Winter Falls

by Nicole Maggi

  Bree glared at me for a moment. “Fine.” She shoved her journal into her bag and pulled out a purple spiral-bound notebook. “Tell me what you’re going to say.”

  “Well . . .” I fumbled in my bag for my notebook and a pen. “I was going to talk about how many jobs it would create—”

  “So is everyone else.”

  “—and the positive environmental impact it would have on the county.”

  “Oh, please.” Bree waved her hand in a circle. “Everyone else in this room is going to say the exact same things. Find something original.”

  Heat crept up my throat and into my face. I took a deep breath. “What do you suggest?”

  She shrugged and studied her notebook. “That’s your problem. I’ve already written mine.”

  “Oh yeah?” I folded my arms over my chest. “Can I see it?”

  “Nope.” She flashed me a humorless grin, and for an instant she looked so much like Jonah that my heart jumped. “It’s better if it’s a surprise.”

  “Okay, that’s it.” My voice rose above the low din in the classroom, and the people nearby looked at us. “What is your problem? I have been nothing but nice despite your crappy attitude, and you continue to be a total bitch to me.”

  “You think because you’re dating my brother you deserve special treatment?”

  “Why is it such a big deal to you if I date him, anyway? It’s none of your business.”

  Bree’s nostrils flared, and the edges of her mouth turned white. “It is,” she hissed. Her green eyes glowed like emerald coals against her pale skin.

  I jerked away from her, the back of my neck prickling.

  Bree launched out of her chair and bent over me. “Trust me,” she whispered in my ear. “My brother is not someone you want to get involved with.” She whirled away, her long black hair fanning out behind her, while I stared openmouthed at her back.

  “Why does your sister hate me?” I asked Jonah at lunchtime. I had taken to spending almost every lunch with him outdoors under the bleachers. I had smuggled a blanket to school, and we ate with it spread across our laps to keep our legs warm. When we were done eating, we would tuck it around us and snuggle until the bell rang.

  “Hate is a very strong word.” Jonah fished in my paper lunch bag for one of my mom’s homemade cookies. “I’d say strongly dislike is more accurate.”

  “Oh, like that’s so much better.” I took the bag away from him, took out the last cookie, and broke it in half. “Seriously. What is her problem?”

  Jonah popped his half of the cookie into his mouth. He looked out into the woods, his profile shadowed by the bleachers so that I couldn’t see his eyes. “Bree is—I don’t know—she’s overprotective for some reason. It’s like, she’s nine minutes older than me, but sometimes she acts like it’s nine years.”

  “Why does she feel the need to protect you from me?”

  He turned to me, grinning. “Because you’re obviously a bad influence,” he said, reaching under the blanket to grab my waist. He pulled me into him and nipped at my neck. “With your shockingly good grades and disturbing habit of never cutting class—”

  I shrieked with laughter and swatted at him, but he held me fast. “I cut class once—”

  “—and your life like an open book—”

  I stopped breathing and wriggled away from him. “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have anything to hide. And that just kills Bree. She doesn’t have anything to bargain with.”

  My ribs tightened and clamped around my heart like a torture device. If Bree only knew . . . I ducked my head and busied myself with cleaning up our trash. It never failed. Sitting here under the bleachers with Jonah every day, I felt like a normal girl with a normal life, but somehow the Benandanti always seemed to intrude.

  “Hey.” Jonah brushed my hair away from my eyes and tilted my face up toward his. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  He leaned in and kissed me. “You just hate it when someone doesn’t like you.”

  I swallowed and managed a smile. “Yeah. That’s it.”

  The bell clanged.

  I pulled away and hopped to my feet. “Are you coming to biology today?” Most of the time Jonah stayed outside. I’d given him my locker combination, and at the end of the day I’d find the blanket in my locker with a pretty leaf or a note in French or a page torn from a book with a sentence underlined.

  “Nah.” He grabbed my hand and kissed my palm. “Take notes for me?”

