A female conductor threw open the door to our car and started surveying everyone. She was missing her hat.
“What’s happening?” I asked when she reached us. “We look really stuck.”
She leaned down and had a good look out the window, then gave a low whistle.
“We’re not going anywhere, honey,” she said in a low voice. “We’re just outside of Gracetown. The track dips down below this point, and it’s completely covered. Maybe they can send some emergency vehicles to get us by morning. I don’t know, though. I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” I assured her.
Amber One was holding her wrist.
“Amber!” another Amber said. “What happened?”
“I twisted it,” Amber One moaned. “Bad.”
“That’s your support wrist on basket toss!”
Six cheerleaders indicated (not subliminally) that they wanted me to move out of the way so that they could get to their wounded member and sit her down. Jeb was trapped in the throng. The lights went dim, the heater audibly cranked down, and the loudspeaker came back on.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice said, “we’re going to cut a bit of power to conserve energy. If you have blankets or sweaters, you may want to use them now. If any of you require extra warmth, we’ll try to provide whatever we can. If you have extra layering, we ask that you share it.”
I looked at the yellow sign again, and then back at the cluster of cheerleaders. I had two choices—I could stay here in the cold, dark, stranded train or I could actually do something. I could take charge of this day that had run away from me too many times. It wouldn’t be hard to get across the road and over to the Waffle House. They probably had heat and lots of food. It was worth a shot, and it was a plan I felt Noah would have approved of. Proactive. I gently pushed my way through the Ambers to get to Jeb.
“There’s a Waffle House across the street,” I told him. “I’m going to go over and see if it’s open.”
“A Waffle House?” Jeb replied. “We must be just outside of town, along I-40.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Amber One said. “What if the train leaves?”
“It’s not,” I said. “The conductor just told me. We’re stuck here all night. Over there, they probably have heat and food and a place for people to move around. What else are we going to do?”
“We could practice our enthusiasm rounds,” one of the Madisons ventured in a tiny voice.
“You’re going by yourself?” Jeb asked. I could tell he wanted to come, but Amber was leaning on him now like her life depended on him.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s just across the street. Give me your phone number and . . . ”
He held up the broken phone as a grim reminder. I nodded and picked up my backpack.
“I won’t be long,” I said. “I have to come back, right? Where else am I going to go?”
Chapter Three
Peeking out of the cold vestibule, which was slicked with snow from the open train door, I could just about see the crew members stalking alongside the train with their flashlights. They were a few cars away, so I made my move.
The metal steps were steep, high, and completely covered in frozen snow. Plus, the gap from the train to the ground was about four feet. I sat on the wet bottom step, snow pouring on my head, and pushed myself off as carefully as I could. I fell on all fours into more than a foot of snow, soaking my tights, but it wasn’t too painful. I didn’t have far to go. We were right next to the road, only twenty feet or so. All I had to do was get down to that, cross, walk under the overpass, and I would be there. It would only take a minute or two.
I’ve never crossed a six-lane interstate before. The opportunity had never come up, and if it had, it would have seemed like a bad idea. But there were no cars at all. It felt like the end of the world, a whole new start to life, the old order gone. It took about five minutes to walk across, since the wind was blowing so hard and flakes kept landing in my eyes. Once I got over, I had to cross some other stretch of something. It could have been grass or cement or more road—now it was just white and deep. Whatever it was, there was a curb buried in it, which I tripped over. I was drenched in snow by the time I made it to the door.
It was warm inside the Waffle House. In fact, it was so overheated that the windows had steamed, causing the large plastic holiday decals stuck to them to droop and peel away. Soft jazz Christmas standards blew out through the speakers, joyful as an allergy attack. The predominant smells were floor cleaner and overused cooking oil, but there was a hint of promise. Potatoes and onions had been fried here not long ago—and they had been good.
People-wise, the situation wasn’t much better. From deep in the kitchen, I heard two male voices, interspersed with slapping sounds and laughing. There was a woman lingering in a cloud of her own misery in the farthest corner, an empty plate dotted with cigarette butts in front of her. The only employee in sight was a guy, probably about my age, standing guard at the cash register. His regulation Waffle House shirt was long and untucked, and his spiky hair stuck out of the low-hanging visor on his head. His name tag read DON-KEUN. He was reading a graphic novel when I came in. My entrance brought a little light into his eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “You look cold.”
It was well observed. I nodded in reply.
Boredom had eaten at Don-Keun. You could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he slouched over the register in defeat. “Everything’s free tonight,” he said. “You can have whatever you want. Orders from the cook and the acting assistant manager. Both of those are me.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I think he was about to say something else, but then just flinched in embarrassment as the slap fight in the back grew louder. There was a newspaper and several coffee cups in front of one of the counter seats. I went over to take a seat a few spaces down, in an effort to be somewhat social. As I sat, Don-Keun made a sudden lurch in my direction.
