Time—if only I had some.
At that moment, Leo, the crêpe chef, came around the corner with a plate of his new specialty: a crêpe smothered with strawberries and whipped cream. “It’s filled with hazelnut chocolate. On the house!” Leo proclaimed, beaming at Robin.
“Thanks, Leo!” Robin told him.
A party on a plate was what it looked like. I thanked him, too, and he went back to his machine.
“If you were me,” I tried again, “how would you get someone to notice you?”
“Jeez, Jade. You’re full of interesting questions today.” She put her fork down, chewed at her food thoughtfully, touched my arm and looked into my eyes. “See what I’m doing right now?” she asked.
She pointed to her own eyes. “Eye contact. Touching.” She squeezed my arm. “Inviting, big smile.” She pointed to her mouth. “Too many girls play hard to get. Guys hate rejection. And they don’t understand games that don’t involve pucks or balls.” She picked up her fork again. “If you can take the first step and let the guy know you like him,” she pointed her fork at me, “he’ll pay attention.”
That seemed so simple. But it worked for her. She smiled and scrunched her eyes closed in the chef’s direction. “Delicious, Leo. It’s going to be a big hit.”
Now for the really tough question. “Robin, how do you kiss a guy?”
“Come on, Jade.” She had another few forkfuls of strawberries. “You know how. You’ve been practising on your family since you were a baby. Two lips together, pucker, smack.” She started in the crêpe.
I shook my head. “Not that kind.” I dug my fork through the cream, crêpe and chocolate trying to spear a strawberry.
“You mean French kissing.”
“Yeah.” I felt my face get warm. The strawberry fell off my fork as I brought it to my mouth.
She sighed. “But you just asked me how to get a guy’s attention. If you’re at that stage you’re not ready for French kissing.”
“What do you mean?” Mmm, I focused on Leo’s specialty for a second, it tasted delicious.
“You need to be comfortable with a person. You can’t just catch his eye and immediately launch into tonsil hockey.”
“I don’t have a lot of time,” I tried to explain, but of course I couldn’t, not completely and truthfully. I nibbled at the strawberry. “I’m going into high school next week and I feel like I’m all behind.”
“Who says? Everybody has their own schedule, Jade. Do you really want somebody else’s tongue in your mouth?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Maybe not.”
“So once you know someone well and you really like him—or her, cause that’s always possible too—you’ll relax when you kiss, and maybe you will feel like it.”
“But then I won’t know how.”
“You’ll learn together. It’s not like driving—you can’t really hurt yourself.”
Her answers would have been fine under normal circumstances. But the only thing I understood from our chat was that I desperately needed to practise somehow.
Chapter 15
DYING TO GET KISSED
“How about we get you doing something a little less manual?” Robin said when we returned to the office.
“Yes, please.”
“Good. I need a fresh pair of eyes.” She switched on my computer and opened up some files. “You’ll find the client’s text on this screen. On that one, you’ll see the flyer pour,” she pointed to the one on my left.
“Okay.”
“Mark any errors. And then tell me when you’re finished.”
“Sure. Thanks.” My phone vibrated again.
When r u done? Scratch had texted.
5:30, I answered.
C U then?
OK At ur house.
I went back to studying the screen.
The flyer I read through was for Baby Barn, an indoor playground. It sounded like fun and I wished I could have gone when I was little. I tried to read it slowly. Everything looked good. Colours. Capitals, periods, all there.
“Did you read it backwards?” Robin asked when I told her it was perfect.
“No.”
“Try it that way, sentence by sentence,” she suggested. When I looked at the text from the end to the beginning, it made no sense but one word jumped out at me: playmites. I read the line forwards again. Your children and their playmites will enjoy the climbers and balls. Sounded like the kids had bugs. I checked the computer text but it read the same. I stared at the photo of all the smiling children having fun on the playground equipment and sighed.
“Playmates, not mites!” I said out loud, marking it immediately.
“Excellent!” said Robin. “The client’s going to love us for finding that before we printed them all.”
The rest of the afternoon I read text forward and backward and found one page-number error. By five o’clock, I was rubbing my eyes.
“You have to train yourself to blink more,” Robin told me.
“Uh huh. When do you think Dad’s coming back?”
Robin shrugged her shoulders. “If he’s out with the Hot Air clients, he loses all track of time. Why don’t you give him a call? Remind him that you still exist.”
She was only sort of kidding—he could have forgotten about me and gone straight home. I rang him.
“Jade, sorry. It’s late, isn’t it? I’ll wrap things up quickly and come and get you.”
“Dad, if you want to stay longer or come back and work, that’s fine with me. I’m going over to Scratch’s house.”
“Really? Well then maybe Robin can drop you off.”
“Yes, but Dad, tomorrow night, remember you have to come to the school barbecue with me, okay?”
“Got it. I promise.”
We hung up. “Can you drive me home?” I asked Robin.
“Sure, let me just power down.” Robin began saving work and shutting folders on her computer.
I said goodbye to the guys and Robin and I headed off. “Actually, could you drive to Greenbank Trail instead? I want to hang out with a friend.”
