doing this competition, not Harper, not even her parents. She kind of just wanted to keep it to herself. If she succeeded and won the tickets, great. If not, no harm done, no egg on her face, no snide comments from Oliver Prince about her falling into the Stash Grab trap and having fun playing a stupid game he created.

  “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “For the love of God, please tell me you’re not Craig.”

  “I’m not Craig.”

  “That feels like something Craig would say.”

  “I’m in high school,” Stashiuk4Prez said.

  Giddy, she hugged her phone. The guy she’d been chatting with was not an old man. Or Craig.

  “I’m in high school, too,” she said.

  A hand slammed against the locker next to her. Elena shut off her phone’s screen on reflex and peeked over at the perfectly manicured hand, though she’d have known who it was even if she hadn’t spotted the bright pink nails. The spicy scent of Obsession was a dead giveaway. Harper.

  “You were playing Stash Grab!” Harper said, reaching for the phone.

  Elena shoved it behind her back. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Bullshit,” said Harper, giving up on obtaining concrete evidence. “I saw you, and obviously I support this development. I want you to win those damn tickets for spring break.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” said Elena.

  “I won’t.”

  “Especially not Oliver,” Elena said. “I’d like to keep the upper hand there.”

  “Of course,” Harper said.

  The girls started walking toward the cafeteria for lunch. Elena kept her eyes peeled—but for what? Something, anything, the tiniest clue that might show her who Stashiuk4Prez really was. What if he was doing the same thing right now? He was. He totally was. A new electricity pulsed through the air. Stashiuk4Prez was inside this building with Elena right now. He was here. He existed within these walls.

  Elena hadn’t felt these bubbly nerves in a while. She was developing a crush on someone she’d met online. She was that person now. She was the girl who liked the guy she’d only chatted with via text. And because she didn’t know who Stashiuk4Prez was and therefore felt she could say anything to him, this down-low romance had hit her faster and fiercer than any other crush she’d ever had before.

  Harper, too, was glancing around, searching for something or someone.

  “How are things going with you two?” Elena asked. “You and Oliver?” She coughed out his name. They’d had a number of tutoring sessions over the past week, and while he’d made a concerted effort to learn his Latin facts, he continued acting like being in Elena’s presence was some grave punishment. The feeling was mutual. And she really could not fathom what her best friend saw in him, beyond the hair and the eyes. And the sliver of lower back she’d seen peeking out from under his fleece when he bent over to grab a pen. Still, the rest of him was completely vile.

  Harper stopped in her tracks and focused on Elena. “Nothing new with him.”

  Elena crinkled her nose. “I can…ask him about you, if you want. You know, when I’m tutoring him—”

  Harper cut her off right away, waving her arms across her chest. “No, no, no. Don’t do that. Definitely not.”

  “You’re the boss.” Elena patted her shoulder. “He’s an idiot if he doesn’t realize how great you are.”

  Harper rolled her eyes. “Thanks.”

  “Actually, having spent some quality time with him recently, I can tell you he’s an idiot either way.”

  Later that afternoon, after Elena had devoted her final four periods to secretly hunting for Stashiuk4Prez in the halls and classrooms of North Pole High, her mom met her at the front door of their house and asked Elena to help deliver some golf clubs. Elena groaned. This was her one afternoon off—from either the store or Oliver Prince. She had hoped to sneak off on a long run to hunt Stashes around town, but alas. That was a no-go.

  “Maggie Garland bought a set for her dad’s birthday and they were accidentally delivered here,” her mom said, handing a bulky blue golf bag to Elena. “He’s staying at their house this week, and I told her I’d walk them over to the store so she could hide them from him.”

  The bottom of the golf bag thumped against the back of her leg as Elena trekked down Main Street, and her phone sat heavy inside her jeans pocket. She was itching to check it. All around her, people were staring at their phones, hunting for Stashes, bumping into lampposts and doors. She saw Craig and Dinesh racing—coatless, mittenless, and hatless—down the middle of the street.

  Elena’s mom shook her head, the box of golf balls and tees jiggling in her hands. “This game is going to kill someone, and all to get people to buy more skis. Trip Prince, always concerned about his bottom line.”

  “You know him?” asked Elena.

  “A little,” said her mom.

  “The game is safe, Mom,” said Elena.

  “It is not.” Her mom pointed to Craig, who had crashed smack-dab into the back of a parked car. “Look at this fool.” Mrs. Chestnut glanced over at her daughter. “I’m just glad you have the good sense not to involve yourself in this idiocy. Keep yourself far away from the Princes’ web of nonsense.”

  “Just like you taught me,” said Elena, who was currently sitting pretty in the top ten on the leader board, thanks to a deep knowledge of Stan Stashiuk and banal North Pole trivia.

  At the coffee house, Maggie Garland’s two sons worked the counter while scanning their phones for Stashes. Brian, the older one, was a
senior at North Pole High, but Danny was in Elena’s class. He was super popular, the star of the basketball team. Danny won every contest he entered and was known for being super competitive—the kind of guy who would totally trash talk a girl back. Could he be Stashiuk4Prez? This was the conversation she’d been having with herself all day, about every guy she saw at school. But Danny had been dating Star since sophomore year…

  Knitting his brow, Danny glanced up from his phone. “Can I help you?” He wiped his cheek like he was sure Elena had been staring at something on his face.

  Elena shook her head, annoyed that she’d been caught watching him. She had to stop treating every guy like he might be Stashiuk4Prez.

  Maggie, exiting the back room where she’d dropped off the golf clubs, came out and said, “Let me get you some coffee.”

  Elena gave her mom the side eye, not sure of the protocol here. Fancy, expensive espresso drinks were not within their budget. Elena knew that much.

  “On the house,” Maggie said after a moment. “Of course.”

  “Oh, oh,” said Mrs. Chestnut. “Then okay. I’ll just have a black coffee.”

  “Elena?” Maggie was smiling right at her.

  “Vanilla latte with whipped—”

  Mrs. Chestnut stepped on Elena’s foot, hard. The pain made it through her boot and deep into her toes.

  “I mean,” Elena said, hopping slightly, “black coffee.”

  “Vanilla latte it is,” Maggie said.

  A buzzing from her phone tickled Elena’s hip, and she made a move to grab it from her pocket, but then she caught sight of her mom standing right next to her. Elena’s body tensed as she watched Danny and Brian spinning around, searching for the Stash. She longed to join them.

  “This stupid game.” Maggie, making the latte behind the counter, shook her head.

  “I don’t know how they haven’t all been hit by cars,” Mrs. Chestnut said. “At least Elena has the sense to sit this one out.”