by A. Destiny
Our only option was an almost-empty corner behind the door. This corner was so tight, there was no room to store anything there except a couple of brooms and an umbrella.
I made like a broom and wedged myself into the corner, motioning for Jacob to join me. He was still sitting on the floor, still out of breath. He gaped at me, gave his head a quick shake, and mouthed, Impossible.
But then the doorknob made a quiet clickety sound. It was the sound of Mrs. Teagle placing her hand on the knob and turning.
He had no choice. Jacob scrambled to his feet and, with a single leap, landed in the corner with me.
The door opened.
I tipped my head back, sucked in my stomach, and stood on my tiptoes—anything to somehow make myself take up less space.
With no wall left to melt into, Jacob pressed back into me. Hard.
This time, I couldn’t spring away from him like a spooked cat. I could only stand there and feel his back, hard and warm, pressing against my torso. I was also aware of his taut legs covering mine. And of his forearms, grazing my hips.
Most of all, I could smell Jacob. He smelled like sun-warmed grass, with a tangy hint of sweat and a bolder dash of citrusy deodorant. He pretty much smelled better than anything I’ve ever smelled before, even fried chicken.
I closed my eyes, awash in that scent and the exquisite discomfort of him squashing me. Somewhere in that haze, I remembered to pray for it all to be over; for Mrs. Teagle to miss us and move on.
It was definitely a long shot. Even with all that willful flattening, there was only room for the door to open halfway. If Mrs. Teagle pushed it any farther, it would knock into us. We were a human doorstop.
I felt Jacob tense from head to toe. I bit my lip and held my breath.
By some miracle, the door stopped just before it connected with Jacob’s nose. He jerked his head backward, lightly bonking me on my forehead.
Click.
The dusky room suddenly filled with fluorescent light.
“Hmmm,” Mrs. Teagle murmured on the other side of the door. She paused for a long, long moment, then whispered, “Ears playing tricks on me.”
Click went the light back off.
Swoosh went the door—closed again.
Jacob took a quick step out of the corner and whirled to stare at me.
“Did we seriously just get away with that?” he whispered.
Equally dumbfounded, I grinned and nodded.
At least, I tried to nod. But I found that I couldn’t. A sudden pain on the back of my head made me yelp.
“My hair!” I whispered. “It’s stuck!”
I’d been so wedged into the corner that a hank of my hair had clearly snaked between the open door and its frame. When Mrs. Teagle had closed it, she’d inadvertently trapped me.
Jacob held a finger in the air. Wait a minute.
Stupidly, I tried to nod again, then gritted my teeth as my hair got another painful yank. Of course, Jacob was right. Only once Mrs. Teagle had left the hallway could we open the door and release me.
We waited a long beat during which even breathing seemed to pull at my scalp.
Finally Jacob reached for the knob.
But before he could turn it, Mrs. Teagle’s voice rang out from the hallway.
“What is this?”
I felt a tug on my hair. Clearly, Mrs. Teagle had spotted it tufting through the door frame.
The door swooped open, releasing me and banging into me all at once.
“Ow!” I groaned as light flooded the room once again.
“What is going on in here?”
Mrs. Teagle’s throaty voice still reminded me of a mama robin’s. But now she was a bird in a rage, flappy and cawing.
Jacob’s face went pale, and red splotches burst out on his neck.
That’s when I realized just how bad this looked. It looked bad enough to get us both kicked out of Camden. I couldn’t let that happen to Jacob. He was so excited to study with Nanny, and he’d only gotten one day with her.
“Mrs. Teagle, wait!” I cried, jumping out from behind the door. “This isn’t Jacob’s fault.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible, young lady,” Mrs. Teagle said. “He’s trespassing as much as you are.”
“But Jacob is only here for me!” I said, desperately. To prove it, I thrust my oozy hand toward Mrs. Teagle’s face. “I got burned today in blacksmithing class. I didn’t want anyone to know, so I just thought I’d sneak in here and help myself to some bandages and stuff.”
“Well, that’s the silliest thing I ever heard!” Mrs. Teagle sputtered.