“That’s off Cavendish, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
She drove for a while silently. “It was really nice seeing you again, Jade. You’ll remember what I told you about boys.”
“Yeah, thanks. Could you stop over there, please?”
She pulled in behind Mrs. Chalms’ Volvo. At that moment Scratch came out of the door with both our skateboards.
“Is he the one? He’s kind of cute,” Robin said.
“Scratch?” I suddenly realized that he could be the perfect person to practise kissing on. After all, I felt comfortable with him and we’d been friends forever. “Yes, he is the one. Thanks again, Robin. For everything.”
“No problem, Kiddo. I’ll push your Dad out the door tomorrow don’t worry. I know high school’s a really big deal for you.”
I waved goodbye as I walked up the driveway.
“Hey, Jade.” Scratch handed me my skateboard. “You left this here the other day. Want to get in a little practise?”
I felt my face get hot. “You mean skateboarding?” Idiot, what else could he mean?
“Yeah, we can sneak out quick before Mom notices.”
“You promise not to grind? I can’t watch you kill yourself again.”
“Fine. No grinding. ”
“Bring our helmets, too.” For all the good mine would do me. But you could never tell. Things were happening differently than they had last week. I didn’t want to alter the greater destiny and end up dying today.
I buckled mine on and we skated over to the school’s blacktop where I tried an ollie again. If I did it low enough, it wasn’t scary at all, and as I landed I bent my knees so I was really close to the ground.
Scratch wasn’t satisfied just coaching me, of course. Nor did he perform low ollies. Instead, he found objects to jump over. A pop can, a rock, a concrete parking block. He fell on that jump, tucking into a roll around his a
rm.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “You didn’t crack the cast, did you?”
“Nah.” he answered as he checked his broken arm over.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Good. Um, Scratch, can I have supper with you guys tonight? Dad’s working late.”
“Sure. Mom’s still into making me all my favourite food. Like that will make the owie go away.” He rolled his eyes.
“Can you get her to make her fettucine alfredo?”
“Done.”
We jumped on our boards and headed back up the hill to Greenbank Trail.
Mrs. Chalms served up the creamiest alfredo with a great green salad.
“Wow. Whenever I come over here I get a complete meal,” I said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“At our house the sauce usually counts as the vegetable. We don’t usually make a salad, too. I wish my father had remarried.” Was that too obvious? Well, I didn’t have time to be subtle.
“Not all women cook, you know,” she said.
“Well, I wish he had remarried someone like you then. We’re going to the teacher and student barbecue tomorrow. Are you?”
“Yes. I want to make certain the teachers know they can contact me any time if Scratch gets in trouble with his school work.”
“Dad wants to stay involved with my life, too,” I told her. I’m sure he did or would if he had time to think about it. Or if he knew I was going to die on Monday. “This was delicious, thank you.”
Scratch stood up to leave so I took my plate and put it in the sink.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked.
“Anything but skateboarding.” I frowned for a minute. I turned back to his mom. “Could you help me make fudge?” I asked.
“You’re still hungry?”
“No, no. I just want to know how. No one has ever shown me and every time I try, I mess it up.”
“Sure, honey. I’ve got a great recipe here somewhere.”
Scratch shook his head but hung around while his mother guided me through the measuring and stirring.
“I think I used the wrong milk last time,” I told her as the brown sweet liquid bubbled up and popped.
“For this recipe it has to be evaporated, the canned kind,” she explained. She took a thermometer from the drawer. “This takes all the guesswork out.” She stuck the tip in the liquid and I saw the red of the thermometer reach up to the soft ball mark. “Now you can pour it into the pan. Careful! Use the potholders.”
I did and from the moment the thick sweet syrup hit the buttered pan, I could tell that this batch would work. I smiled. Learning how to make fudge wasn’t quite the same as getting my degree in medicine, but it still felt good.
“You’re going to have to take this home. I can’t eat fudge,” she told me.
“But I can,” Scratch said as he scraped at the pot with a spoon.
When everything was put away, I knew that I still didn’t want to go home to an empty house and a cat. Mrs. Chalms sat down in the family room attached to the kitchen and flipped through a magazine.
Should I watch another sunset? I couldn’t miss it, really. There were only four left and watching it go down with Scratch would be a different experience. “Can we go hiking up on Kerns trail?” I asked him. “Would your mother drive us?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Mom,” he called.
She looked up from her magazine.
“Would you mind taking us hiking?”
“I’d like to watch the sunset from the Kerns trail,” I told her.
“Sure. That sounds lovely. I’ll get my walking shoes.”
Oh. Ohhh! She thought she was coming along with us.
Scratch gave his mother a look. “We just wanted the lift up there.”
“Yes, but then you’ll need a ride back. Did you expect me to drive up there, then hang around like a cab driver waiting for you.”
I jumped in before it could turn into an argument. “No, no. You should come. It will be fun.” I had pictured practising, maybe even perfecting, my kissing technique. In one way his mother coming was almost a relief. It totally took the pressure off.
She packed her camera and we all headed off.