“Um, you might not want to—”
He cut himself off and retreated a step as someone emerged from the direction of the restrooms. It was a man, maybe sixty years old, with sandy hair, a little bit of a beer gut, and glasses. Oh, and he was dressed in tinfoil. Head to toe. Even had a little tinfoil hat. Like you do.
Tinfoil Guy took the seat with the newspaper and the cups and gave me a nod of greeting before I could move.
“How are you on this night?” he asked.
“I could be better,” I replied honestly. I didn’t know where to look—at his face or his shiny, shiny silver body.
“Bad night to be out.”
“Yeah,” I said, choosing his shiny, shiny abdomen as my point of focus. “Bad.”
“You don’t happen to need a tow?”
“Not unless you tow trains.”
He thought that over for a moment. It’s always awkward when someone doesn’t realize you’re joking and devotes thought time to what you’ve said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.
“Too big,” he finally replied, shaking his head. “Won’t work.”
Don-Keun shook his head as well and gave me a back-away-while-you-can—it-is-too-late-to-save-me look.
I smiled and tried to develop a sudden and all-consuming interest in the menu. It only seemed right to order something. I scanned it over and over, as if I just couldn’t decide between the waffle sandwich or the hash browns covered in cheese.
“Have some coffee,” Don-Keun said, coming over and handing me a cup. The coffee was completely burned and had a rank smell, but this was not the time to be picky. I think he was just offering me backup, anyway.
“You said you were on a train?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, pointing out the window. Both Don-Keun and Tinfoil Guy turned to look, but the storm had picked up. The train was invisible.
“No,” Tinfoil Guy said again. “Trains won’t work.”
He adjusted his tin cuffs to punctuate this remark.
“Does that help?” I asked, finally feeling the need to mention the obvious.
“Does what help?”
“That stuff. Is it like that stuff runners have to wear when they finish marathons?”
“Which stuff?”
“The tinfoil.”
“What tinfoil?” he asked.
On that, I abandoned both politeness and Don-Keun and went and sat by the window, watching the pane shudder as the snow and wind hit it.
Far away, the Smorgasbord was at full tilt. All the food would be out by this point: the freakish hams, multiple turkeys, meatballs, potatoes baked in cream, rice pudding, cookies, the four kinds of pickled fish . . .
In other words, this would be a bad time to call Noah. Except he had told me to call when I got there. This was as far as I was getting.
So I called, and was immediately shuffled off to voice mail. I hadn’t planned out what I was going to say or what kind of attitude I was going to adopt. I defaulted into “funny-ha-ha,” and left a quick, probably incomprehensible message about being stranded in a strange town, along an interstate, at a Waffle House, with a man dressed in foil. It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized he would think I was joking—weirdly joking—and calling him when he was busy to boot. The message would probably annoy him.
I was about to call back and use a more sincere and sad voice to clarify that all of the above was not a joke . . . when there was a rush of wind, a bit of suction as the outside doors were opened, and then another person in our midst. He was tall, and thin, and apparently male. But it was hard to tell much else because he had wet plastic shopping bags on his head, his hands, and his feet. That made two people using non-clothing items for clothes.
I was starting to dislike Gracetown.
“I lost control of my car on Sunrise,” the guy said to the room in general. “Had to ditch it.”
Don-Keun nodded in understanding.
“Need a tow?” Tinfoil Guy said.
“No, that’s okay. It’s snowing so hard, I don’t even know if I could find it again.”
As he peeled off the bags, the guy turned out to be very normal-looking, with damp and dark curly hair, kind of skinny, jeans a little too big for him. He looked at the counter, then headed over to me.
“Is it okay if I sit here?” he asked in a low voice. He nodded slightly in the direction of Tinfoil Guy. Obviously, he didn’t want to sit over there, either.
“Sure,” I said.
“He’s harmless,” the guy said, still very quietly. “But he can talk a lot. I got stuck with him for about a half an hour once. He really likes cups. He can talk about cups for a long time.”
“Does he always wear tinfoil?”
“I don’t think I’d recognize him without it. I’m Stuart, by the way.”
“I’m . . . Julie.”
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“My train,” I said, pointing to the vista of snow and darkness. “We got stuck.”
“Where were you going?” he asked.
“To Florida. To see my grandparents. My parents are in jail.”
I decided it was worth a try, just slipping it into the conversation like that. It got the reaction I half expected. Stuart laughed.
“Are you with anyone?” he asked.
“I have a boyfriend,” I said.
I’m usually not this stupid, I promise you. My brain was on a Noah track. I was still thinking about my idiotic message.
The corners of Stuart’s mouth wrinkled, like he was trying not to laugh. He beat a little rhythm on the table and smiled as if trying to blow my awkward moment away. I should have taken the out he was giving me, but I couldn’t just leave it. I had to try to cover.
“The only reason I said that,” I began, seeing the doomed conversational path open wide in front of me and getting myself into sprinting position, “is that I’m supposed to be calling him. But I don’t have a signal.”