  I cupped my hand around his cheek, then ran my fingers through his hair. “Sure.”

  “Oh, and don’t worry about Bree. She’ll come around.” He smiled at me, but his eyes stayed cloaked.

  At the end of the day, I waved good-bye to Carly and Melissa and joined Jonah on the sidewalk in front of the school. I usually walked home with him until the turnoff to his house, but today as we crossed Main Street he said, “Do you want to come over?”

  I stared at him. “Um, really?” Even though I had come within steps of his house every other day, he had never invited me in.

  “Yeah, my mom wants to meet you.”

  “You told her about me?” From what I gathered, Jonah barely spoke to his parents.

  “You might’ve come up in conversation.” Two little spots of color appeared high on his cheeks. It was the first time I’d ever seen him blush.

  A slow grin spread across my face. “You told your mom about me.”

  Jonah kicked me lightly on the shin. “Don’t gloat. Are you coming over or not?”

  “Sure.” I was technically still grounded, but I could usually get away with coming home a little late from school since Lidia was so busy on the farm. I glanced over my shoulder at Jenny, who always followed at a distance to give us privacy before joining me on the rest of the walk home. “Just let me tell Jenny.”

  “I want details,” Jenny said as we stood a few feet away from Jonah at the bend in the road. “Which, by the way, you have been very bad about. I don’t have a boyfriend right now. I need to live vicariously through you.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll call you tonight.”

  “You better,” Jenny yelled as she bounced down the street.

  I rejoined Jonah at the corner. He held my hand as we walked, but when we came within sight of his house he wriggled his fingers out of mine.

  Mrs. Wolfe descended from the porch and met us halfway down the driveway. Bree disappeared into the house. I hoped she would stay out of the way during this social call.

  “Hi, Mrs. Wolfe.”

  “Hello, dear. I’m so glad Jonah brought you over.” She held up the plate in her hands. “Peanut butter cookie?”

  “Sure.” I took one and bit into it.

  Jonah followed suit with an air of forced cheerfulness. I got the sense they ate a lot of cookies.

  “Well, come inside.”

  I followed Mrs. Wolfe with a glance over my shoulder at Jonah, who shook his head a little and shrugged. I swallowed the rest of my cookie (it was too dry) and jogged up the steps to the front door.

  The house was warm. I hung my jacket by the door and veered into the kitchen. Jonah plunked onto one of the stools that surrounded the island in the middle. I climbed atop the one next to him. Mrs. Wolfe set the plate of cookies in front of me and gestured that I should have another one. I thought it would be rude to refuse, so I reached for one. To my enormous relief, Bree was nowhere to be seen or heard.

  Mrs. Wolfe moved between the stove, where something was stewing in a large pot, the island, the fridge, and the sink. She seemed to know exactly when something needed to be stirred or salted. “Jonah tells me you and he are lab partners in biology, Alessia.”

  I shot Jonah a look that simultaneously conveyed my annoyance at being part of his lie and admiration for the ease with which he was able to lie to his mother. I needed to learn that. “Um, yeah,” I said and shoved an entire cookie in my mouth, so I had time to gather my though
ts. I chewed slowly and swallowed. “We dissected frogs last week.”

  Mrs. Wolfe gave a delicate shudder, smiling tightly. Her smile, like her husband’s, didn’t reach her eyes. A hot feeling of pity shot through me. I tried to imagine what her life was like, being bounced from place to place by her husband’s work. As if she could read my mind, she asked, “You’ve lived here all your life, haven’t you?”

  “Since I was a baby,” I said.

  Jonah rolled his eyes at me, silently asking me to humor his mother.

  I took another cookie.

  “It must be nice to have roots,” Mrs. Wolfe murmured as she carried a cutting board with diced pepper and carrots to her pot, slid the vegetables in, and stirred the contents for a few minutes.

  Silence stretched across the kitchen. Jonah and I looked at each other, our feet tangling between our two stools.

  Buzzing broke the silence.