The road curled up around the hill to the top. Often people walked their dogs along the pass but tonight the parking lot to the side was almost empty. The cricket orchestra played as we walked, a million pairs of wings rubbing together. The grasshoppers leapt higher than the long golden grasses and purple wildflowers. Mrs. Chalms snapped pictures as we went.
“Shh!” she suddenly said and pointed up ahead.
Deer! Four of them, honey-coloured with a splash of white behind their tails and ears, stood together silently nibbling at the bushes.
I smiled as I watched. One lifted her head and seemed to look directly at us, as curious as we were about her, perhaps. Then another. A branch snapped under Scratch’s foot.
The leader’s tail flashed up as she bounded away. The others leapt after her.
“I think I got a good shot of that,” Mrs. Chalms said. Her voice sounded excited and happy, something I’d never heard in it before. Scolding, worried, pleading, wheedling—excited and happy was a great change. “This hike was a wonderful idea, Jade.”
And then we climbed to a spot near the top of the hill and sat down on a large, flat boulder. We could see the lake to the east of us and more hills and fields to the west. The edges of the trees, rocks and barns in the distance became outlined in white gold.
“I wish my father could be here.” For a moment I didn’t realize I had said that thought out loud. “You’re lucky, Scratch.”
“Hey, my father’s not here either,” he reminded me.
Behind her camera, Mrs. Chalms frowned.
“I take it back,” I said smiling as the whole world lay before us all lit up with the last brightest rays of sunlight. “This is as good as it gets.”
Chapter 16
KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE
“It’s nice having company for breakfast. Awfully early for you to be up though,” Dad said on Thursday morning from his seat at the counter.
“I’m making every moment count,” I told him, finishing up the last dregs of my cereal. A safe enough thing to say.
He smiled at me over his cup of coffee. “High school is not the end of all freedom. You will have a life after you start school.”
“Uh huh.”
“Did you enjoy your day at the office yesterday?” Dad asked.
“Yeah. Robin’s great.” I rinsed my bowl and put it in the dishwasher. I hadn’t always been this tidy—dying had cleaned me right up. Dad worked hard enough. I couldn’t imagine how he had done it all when I was little.
“You did good work.” He pulled out his wallet, peeled three twenties off, and put them on the counter. “Here’s what I pay your brother.”
“You don’t have to…” I stopped myself. It wouldn’t be normal for me not to take the money. I mean what teenager would turn down an extra sixty bucks? I tucked the bills in my pocket. “I mean, thanks. You got in late.”
“Yes. But it was worth it. That service I told you about, the perk from the client? It’s all planned out for Friday. Save the day.”
Fishing. Yippee. I should have been honest about those anchovies. Still if the three of us did it together, I would force myself to have a good time. I picked up his glass of orange juice and chugalugged.
“Hey, get your own.” He grabbed his near-empty glass. “Bring Hailey if you like.”
I opened the fridge and fished for the juice carton. “She’s still at her cottage.”
“Right. So bring Scratch then.” Dad studied his phone for a moment.
“Good idea. What about his mom? If she’s not working, I mean. You know she’s been single a while now and I think she likes adventure. She loves taking pictures anyway.” I filled Dad’s glass again.
He downed his juice immediately this time. “Well, if she
likes photography, she’ll get some good shots on this trip. Ask her along if you like.”
“You can tonight,” I said. “Remember? The barbecue at M.M. Robinson. We’re supposed to be there at seven.”
“I’ll be home at six. Make sure you’re ready.” He got off his stool and put his dish and cup in the dishwasher. “Don’t wear your holiest jeans.”
“Don’t wear black!” I returned. “It’s still summer.”
“Jade, I have to choose colours all day long. I don’t want to agonize over my clothes.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll choose for you. Do you have clothes in any other colour?”
“Check my closet.” He smiled and kissed my forehead. “Have a good day.”
“You, too.” I threw my arms around him and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”
“Wow,” he said softly. “I’m liking this new grown-up you. I love you, too, Jade.”
He headed out the room. Good thing or I might have had to explain the sudden tears in my eyes.
Oreo pawed at the window. Not paying much attention, I turned and slid it open. As he stepped over, I noticed he was dragging something, something that was blue and still flapping.
“Drop it, Oreo!”
He gave me a look over his shoulder and sped up toward the family room instead. I ran after him. He ducked under the couch and began plucking out feathers with his teeth.
“Stop that!” I yelled.
The noise woke Devon and he stumbled out of his room, rubbing his eyes.
“Help me! Oreo’s got a bird.”
Devon rushed over to the couch as I snatched at Oreo hoping to grab some part of him. Instead I felt the wild fluttering wings against my wrist as Oreo pulled away. He bounded into the hall with Devon on his heels and me in the rear. Down the stairs, over the couch, under a coffee table.
Devon blocked one side and I kneeled down, blocking the other.
Oreo stared at me, the bird between us. By this time, the blue jay no longer flapped.
“You bad, bad cat!”
Oreo’s tail swished. He made no further attempt to run.
“Don’t come down too hard on him, Jade. It’s what cats do.”
I looked up. Something about the way Devon said that reminded me of Mom. The patient tone, maybe. Sooner or later everyone dies, Jade.
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