“Not if you know how badly Nell wants to learn blacksmithing,” Jacob piped up. “She doesn’t want her grandma or Coach to make her quit just because she made a mistake.”
I shot him a grateful glance, but Mrs. Teagle was clearly less moved than I was by Jacob’s little speech.
“Burning yourself is a forgivable mistake,” she said. She pointed dramatically at the open door. “That is not.”
“I promise, Mrs. Teagle,” I said. “I just wanted a little Neosporin.”
Mrs. Teagle squinted at me and then at Jacob. As she looked back at me, I saw something shift and soften in her eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I see.”
Jacob and I glanced at each other. What did she see?
Mrs. Teagle actually smiled a little bit as she closed the door. Then she motioned for me to sit on the infirmary’s examining table while she bustled around, gathering medical supplies from drawers and cabinets. While Jacob hovered nervously by the wall, Mrs. Teagle grabbed my arm and started swabbing at my burn with disinfectant.
“Ooofffff!” I grunted in pain. Strangely, this seemed to make Mrs. Teagle even more cheery.
“You know, I was a nurse before I had my children,” she chirped. “Even though they’re all grown now, I still remember all my training.”
She squirted some ointment onto my burn, slapped on some gauze, and wrapped my hand in medical tape. Then, after piling more bandages and ointment packets into my arms, Mrs. Teagle shooed me and Jacob out of the infirmary like a farmwife herding her backyard chickens.
“Thanks so much, Mrs. Teagle,” I said. “I promise, nothing like this will ever happen again.”
“Absolutely,” Jacob agreed.
“Oh, I know that, sweethearts,” Mrs. Teagle said with a smile. “But we’re not finished yet. Come with me.”
Jacob and I exchanged another glance as Mrs. Teagle led us a few steps down the hallway and into the kitchen. A trio of staffers in damp white aprons were scrubbing at countertops and putting tools away with a loud clatter. Mrs. Teagle had so quickly reverted to her sweet, mama-bird self that for a delusional instant, I thought she was going to give us milk and cookies.
“I reckon you’ll need about three days for that burn to heal enough,” Mrs. Teagle said, crossing her arms over her bosom and grinning at us. “Then you can both start.”
“Start . . . what?” Jacob asked.
Mrs. Teagle pointed at the industrial-size sink, which was brimming with dirty pots and pans. Next to it was a short stack of soiled dinner plates. It was only short because tray after tray of the plates had already been sent through a loudly churning dishwasher. One of the workers was stacking the hot plates onto a cart, her face pink and sweaty from the steam.
“Betty,” Mrs. Teagle called, “I got you some little elves to help. They’ll do the after-dinner shift starting Thursday, all right? That’ll free you up to make those scones you’ve been nagging me about. They’ll be here for three days.”
As Ms. Betty grinned and gave us all a thumbs-up, Mrs. Teagle turned to me and Jacob.
“Me, I like a classic old biscuit, but Betty watched too much Food Network over the winter, and she’s gotten all fancy on us,” she said. Then, without breaking her sweet smile, she added, “I trust you’ll take this punishment over telling your Nanny or Coach what really happened?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I sai
d. “But Mrs. Teagle, you really shouldn’t punish Jacob, too. This is all my fault.”
“No, no,” Jacob jumped in to say. “I did pop the lock. I deserve this just as much.”
I raised my eyebrows at Jacob. Why wouldn’t he let me thank him—and apologize to him—by taking the fall by myself?
“And now, won’t you join me for the sing-along?” Mrs. Teagle said.
It wasn’t a question. We followed her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the great hall, a lofted room whose exposed beams and slanting ceiling bounced notes around better than any recording studio.
Before I knew it, Mrs. Teagle had thrust a weathered binder full of sheet music into my hands and ushered me into the soprano section. I sat down next to the girl I’d seen the day before, the one who was taking the canning class. She smiled at me and showed me what page to turn to in the binder. As she did, I couldn’t help but notice a bandage on her inner arm, a few inches above her wrist.
