The Cupid Chronicles (20 page)

In an hour the pain is worse. Stella insists we see a doctor.

The film shows a fracture.
No.
They strap on an ugly blue boot.

“Keep that leg elevated tonight,” the cruel, cruel doctor says.

“But the dance is tonight,” I say, first in a somewhat calm voice, and then more hysterically as it becomes clear that Stella will abide by the doctor's orders.

“Willa,” she says, “I'm so sorry, sweetheart, but we can't be reckless here. The bone needs to heal….”

This can't be happening. Shakespeare couldn't have written a more tragic tragedy.

And so here I sit, in my room, all alone, miserable on Valentine's night. Stella and Sam brought me a nice dinner and offered to stay, but it is Valentine's Day, after all, and so I insisted that they keep their date plans. It's bad enough I have to miss the Dream. Who wants to spend Valentine's Day with your parents?

And, in case you haven't figured it out, Suzy-Jube's “talent” is yodeling.

Seriously. And, believe me, if you heard that laboring-moo-cow-sound breaking the sweet silence of morning at the inn, you'd probably injure yourself somehow, too.

Suzanna feels horrible about my accident. So do the Blazers.

They knock on my door before leaving for the dance.

“Come in,” I say, peering out from my pity-party cave of covers.

Suzanna looks like a movie star. No, like a princess. No, like a movie-star-princess. Move over Sister Cinderella. Suzy-Jube will be the belle of this ball. I think about my beautiful cotton-candy dress and my sparkly shoes and I fight back the tears.

Mama B's wearing a virtual rainbow of boas … red, orange, yellow, green. Papa B is dashing in a white tux with a rainbow top hat, bow tie, and cummerbund.

“We were going to surprise you with this at the dance,” Mama B says. She walks toward me, feathers flying. “Hopefully, this will lift your spirits a bit, honey. Go ahead, Papa B, give it to her.”

Papa B hands me an envelope.

It's a thank-you card. Inside there's a picture of what looks like my Bramble Board, except that the mansion behind it is clearly not the Bramblebriar Inn.

“That's our California house,” Papa B explains.

“Read what it says on the board,” Mama B says.

I hold the picture closer. “It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.” That was the
message I had on the Bramble Board the day the Blazers first visited.

“You don't know how those words changed our lives,” Mama B says. “Ever since we read your board last October, Willa honey, and ever since you told us about community rent at Thanksgiving, we've been spending money left and right.”

“Well, we always spend money left and right,” Papa B says with a laugh, “but now we're spending it left to build houses for people and right to help kids go to college. And, we've never felt so good being such big spenders.”

“That's wonderful,” I say. My eyes fill with tears. I guess Stella was right about the friend-raising. You never know how the good will spread.

“You're a big spender, too, Willa,” Mama B says. “You spend that great big heart of yours.”

Suzanna honks in a tissue and yodels a “yippee-yay-hoo for Willa.”

“You better go or you'll be late,” I say, wiping my nose, laughing.

“Absolutely-hootly,” Papa B says. “Right after you open one more thing. Go ahead, Mama B, give Willa the present.”

It's a check made out to the Save the Bramble
Library Fund, “with thanks to our friend, Willa Havisham.”

It's enough money to save my library and probably two or three others, too.

CHAPTER 32
 
Compatibly Cupid
 

When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that …

—Shakespeare,
The Winter's Tale

I'm imagining the Midwinter Night's Dream in my mind when there's a tap on my windowpane. A branch in the wind. Then another tap, louder. Then someone calling my name. I hobble to the window to see.

JFK is standing on the lawn in a tuxedo. I unlatch the window and slide it up.

“Willa,” he shouts. “Come down. And bring your coat.”

“I can't.” I laugh. “I fractured my foot.”

“I've done that before,” JFK says. “It's in a cast or something, right? Just go easy on the stairs. I'll meet you at the door.”

I close the window. My heart is pounding.
Breathe, Willa, breathe.

I look in the mirror. Willa, straight. Willa, curly. I let my curly side rule.

I put on my cotton-candy pink dress and reach for my new cherry lipstick. Right foot, blue boot. Left foot, bunny slipper. So much for the glittery heels.

My heart is racing as I walk down the stairs, slowly, so I won't fall. When I reach the landing I take a deep breath. I wink at the girl in the hallway mirror.

The first thing I notice when I open the door is that JFK is wearing a red boutonniere. The same color as Ruby's gown.

“You look pretty.” he says, “really pretty.” He brushes a curl from my cheek.

The second thing I notice is that there's a light coming from the barn.

“Lean on me,” JFK says, holding out his arm.

I forgot my coat. He gives me his jacket. He leads us toward the barn.

JFK has a flashlight, but the moon is so bright we don't need it. When I stumble, he picks me up in his arms. “You're so light,” he says with a laugh.

He's wearing cologne. I'm going to faint. “Your hair smells good,” he says.

When we reach the barn, he sets me down and opens up the door.

There's a fire glowing in the old silver tub we bobbed for apples in on Halloween. “Boy Scouts was good for something,” JFK says and laughs.

“How was the dance?” I ask.

“Sort of lame, I guess, but your friend Suzanna was a hit.”

“Who won the date with—”

“Here,” JFK says, reaching in his pocket. “This is for you.”

A little pink box of conversation hearts. There's Cupid on the front.

“Thanks,” I say, disappointed, wishing it was something else.

“It's a belated birthday present,” JFK says. “Go ahead. Open it.”

There's another box inside the candy. It says Wickstrom's on it.

My hands are shaking,
oh, please let it be.

Yes.
The locket with the tiny gold bow He must have asked Mr. Wickstrom which one I liked,
how sweet.

“It's beautiful,” I say, my heart pounding like storm waves against the jetty.

I'm afraid to open the heart, but I do.

There are no pictures inside.

I feel sad. I guess I hoped … I guess he didn't want to …

“The
girl
decides who to put in it,” JFK says, smiling with those gorgeous blue eyes. “But … I hope you decide it's me.”

“Oh, it's you,” I say, hugging him. I'm laughing and crying, too.

“It's funny,” JFK says, “but guess who my match was for that compatible couple thing?”

Me,
I'm hoping,
me.
“I don't know, who?”

“You.”

“Really?” So Tina was right after all.

“Well, actually,” JFK says, “it was you and another girl, too.”

What other girl?

“But the eleventh question broke the tie,” JFK says. “Do you remember what you wrote?”

“Of course. I said I have so many favorite books, that I couldn't pick just one.”

JFK laughs. “Well, I guess we've got that in common and at least ten other things, too. Oh, and Tina said to tell you she ‘told you so'—and that you and I are ‘compatibly perfect'.”

“Make that
compatibly cupid,”
I say.

“What—”
JFK starts to ask, but before he can finish, I kiss him.

“You taste like cherries,” he says.

“You taste like peppermint.”

He fastens the locket around my neck. “Now, how about a dance?”

And so we dance, careful of my foot, on this mid-winter's night in the barn. And it isn't a dream and I'm certain I hear “Stairway to Heaven” playing. And as we dance, the fire crackling beside us, I see something flitter up in the rafters.

Nice work, baby, nice work.

THE END

(Or, as Will would say …

“All's well that end's well.”

Recommended by Willa Havisham (see
The Wedding Planner's Daughter
for the original Willa's Pix)

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote

The Complete Works of Shakespeare

A Day No Pigs Would Die, Robert Newton Peck

The Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

The Giver, Lois Lowry

The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton

Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare

 
Acknowledgments