Bittersweet (11 page)

“Saw Blackthorn earlier,” Will says, running a hand through his wavy, dark blond hair. “I didn’t know you were training again. I thought you quit after—”

“I’m not training again.”

Will raises his eyebrows. “Does that mean my co-captain’s full of—”

“No. I mean, sometimes I hit the ice for fun. Exercise. It’s nothing.”

“Not according to Josh. He said you, uh … kick ass. More or less.” Will smiles again, leaning in a little closer.
Mmmm
. He smells …
expensive
. The delicious kind of expensive that erases your mind right while you’re standing there, which is why the cologne ads always show a pack of jar-eyed girls draped all over the chesty, good-smelling guy as if they forgot their own names the second
he
showed up.

“Well, Josh said … I …”

“He asked me about getting you ice time at Baylor’s,” Good Will Smelling says. “And I think I can swing it, but on one condition.” He grins at me like he did that night in the closet, right before he moved in for the kill.

I swallow hard. “Condition?”

“More like a proposition. For the Wolves.” Will lowers his voice. “Hear me out. I know my boys are strong. A little unmotivated at the moment, but talented. Thing is, we’re not good with technique, edgework, stuff like that. And our coach is useless—he doesn’t even call practices. Spends most of his time with the football team. Unlike us, those guys win championships.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“You need rink time. I need a special techniques coach. I get you the ice … and you teach the boys how to skate.”

My legs go all wobbly again. Convincing myself to skate with Josh was hard enough. Training an entire pack of notorious thugs who haven’t won a single game for as long as I’ve been at this school? A bunch of puck-slapping meatheads who’d probably rather skate naked at Fillmore during a lake-effect snowstorm than learn a single lesson from a girl?

Has this boy been sniffing too much of his own cologne?

I lean back against the lockers, arms strategically folded over my stained sweater. “I don’t know anything about hockey. And I’m already behind on school stuff, and I’m about to pick up a few more shifts at work, and—”

“Where do you—oh, right. The cupcakes. Man, my mom loves those things. I don’t know how you do it. I could never work for my parents—they’d take over my life.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not my
dream
or anything. I have my own life.” I don’t elaborate. I don’t care how amazing he smells. No
way I’m getting all self-disclosey with a guy I’ve only spent about nine minutes of my life with, and that’s
including
the seven in the closet way back when.

“Good,” he says, his hand landing uninvited on my shoulder. “Because I’m serious about this. We need each other, Hud. Admit it.”

I meet his gaze, ready for a fight, but there’s an unexpected softness there—a bit of playful humor behind all the cocky attitude that takes me off guard. No wonder Kara fell so hard for him. I’m beginning to feel a bit drugged by the whole thing myself.

“Just think about it, okay?” he says quietly. “I called a practice after school this Friday. Text me if you want to check it out.” He grabs one of my notebooks and the pen from behind my ear—the nerve!—and scribbles down his info. I scan the hall for those video cameras again, but my eyes instead find Dani, already sitting at her desk in the classroom. She raises her eyebrows and points to her wrist.

“So you’ll text me?” Will hands over my stuff and leans in close, his breath tickling my neck. “Or do I have to work on you? I can be pretty convincing, you know.”

“I have to go, Will.” I duck into class just as the bell rings and slide into the spot next to Dani, my skin rippling with goose bumps.

“What. The hell. Was
that
?” she asks.

I shrug, shaking off the eau de Harper. “Josh asked him about the Baylor’s thing. Not gonna happen.”

“He said that? And what’s with all the touching and, like,
smoldering
looks?”

I laugh. “Smoldering? You still reading that pirate romance?”

“No. I mean yeah. But whatever—I’m serious! The boy kisses you once, and that gives him perpetual license to put his hands on you? After basically ignoring you for three years? I don’t
think
so.”

“It’s not like that,” I whisper as Madame Fromme shoots us
le mauvais œil—
the evil eye. “He wants me to—”

“Commencez, s’il vous plaît, Mademoiselle Avery.”
Madame beckons me to the front of the class to set up for my presentation. Of course she wants me to go first—she’s probably been eye-fondling those cupcakes ever since I dropped off the box this morning.

“
Commencez
handing out the goodies, Cupcake Queen,” someone says as I finish arranging the Carousels on the presentation table. I turn around quickly, but I can’t tell who said it, and the room goes quiet again. Outside, a tree branch scrapes the window, craggy fingers tapping the glass as Madame Fromme clears her throat, urging me to begin.
Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

“
Bonjour
. Um …
je m’appelle
Hudson Avery. I am—I mean,
Je suis,
um …” I lean on the table to steady myself, hands leaving damp prints that fade as I fidget. My fingernails are orange like my shirt. It looks like dried blood.

Frosting stains are usually just another part of the gig. An occupational hazard. A badge.
Yeah, I’m the Cupcake Queen, I
hand-tint my icing, and I’ve got the ruined clothing to prove it
. But now, when I look at the color under my nails and the cupcakes lined up neatly on the table, I see my father’s suitcases, stacked by the door. The moving trucks that came later to collect the rest of his things, all of us redeposited into separate lives. My walk of shame from the ice rink and all those months I spent hiding out at Hurley’s behind an apron and a mixer. I see my mother, too, rushing from the grill to the dining room and back to the office, where each night she counts the till, twice to be sure.

If I don’t buck up and do something different, someday that will be me.