“Kitchen burn?” I whispered, pointing to her swatch of gauze. Then I held up my hand. “Mine’s from blacksmithing.”
“Awesome,” the girl said with a grin. “It’s a badge of honor, right?”
Not hardly, I thought, feeling a fresh wave of guilt wash over me. I craned my neck, searching for Jacob among the tenors.
I wanted to lock eyes with him so I could telegraph how sorry I was.
Or maybe I just wanted to get one more glimpse of his eyes’ deep, dark blue.
But Jacob was hidden in the back of the tenor section, and I couldn’t see him. My hand had also started to throb again, and I suddenly felt limp with fatigue.
The path of least resistance?
Singing.
The song was “Darling Clementine,” which of course I knew. I slipped into the soprano harmony without even thinking about it.
“Ruby lips above the water,
Blowing bubbles, soft and fine,
But, alas, I was no swimmer,
So I lost my Clementine.”
The usual doom and gloom of the song didn’t bother me that much this time. The familiarity of the tune was even a little comforting, like the same twisty stretch I did every morning of my life, no matter what bed I was sleeping in.
That, of course, was karma’s cue to make me uncomfortable.
“All right, folks,” announced the song leader, who peered at us through glasses perched at the end of his nose. “Let’s mix it up a little. You’re not a real harmonizer unless you can do it next to someone singing a different part. So go on. I want tenors with altos, sopranos with basses, altos with sopranos, whatever crazy combo you can come up with.”
Everybody laughed and murmured as they began to shuffle around the room.
I bit my lip and looked around. Over in the altos, I spotted both Nanny and Annabelle. But something made me skirt them and head over to guys’ side of the room.
Specifically, to the tenors.
The chair next to Jacob was empty, and I slipped into it. We barely had time to glance at each other before the leader called out, “Page forty-six!” and blew into a little pitch pipe to give us our starting notes.
And then we were singing.
Everybody in the room sang, of course, but it felt to me like just the two of us—me and Jacob.
His voice, like mine, wasn’t the strongest. He was on the low end of tenor, and sometimes he had to strain for the high notes. My voice was a little reedy and scratchy.
But that didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that I was too shy to meet his eyes, and that he was white-knuckling the songbook. We still hit just the right notes, our voices swirling together as easily as sugar and soft butter on their way to becoming cake.
Even I was a little excited by this. Perfect harmonizing like that doesn’t usually happen on the first try, much less in the midst of dozens of other voices.
When we hit the last stanza, I snuck a glance Jacob’s way.
He seemed to feel my gaze and looked at me. Then he lifted one corner of his mouth in a grudging smile.
I didn’t have to say sorry or thank you. I didn’t have to say anything at all. The music said those things for me, and Jacob forgave me.
Chapter Seven
By Thursday, my burn had gone from a raw, red blister to a peeling pink welt that was tender, but not unbearable.
Maybe this was because I had other aches and pains to contend with. Arm, back, and neck muscles that I’d never known I had were sore. Several strands of my hair had been singed into wiry crisps before Coach told me to lay off the hair products. And the soles of my feet were tired after standing at the anvil for hours at a time.
At least, unlike my classmate Anthony, I still had my eyebrows. I’d also developed a tiny bit of blacksmith pride. I looked like a real smith (well, a miniature version of one) in knee-length cargo shorts, a pair of old, red Doc Martens, and a ribbed tank top fitted enough to stay clear of fire or swinging hammers.
I’d learned a ton of blacksmithing basics. I now knew the difference between a ball-peen hammer and a cross-peen one. I’d learned to get a fire to that magical temperature that wouldn’t leave my iron cold and stiff, but wouldn’t turn it into a molten puddle, either.
Most of all, I’d started hammering out some iron knickknacks.
Ugly, misshapen, unusable knickknacks, but hey, it was a start.
A lot of others at the vegetarian table were in the same place as me—that giddy, messy, just-starting-to-get-something phase. At least, that was what I gathered when I slumped into the dining hall on Thursday night.
Marnie and Isabelle, two college girls who were taking quilting together, showed us the needle injuries on their fingertips.
