The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball (5 page)

Now I grabbed
her
shoulders.

“It means Madame M's prediction—
my very deepest dream
—is coming true!”

Just then, Eleanor's eyes popped out of her head. I turned to see what she was looking at and nearly fainted. Standing right behind me was JB Knox.

“Hey,” he smiled, and pointed at the floor. “I forgot my backpack.”

I tried to think of something—
anything
—to say, but my tongue was tied. I stared at the backpack as Eleanor reached down to get it.

“Thanks,” said JB, and he smiled again as Eleanor handed it to him, then jogged off toward the locker room.

“Bye, JB!” I finally managed to blurt.

“See ya later,” he called back, before disappearing through the door marked
BOYS
.

Eleanor crossed her arms, rolled her eyes, and shook her head.

“What did I tell you?” I said. “Glass half-full!”

6

Just as Mim had said, I, too, could not remember a year when there had been so much snow so early in the winter. Walking home that day after school, I realized it had to be Mother Nature's way of pushing me to take up skiing. Plus, running into JB—who actually promised to
see me later
—left no doubt in my mind. Every little sign so far seemed to be leading me to my dream of becoming an Outer and going to the Snow Ball with the cutest boy in all of Paris—and if Eleanor and I hadn't visited Madame M, I never would have seen my own destiny jumping out at every corner.

Like a lot of parents and older people in town, my pop grew up skiing at Sugar Mountain, before a big company bought it and turned it into a fancy resort and, according to him, made it a destination for snobby, rich people. It was true about the rich part. Like Eleanor had said, most kids in Paris couldn't afford to buy a lift ticket, let alone all the equipment and the designer ski clothes. Pop said he used to get hand-me-down skis from the neighbors and lift tickets were pretty cheap, and no one cared if you wore an old snowmobile jacket and a pair of jeans.

But I have to admit, I didn't see anything snobby about the people who skied. They couldn't help it if they were completely happy and lived life like it was a fun party where you got to dress up every day and hang around with your awesomely cool friends.

Obviously, skiing had to be in my blood, since my father was practically an expert when he was younger. And, anyway, how hard could it be? I knew I wasn't the most athletic person on the planet, but even I could stand on two skinny strips of wood or plastic, lean on two poles, and glide down a hill, with gravity doing all the work.

Eleanor
had
convinced me, however, that I should probably be on the safe side and take a lesson or two before joining the ski club. But my one big problem was finding the time and the money, on top of convincing Mim to let me ski. I guess that was more than one problem, but I was still determined to figure it out, because it was an important step in fulfilling my deepest dream and ultimate destiny of becoming an Outer and going to the Snow Ball with JB.

At the end of Maine Street, before I turned down Bon Hiver Lane toward the Petites' home to pick up the twins, I stopped and stared through the mansion fence. That place really did remind me of a castle, as if the king and queen of Paris lived there, perched at the end of the boulevard that ran from the center of town. I crammed my nose between the black iron posts and counted the windows: eighteen normal-size ones, six tall ones, and four that stuck out in a half-circle, not to mention all the round windows up and down the two towers. And that was only the front of the house.

The whole property looked abandoned again—no cars, trucks, or even a worker anywhere in sight—but then I thought to myself that maybe that boy was playing somewhere inside the mansion.

I decided to walk over and knock on the door. After all, it was just a house where a kid like me lived. So I dropped my backpack to the ground and tried to lift the giant latch, but it was locked. That's when I noticed a tiny metal door on the right stone post, so I opened it. Inside was a button, like a doorbell. I pressed it long and hard in case it didn't work too well, like our doorbell. Then I waited a few seconds for someone to walk down the driveway and let me in.

“No one's home,” came a boy's voice from inside the metal box.

It startled me, so it took me a second to reply.

“If no one's home, how come you're talking?”

Silence. Then the voice spoke again.

“It's illogical, but that's what I'm supposed to say when my parents aren't here.”