  “I think that’s my phone,” I said and slid off the stool to retrieve it from my backpack. It was Lidia. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Where are you?”

  I glanced at Mrs. Wolfe, who was clearly listening. “At Jonah’s. His mom invited me over for an after-school snack.” I figured it couldn’t hurt to emphasize it was his mother’s idea, not mine.

  “You’re still grounded, young lady.”

  “I know but I won’t be long. Please?”

  Lidia mumbled something in Italian, then said, “Be home by dark.”

  “I will.”

  “Ciao.”

  “Ciao.” I hung up and slid the phone back into my bag. “Sorry about that.”

  Jonah sprang off his stool. “Do you need to go home?” There was a hopeful look in his eyes.

  I almost lied, but some part of me was oddly fascinated with his weird home life so I shook my head.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he muttered, and while his mother’s back was still turned, he pulled me into the hall.

  I followed him up the stairs. On the landing there were a few boxes piled against the wall. I peeked inside one: family photos that had yet to go on the wall. The photo on top was Jonah and Bree when they were about four, both sitting on the same glittery carousel horse. I took it out of the box to look closer. A thick layer of dust coated the frame.

  “Those almost never make it out of the box before we have to move again,” Jonah said. “But my dad says he’s putting them up this weekend.”

  I traced my finger along four-year-old Jonah’s jaw. “You were a cute kid.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jonah stepped close to me, and I felt his breath on my cheek. “How ’bout now?”

  I put the photo back in the box. “Obviously something went wrong.” I ducked under his arm, laughing, and he caught me around the waist. He lifted me and growled while he bit my neck lightly. I shrieked and kicked at him as he carried me down the hall.

  A door flew open with a clatter. “Can you two keep it down, please?” Bree stood in the doorway, her lip curled as she took in the sight of us mock wrestling. “I’m trying to study.”

  “Give it a rest.” Jonah didn’t let go of me, but I lowered my head to avoid Bree’s piercing gaze. “I don’t think your straight-B average is in jeopardy.”

  “Not all of us have girlfriends to cover for us in class,” Bree said and slammed her door. Angry-girl rock music seeped out into the hall.

  I fought the urge to stick my tongue out at the closed door.

  Jonah carried me to his room at the end of the hall and set me down.

  A huge black-and-white poster of Jack Kerouac took up half the door. The walls were painted grey and covered with all sorts of things I had never seen in a teenager’s room before: African masks, South American baskets, a framed poster of Machiavelli. I took it all in for a moment. “Cool room.”

  He smiled. “Thanks.”

  I pointed to the African masks. “So when your dad said the Guild worked in the Congo . . . Did you guys actually go there?”

  Jonah nodded. “Just for a few months. It’s not the safest place. Plus, we had to be homeschooled while we were there and my mom . . .” He shrugged, leaving the sentence undone, but I gathered that Mrs. Wolfe was not the homeschooling type.

  Jonah closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  I dawdled by the desk, fingering the stack of paperbacks, and suddenly realized that this was the first time I’d been alone with a boy in his room since I was twelve. On the rare occasions I had boys over to my house, Lidia was adamant about keeping us downstairs, where she could watch us.

  “You like to read,” I said, motioning toward the books.

  “Yeah.” Jonah leaned back on his hands, watching me. “Just not the crap they make us read in school.”

  I peered at the spines of the books. Slaughterhouse-Five, A Clockwork Orange, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, On the Road. I picked up The Prince. “Machiavelli, huh?”

  Jonah grinned. “I have grand plans to be a tyrant.”

  I laughed and set the book back on the desk.

  “Hand me the Joyce—I want to read you something.”

  I brought him A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and then, because it seemed obvious not to, sat beside him on the bed. Our thighs touched as he flipped through the early pages of the book. Many of the passages had been underlined.

  Jonah stopped at a folded-down page and read, “‘He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment, he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.’” He closed the book and ran a finger down the cover. “I underlined that quote the night I met you.”