“I swear, I lost a pint of blood!” Isabelle said proudly.
Ronnie, who was working in Camden’s organic garden and chicken coop, was telling Jacob, “I never knew compost could be so fascinating!”
As he nodded at Ronnie, Jacob put his fist beneath his chin so that his knuckles rested right beneath his nostrils. It was a polite but clear (to me, anyway) odor-blocking move.
I was sitting next to Annabelle and whispered to her, “Poor Jacob. Does Ronnie have no idea that compost might be fascinating but it’s also stinky?”
“Oh, I’m no one to talk,” Annabelle said, pushing a corkscrew out of her tired eyes. Her fingers were wrinkly after a day smushing around wet clay. A streak of the stuff was crusted near her hairline. “I probably smell like a root cellar.”
I gave her a sniff.
“A little,” I admitted. “But that’s not a bad smell. I mean, who doesn’t like a sweet potato? Speaking of which . . .”
Across the table, I made eye contact with Jacob, then smiled and motioned to the bowl of mashed potatoes near his plate.
I expected him to smile back as he passed the food my way.
Because we’d exchanged a lot of shy smiles ever since that harmonious sing-along.
There’d also been many sidelong glances.
And him saying, “How’s your burn?”
And me asking, “How was fiddle class today?”
But somehow, it felt like we were doing more than exchanging polite pleasantries.
Maybe it was because we shared secrets. We’d committed a criminal act together and been sentenced to covert kitchen duty.
Maybe there was a different kind of connection between us. An attraction.
Or maybe, I thought now as Jacob passed the bowl without a single look at me, much less a smile, I imagined it all.
I frowned as the potatoes reached me. I also realized I didn’t actually want any. I scooped out a tiny dollop, just for show. Then I turned to Annabelle to ask her if she thought Jacob was being weird.
In the next instant, I stopped myself.
Is he being weird? What’s he thinking? Should I ask—?Does he—?
Those were the kinds of questions a girl asks about a boy she’s infatuated with.
And of course, I wasn’t infatuated with Jacob.
Was I?
I shot another quick glance Jacob’s way. He looked a little pale, especially next to Ronnie, who already had the burnished skin and peeling nose of a real farmer. Jacob was shoveling in his salad and potatoes, but he did it joylessly, like he barely tasted his food. Even his hair was a little saggy and dull.
Yet somehow, all this moroseness made him look cuter than ever.
I decided I would ask Annabelle what she thought. But before I could say anything, she was whispering to me.
“So you say I smell like a sweet potato,” she said. “Do you think maybe Owen likes sweet potatoes?” I was so absorbed in Jacob hypotheticals that it took me a moment to figure out who she was talking about.
“Owen?” I asked. “Oh, Owen!”
I craned my neck to see if I could spot him. There he was. Talking and laughing and gesturing with a forkful of delicious-looking meat loaf. “What I think he likes about what?”
“Do you think he likes sweet potatoes?”
I looked at Annabelle in confusion.
“Does he like . . . ,” I began. Then I started to laugh. “Annabelle, I think the question you really want to ask is, does he like you?”
Annabelle shrugged and looked sheepish.
Feeling kind of happy to have a diversion from my Jacob confusion, I peered over at Owen again.
“Why don’t you just . . . ask him?” I said. “Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing you said you’d do at Camden? Just going for the guy is a great example of sucking the marrow out of life, isn’t it? And you’ll be rejecting traditional gender roles. Bonus!”
Annabelle blinked at me.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re absolutely right.”
“So . . .”
I nodded in Owen’s direction.
“So,” Annabelle sputtered, “that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”
I stared at her for a flabbergasted moment before I started laughing.
“Stop!” Annabelle ordered me. But her lips were twitching as she said it, and before I knew it, she was cackling along with me.
“What’s so funny, you guys?” asked Sadie. Our eleven-year-old tablemate was sitting next to me on the other side. Today she wore a crisply ironed sleeveless shirt and a red-and-white-checked miniskirt. She looked more like a cute 1950s housewife than a middle schooler.
