Soon after, she dismissed the closet scene and asked Will out, just like she told me she would that night at the diner. They got together, and I buried my shame in a bowl of cupcake batter. The Hurley’s kitchen was a safe place to be; I was finally good at something else. I could forget about Will and Kara. I could erase Lola Capriani and the private lessons Mom could no longer afford and all of the promises that died when my father left, and I could focus instead on making people fat and happy.
I’ve been doing it ever since.
While Trick works on my order, I take five at the counter with my Scarlet Letter homework, a mug of hot chocolate, and one of our best sellers—caramel apple granola cupcakes, a.k.a. Tree Huggers. Two seats over, Earl counts out a stack of dimes from one of those paper rolls you get at the bank, pulls his cardigan tight over his shoulders, and winks at me, hair and eyes and face as gray as the sky. “See ya next time, Dolly Madison.”
I walk him to the front door and watch him leave, his footprints making uneven holes in the snow-covered parking lot. Behind his little blue sedan, the I-190 overpass glitters with red and white orbs in the distance, the lights of a thousand cars zooming along to some other destination, Watonka no more than an exit with FOOD-GAS-HOSPITAL, just like the sign says. A crumbling smokestack horizon wedged between the city of Buffalo and its southern suburbs. Exurban, we’re called. Ex. Former. No longer.
Dani joins me at the door, nudging my shoulder with hers. “You’re a million miles away over here.”
I shrug and press my forehead against the glass. Outside, Earl flicks on his wipers and coaxes the car out of the lot. With my fingertip I draw an X in the frost on the glass over the spot where he used to be. Ex. Former. No longer.
Dani follows my gaze past the highway. “I know you don’t love the new arrangement, but you’re doing great tonight. Don’t fade on me now—even on slow nights, we have to stick together. You remember what happened with Carly, right?”
“She’s the reason I’m wearing this lovely dress,” I say. “No offense.”
“None taken. I rock this thing and you know it.” She shakes her hips a little.
“Doesn’t count. You could make a Hefty bag look hot.”
“True. But enough about me. You’ve been acting funny all weekend. What are you dodging?” The smile vanishes from her reflection in the glass and something hazy passes over her face, gray and sad like a cloudless snowstorm.
I reach into my apron pocket and pull out the letter, wrinkled from all the times I’ve read and refolded it, carrying it with me ever since it passed from Bug’s anthrax detector to my hands.
“Read this,” I whisper, keeping an eye out for Mom.
She looks over the letter. “Capriani … she was your coach, right?”
“Yeah. Mom was still paying off my lessons after we moved—we must be on an old mailing list.”
“Is this the invitation you unmentioned last night?”
I nod.
“Fifty grand? That’s pretty sick, Hud.” Dani folds up the letter and hands it back to me, her eyes soft and glassy. “I know you skate at Fillmore sometimes, but I didn’t know it was like that.”
“Honestly? Neither did I. But when I heard about this competition, it was like … I don’t know. Like I could finally have a chance to do something with my life, even if Mom can’t afford college and my father …” His latest e-mail scrolls through my head, sent this morning from a rest stop near the Grand Canyon. God’s country, he called it. The soul of the world. “My father just isn’t here.”
A gust of wind blows across the near-empty parking lot. Snow clouds funnel and swirl beneath the lampposts, and a string of taillights beads along the overpass.
“The thing is,” I continue, “when Josh asked me to skate with him yesterday, I thought about what it would be like to do it again for an audience—even one person—and I freaked. I don’t think I’m cut out for it anymore.”
“What? Hudson, you have to find a way to make this happen. Your whole face lights up when you talk about skating. Look.” She touches my reflection in the glass, and I smile, seeing for just a moment what she sees. Nervousness, yes. But hope. Excitement, too.
“You can’t walk away from this opportunity,” she says. “You’ll regret it forever. I know you.”
“You’re the only one.” I look out the door again, the wind picking up snow and depositing it across the few remaining cars.
“Maybe I can help you train.”
“You don’t even like the cold.” She takes a breath to speak, but I shake my head. “Even if I had time to work on my routine, and I could lose the anxiety, I don’t have the cash for another club membership. And I can’t train on Fillmore—I need access to groomed, indoor ice.”
“What a coincidence. I think we both know someone who can get it for you.” Dani smiles, wriggling her eyebrows until I connect all the dots.
“Are you serious? Are you … no. No! That’s straight up crazy. There is no way I’m—”
“Suit yourself,” she says. “But once you figure out you want it bad enough—and I know you do—you’ll talk to him.”
“Miss?” One of the blue-haired knitting club ladies steps out of the bathroom and joins us at the door. She’s a bit winded, and there’s a long piece of toilet paper trailing behind her shoe.
“Just thought you should know,” she says, leaning in close and pointing a finger at my chest, “the powder room is out of toilet paper, and one of the toilets is overflowing.” With that, she waddles back to her table and smooths a crumpled paper napkin over her lap.
I believe this is what Oprah refers to as an “Aha! Moment.”
I look at Dani and sigh, a big one for the ages. “Okay. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
Chapter Six
Kill Me, Kill Me Now Cupcakes
Any cake, any flavored icing, served in front of the entire school while wearing your most unflattering, back-of-the-drawer underwear
If I detour down the science hall, cut across the gym, head up one flight of stairs and down another, Josh Blackthorn’s locker is conveniently en route to my first class.
He totally catches me staring from across the hall like the gawker that I’m not, and I flip open my econ book to a random page as if my sole purpose in this hallway at this moment is to save the lives of hundreds of innocent children by defining the term “gross domestic product.”
Here it is! The sum of all market values of goods and services produced by a nation in a given year. Says so right on page ninety-four. Disaster averted! Lives saved! Awards, um, awarded!
Still, he’s smiling right at me, and I can’t escape. I wave and head toward him with my best fancy-meeting-you-here-at-your-own-locker face, front and center.
“Hi, Josh,” I say, super-originally.
He leans against his open locker door, shoulders shifting under a faded Addicts in the Attic shirt. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” I say, once again demonstrating my knack for witty conversation. “So, um, you like the Addicts?” No, idiot. He hates them. Why else would he be wearing their shirt?
“You know those guys?”
“I once skated a routine to ‘Bittersweet.’ My coach thought it was unorthodox, but the crowd loved it. I got a perfect … anyway. It’s pretty much my favorite song.” God. When did I become such a danger to myself and others? I take a deep breath and try to turn down the spaz-o-meter before someone gets hurt.
“For real?” he says. “I love that song. You know the part right after the guitar solo, when he hits that high note? Man, he went to some dark places for that stuff. Sometimes the lyrics just … wow. It’s so cool that you dig those guys.” He looks at me a moment longer like he wants to say something else, something about the band, maybe, or the way one perfect song can make you feel less alone.