“
Hey
, wait a sec. How can you hear me if you're inside your house?”

“The technology is a basic intercom system dating back to the 1950s.”

“Cool! So, I'm Ruby LaRue—what's your name?”

Nothing came out of the box for a few seconds. Then: “Please, go away.”

Go away?
No one had ever said that to me, except for a few times when we were assigned group projects and I tried to be part
of a group with kids who didn't include anyone other than their friends, or the brainiacs who would do all the work for them.

“Well, just so you know,” I told him, “you can come over to
my
house anytime and hang out with me and my brothers and watch TV if you're lonely in there. My stepmom works at the Slope Side Café over at Sugar Mountain, so we've got every kind of Monster Chunk cookie they make.”

I waited a minute, in case he needed to think it over.

“Hello?” I called into the metal box. “Are you there?”

I sighed and picked up my backpack, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. I decided I would try again the next day, and maybe the day after that. I mean, honestly, who doesn't want a friend?

By the time I picked up the twins at Mrs. Petite's house and got them home,
The Price Is Right
had started. We plopped on the couch and ate cookie leftovers and drank soda. The boys had a burping contest, which Charlie always wins, since he's louder and grosser than Henry. That meant Charlie got to sit in Pop's recliner once again for the rest of the afternoon, which was fine with me, since I was wicked sleepy.

All I wanted to do was think about how I could reach my dream goal. But the more I thought about it, lying on the couch and munching Monster Chunks, like I did every afternoon, the more I wanted to take a nap.

A few days later, the three of us were sitting on the couch in the exact same spots, eating broken cookies and sipping soda, when
the TV screen popped without warning. So now we had absolutely nothing to do except stare at the black screen. And I wasn't one inch closer to my dream.

If anything, I'd begun to worry it would never happen.

The phone rang and I glanced over at the caller ID.

Eleanor?
Eleanor never called unless it had something to do with official school business, like a bake sale to raise money for the Math Squad. She wasn't allowed to just chat on the phone. Plus, I thought she had her cello lesson today.

“LaRue residence,” I blurted into the handset. “I saw your name, Eleanor, and couldn't help myself. Did that sound like something an Outer would say?”

“Ruby! There's no time for your delusional Outer aberrations. Amma is gone.”

“What?!” I gasped. “Your mother is
gone
gone
?
”

“YES!”

“You mean, she's
dead?
”

“No, no, no!” cried Eleanor. And then suddenly she started giggling. And giggling and giggling, more and more, until she must have dropped the phone, because I could have sworn I heard it fall on the floor.

“Eleanor?
Eleanor?
”

She was laughing really hard now, the kind of laugh that cramps your stomach and fills your eyes with tears.

“I'm coming over there, Eleanor, if you don't tell me what's going on! Are you losing your marbles? Or has someone taken you hostage and drugged you? Are you calling me from the closet?”

“
Stop!
” she shrieked, picking up the phone again and giggling hysterically one more time. “Oh, Ruby—I think Madame Magnifique may really be right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The unattainable now seems feasible! Even though I wasn't able to locate her on my way home from school.”

“Locate who?”

“Madame Magnifique,” she cried. “The alley, Apparition Way—it's deserted now, and blocked by Dumpsters. Even the street sign is gone.”

“Okay. You aren't making any sense, Eleanor. I think I should hang up and dial 911.”

“I swear, Ruby, nothing's wrong. The opposite is true! At this very moment, Thaththa is driving Amma to the airport. I got an emergency call from my parents as I was walking home from school. My mother had to leave unexpectedly for our old neighborhood in New York to take care of my great-aunt, Nenda Soma, who's in the hospital.”

“I'm so confused,” I said. “What's the good part of all this?”

Eleanor groaned like she did when she felt everything was so obvious, but no one else got it.

“My. Mother. Is. Away.
And
my cello lesson has been canceled!”