“Je ne suis pas mon travail.”
I am not my job. I mumble it in perfect French, just loud enough for no one to hear. Madame Fromme removes her glasses and squints, and in my parallel life, I say it again. In my parallel life, I climb on the table and stomp on all those cupcakes, lions and tigers and bears crushed under my boot as I scream for the class, for the school, for the entire town of Watonka and anyone who’s ever wondered what lies beyond that old smokestack horizon.
Je ne suis pas mon travail! Je ne suis pas mon travail!
I am not Hurley’s Homestyle Diner! I’m not a waitress! I’m not the Cupcake Queen! I’m just
me
, alive and whole and happy when I’m skating. When my eyes are closed and my feet glide across the ice. Out there, I forget about my father road-tripping through the desert. I forget about the lines in my mother’s face and her chapped hands, red-raw with burns from the grill and too much time at the sink. I forget about the stains on my clothes and under my nails.
When I’m skating, I’m somewhere else. Somewhere better.

But I don’t know how to speak the language of impossible dreams
en français
, so I swallow it back, blinking rapidly as if it’s just the Lake Erie wind in my eyes.

Tap tap tap.
Out beyond the window, past the branches to the barren soccer field, snow dances across the expanse and I want to bolt, straight back to the lake with my skates. But like the old saying goes: It takes forty-two muscles to frown, and only twelve to jam a cupcake in your mouth and get over it. So I smile and begin again, distributing my sugar-sweet merry-go-round confections to the class.

“Je m’appelle Hudson Avery. Je travaille chez Hurley’s Homestyle Diner. Oui, je suis la boulangêre des petits gâteaux.”

My name is Hudson Avery. I work at Hurley’s. Yes, I am the baker of the cupcakes.

But not for long.

“Those cupcakes rock,” Trina Dawes tells me after today’s presentations are done. “Are you doing anything January tenth? I’m having a birthday bash. A hundred people at least.”

“Can’t make it.” Wrong date? Wrong address? No way I’m falling for that joke.

“Make it? Oh, no! That’s not what I meant.” She giggles, her cheeks turning red. “I was asking about ordering cupcakes … I mean … you could totally come if you want to, though. Do you?” She looks up at me and tilts her head, freshly glossed mouth turning into an awkward frown.

“Wait, you thought … that I thought … you were inviting me to your party?” I pack up the few remaining Carousels, hoping my face isn’t the same color as the frosting.

She swipes another cupcake from the box. “I mean, you
could
—”

“I have a thing that night. An art show. With my brother. He’s, um, exhibiting his … Civil War sculpture. Thing. So I’m busy.”

“Can you still make the cupcakes?”

“Not a problem.” Where are those horribly intrusive fire drills when you need them?

Trina smiles again, her face rearranging itself to happy and casual. “Should I, like, give you my order now? Or do I have to call Harley’s?”

“It’s Hurley’s,” I say with a sigh. “But you can give it to me now.”

“You kicked some serious
derrière
in there,
ami
,” Dani says after class. “Don’t sweat Trina’s party, okay? Those girls are like a living issue of
Cosmo
.”

“Easy for you to say. The whole junior class doesn’t look down on you.”

“Please.” She empties her backpack into her locker, packing away the Nikon equipment she used in her presentation. “People just don’t know you, okay? It’s not the same thing.”

“They know me all right. Cupcake Queen of Watonka, remember? A real celeb.”

Dani drops her books into her backpack and tugs hard on the zipper. “There are what—three thousand people up in this joint?”

“So?”

“So why do you assume everyone around here is so tight? You act like Watonka High is this big bowl of awesome and you’re the only one who didn’t get a spoon. Guess what, girl? It’s high school.
Everyone
hates it.”

“Not you. You’re always talking to people, smiling, whatever. You have friends here.”

“So do you—you just keep forgetting it.”

“Dani, I didn’t mean—”

“Gotta go. I’ll catch you at work tonight.” She slams her locker, but not that hard, and I let her leave. We never stay mad at each other for more than a few minutes, anyway. I just wish I could be more like her, letting all the bad stuff roll off. Not caring so much what everyone thinks. Full of those confident, front-of-the-house smiles, all the way.

Maybe Dani’s right—maybe they don’t look down on me. Not exactly. For the most part, they don’t even notice me. I spent those all-important clique-forming years on the ice with Kara. While the normal Watonka kids were having playdates and movie nights and sleepovers, we were practicing our lutzes and spins, learning to balance competitive drive with sportsmanship and ladylike grace. By the time I got to high school, I’d lost my skating friends, Kara got swept up in the current of Will’s popularity, and fate had sorted everyone else into groups
like change in the till. Other than Dani, I was alone; the rest of the nickels and dimes and quarters had moved on—not against me, just without.

Now when they see me in the halls, they remember only one thing: Cupcake Queen of Watonka. That stupid newspaper picture, me cradling a mixing bowl in my arms like a baby. Well extra, extra! Read all about it, Watonka! I used to be good at something else, too. Something that had nothing to do with taking orders from Trina Dawes or following in my mother’s dream-sucking, Hurley Girl footsteps. Something with a real future. Something I finally have another shot at.

All I have to do is reach out and take it. It’s that simple.

I stash the extra French cupcakes in my locker, flip open my notebook, and turn on my phone. Orange-stained fingertips quick over the buttons, I punch in Will’s number, take a deep breath, and send my answer up to outer space.

Chilled vanilla cupcakes cored and filled with whipped vanilla buttercream and dark chocolate shavings, topped with vanilla icing and a sugared cucumber slice

Blue-and-silver jersey number seventy-seven, harper, skates back and forth
in front of his eighteen teammates. From my spot in the player’s box, I check the roster and count the boys three times to be sure, looking them each in the eye as I do. It’s a thing I learned from that show where the guy gets dropped in the jungle with nothing but a pillowcase, a pack of gum, and a tampon applicator: Make eye contact with wild animals to claim your territory and avoid a beatdown.