  My breath stopped in my throat.

  Jonah dropped the book to the floor and kissed me. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him closer until we both toppled backward onto the bed. He pressed his hand to the back of my neck, and I moved my hand under his shirt, the heat of his skin burning my palm.

  His bedroom door banged open, and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. We pulled apart like taffy, parts of us still stuck together, and sprang off the bed.

  Bree stood inside the doorway, hands on her hips.

  Jonah rearranged his shirt. “God, Bree, don’t you freaking knock?”

  “Sorry,” she said with a smirk. “Mom wants you downstairs.”

  “Tell her we’re studying.”

  Bree pressed a hand to her chest. “Are you asking me to lie?” She narrowed her eyes at me, and though I didn’t want to flush, I couldn’t help it. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she knows what’s really going on up here.” She spun on her heel and left the room. A few seconds later her door slammed, and the angry-girl music started up again.

  Jonah looked at me. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I glanced out the window; orange and pink light streaked the sky and lengthened shadows in the backyard. “I should probably get going soon anyway.” I headed for the doorway.

  But Jonah grabbed my hand and pulled me to him. He kissed me, one hand in my hair, the other at my waist, and I didn’t care who walked in on us. For an instant I forgot where I was, who I was, and everything complicated in my life smoothed itself out. I clung to him, not wanting to return to that other life. I wanted this world, where it was just me and Jonah and nothing else.

  When he finally released me, my whole body trembled. I had fallen hard for Jonah Wolfe, and there was no going back. I could only hope he felt the same way about me and that his family really was staying in Twin Willows. Because if they picked up and left . . . I drew a shaky breath. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  Mrs. Wolfe was still cooking in the kitchen.

  “I should head home,” I said when we reached the counter. “Thanks for the cookies, Mrs. Wolfe.”

  She looked up from the onion she was dicing. Her face was streaked with tears, but her mouth held a bland smile.

  A shiver ran down my spine. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Oh.” She swiped her cheek with the back of her hand
, but it only succeeded in smearing the makeup that was caked on her face. “Cutting onions always makes me cry,” she said with a shrill laugh.

  A door creaked open from down the hall, and for the first time all afternoon I saw Mrs. Wolfe’s mask come down.

  “Your father’s coming in from his office,” she whispered to no one in particular. She pulled a paper towel off the roll by the sink and blotted her face. She used the reflection in the knife’s blade to check her makeup, rearranged her features into pleasant blandness, and went back to calmly dicing the onion.

  I turned to Jonah. “Your dad works from home? Doesn’t the Guild have a big office in Bangor?”

  “Yeah, but he needs to be close to the actual site.”

  A shadow darkened the entrance to the kitchen. Mr. Wolfe straightened his tie as he strode past Jonah and stole an apple from the bowl on the counter. He sniffed the air. “Beef bourguignon again?” With a frown he took a bite of the apple, then spotted me and swallowed quickly. “I didn’t know we had company.” He peered at me. “Alexis, right?”

  “Alessia,” I corrected him.

  “Of course.” He took another bite of apple. “Well, I’m in the middle of a conference call. Nice to see you again, Alison.”

  Jonah let out a loud sigh as Mr. Wolfe headed back down the hallway. “Sorry,” he mumbled to me.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I touched his hand lightly. “Before I go, where’s the bathroom?”

  “On the left.” Jonah pointed down the hallway where Mr. Wolfe had disappeared.

  “Be right back.”

  More boxes were stacked against the wall, including a bunch of empty ones outside a door across from the bathroom. A sign read Private below the mottled glass window that took up half the door. I could only assume it was Mr. Wolfe’s office.

  The murmur of voices leaked into the hallway after I came out of the bathroom. “. . . that goat farm . . .”

  I stopped.

  “. . . don’t need her permission . . .”

  I pressed myself against the wall next to the office and leaned my head toward the door hinge.

  “It’s outside the boundary of the farm’s property.” It wasn’t Mr. Wolfe’s voice.