A few seconds passed in silence as I tried to figure out what in the world Eleanor was . . . and then it hit me like a six-foot icicle.

“Ohhhhhh!” I yelled into the phone. “You're completely
alone?
”

“Alone and
unsupervised,
with nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon. Well, nothing I
must
do. There's plenty I
want
to do. I don't know where to begin. I've dreamed of this moment all my life.”

That's when I heard a crash behind me. The twins were on the floor.

“Charlie!” I yelled. “Get off Henry and play nice, you two.”

“What's going on over there?” asked Eleanor. “I thought your brothers were lazy and easy to babysit. Are they fighting?”

“Not really, but the television made this popping noise and went black a few minutes ago and we're already going batty. There's nothing to do. I called Mim right after it blew, and she said we could go to the playground at the Winterberry Common if I could find a friend to help me keep an eye on these two, but it's cold and it'll be dark soon, plus the snow is deep, so I don't know who would want to go.”

Without mulling it over like she always does, Eleanor squealed, “I do!”

7

It took forever to get Charlie and Henry dressed in their snow gear, and I couldn't find their hats. They hated hats anyway, so they had probably hidden them and just weren't telling me.

By the time we finally arrived at Winterberry Common, Eleanor was waiting for us at a picnic table, bent over a pad of paper, drawing. Fingerless gloves kept at least part of her hands warm. Even though it was cold and windy, the boys hollered with excitement as they raced toward the wooden fort that was complete with tunnels and towers and slides.

“Hey, how come this table isn't buried in snow like the others?” I asked, sliding along the icy bench. I blew into my mittens to warm up my hands.

Eleanor didn't even look up from her secret sketchbook and box of colored pencils, which weren't a total secret, because I knew all about them. But she had never told her parents, particularly her mother, who expected Eleanor to spend all her free time on brainiac activities.

That's another person I didn't understand—Eleanor's mother. To be fair, I didn't actually know her; I only knew what Eleanor had told me. Besides, she was from another country, so she probably thought about the world in a very different way.

“I cleared it off so we could sit here,” she said. “I ran down here as soon as we hung up.”

I leaned over and studied her drawings. Wispy stick figures, standing at sharp angles and dressed in flowing clothes, covered the entire page. Eleanor bent her red pencil all around, scratching with the side of the pointy end, like she was adding cherry frosting.

“Those are so pretty.”

“Thanks,” she replied, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth.

“And you could make real-life clothes from these pictures?”

“Yep. Especially if I had the Deluxe Electronic Pluckarama 1080.”

“What's that?”

Eleanor sighed.

“The very best sewing and embroidery machine on the market.”

I turned around and scanned the entire park as Eleanor finished her sketches. The sun was setting behind Sugar Mountain and the winds had died down. It was still early in the ski season, so I didn't see too many Outer ants gliding down the slopes. That's what everyone in town called the teeny-tiny people skiing way off in the distance—ants—like they were crawling all over the biggest, richest anthill ever.

I immediately slipped into daydreaming like I always do, this time imagining myself as one of those Outer ants, sliding down
the snowy slope wearing a super-cute ski jacket and matching ski pants, then meeting JB and all my beautiful, fun friends at the lodge by the fireplace for hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream, and one of Mim's mouthwatering Monster Chunk cookies that wasn't a broken leftover, but a whole, fresh cookie.

Just then, Henry ran over, wiggling and blowing into his bare hands.

“My fingers are falling off!”

“Well, what did you do with your mittens?”

“Stupid Charlie took them and lost them in a crack.”

“Don't say
stupid
, Henry.”

“Well, he is. Mean
and
stupid!”

Eleanor twisted around and dug into her backpack.

“Here,” she said, handing Henry the cutest pair of yellow mittens I had ever seen, as soft as bunny fur. “They're a little big, but you can use these. They're extras.”

“Those are too fancy for him,” I said as Henry turned around and ran back to the swings.

“It's just yarn I found in a clearance bin. They were easy to knit.”