Yes. I had stolen Jeb’s story. Sadly, though, when I spoke, I didn’t take into account that my phone was sitting in front of me, proudly displaying a full range of bars. Stuart looked at it, then at me, but said nothing.
Now I really had something to prove. I would never be able to let it go until I showed him just how normal I was.
“I didn’t,” I said. “Until just now.”
“Probably the weather,” he said charitably.
“Probably. I’ll just try now, really quick.”
“Take as long as you like,” he said.
Which was fair enough. He’d only sat with me to escape a long conversation about cups with Tinfoil Guy. It wasn’t like we were accountable to each other’s schedules. Stuart was probably glad that I was breaking off this conversation. He got up and took off his coat as I called. He was wearing a Target uniform underneath, and even more plastic bags. They came tumbling out of the inner folds of his coat, about a dozen of them. He gathered them up, completely unfazed.
When I got Noah’s voice mail, I tried to hide my frustration by craning my head to look out the window. I didn’t want to leave my pathetic follow-up message in front of Stuart, so I just hung up.
Stuart gave me a little “nothing?” shrug as he sat down.
“They must be busy with the Smorgasbord,” I said.
“Smorgasbord?”
“Noah’s family is tangentially Swedish, so they put out an amazing Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve.”
I saw his eyebrow go up when I said “tangentially.” I use that word a lot. It’s one of Noah’s favorites. I picked it up from him. I wish I’d remembered not to use it around other people, because it was kind of our word. Also, when on a campaign to convince a stranger that you aren’t a few fries short of a Happy Meal, throwing around phrases like “tangentially Swedish” is not the best way to go.
“Everyone loves a Smorgasbord,” he said graciously.
It was time for a change of topic.
“Target,” I said, pointing at his shirt. Except I said, “Tar-shay,” in that French way that really isn’t very funny.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Now you can see why I had to risk my life getting to work. When your job is important as mine, you have to take some chances; otherwise, society doesn’t function. That guy must really want to make a call.”
Stuart pointed out the window, and I turned. Jeb was at the phone booth, which was surrounded by about a foot of snow. He was trying to force the door open.
“Poor Jeb,” I said. “I should lend him my phone . . . now that I have a signal.”
“Is that Jeb? You’re right . . . Wait . . . how do you know Jeb?”
“He was on my train. He said he was coming to Gracetown. I guess he plans on walking the rest of the way or something.”
“It looks like he really, really wants to make a call,” Stuart said, pulling aside the slippery candy cane on the window to get a better look. “Why doesn’t he just use his phone?”
“His phone broke when we crashed.”
“Crashed?” Stuart repeated. “Your train . . . crashed?”
“Just into snow.”
Stuart was about to press a bit further on the train-crashing subject when the door opened, and in they poured. All fourteen of them, yelping and squealing and trailing snowflakes.
“Oh my God,” I said.
Chapter Four
There is nothing about a bad situation that fourteen hyper cheerleaders can’t worsen.
It took about three minutes for the unassuming Waffle House to become the new offices of the law firm of Amber, Amber, Amber, and Madison. They set up camp in a clump of booths in the corner opposite from us. A few of them gave me an “oh, good, you are still alive” nod, but for the most part, they had no interest in anyone else.
This did not mean that no one had an interest in them, however.
Don-Keun was a new man. The moment they arrived, he vanished for a second. We heard muffled ecstatic screaming coming from somewhere in the back of the Waffle House kitchen, then
he reappeared, his face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany. Looking at him made me tired. Behind him were two more guys, awed acolytes following in his wake.
“What do you need, ladies?” Don-Keun called happily.
“Can we practice handstands in here?” Amber One said. I guess her basket-toss wrist was feeling better. Tough types, these cheerleaders. Tough and crazy. Who treks through a blizzard to practice handstands in a Waffle House? I only went there to get away from them.
“Ladies,” he said, “you can do whatever you want.”
Amber One liked this answer.
“Could you, maybe, like mop the floor? Just this bit right here? Just so we don’t get stuff on our hands? And could you spot us?”
He almost broke his own ankles trying to get to the mop closet.
Stuart had been watching all of this wordlessly. He didn’t have that same glorious look as Don-Keun or his friends, but the matter had clearly made his radar. He cocked his head to the side, like he was trying to figure out a really hard math problem.
“Things around here have deviated from the usual,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You could say that. Is there anywhere else to go? A Starbucks or something?”
He almost flinched when I mentioned Starbucks. I guessed he was one of those antichain types, which seemed odd for someone who worked at Target.
“It’s closed,” he said. “Pretty much everything is. There’s the Duke and Duchess. That might still be open, but that’s just a convenience store. It’s Christmas Eve, and with this storm . . . ”
Stuart must have sensed my despair from the way I began lightly banging my forehead on the table.
“I’m going to get back to my house,” he said, slipping his hand across the table as cushioning and preventing me from doing myself any more damage. “Why don’t you come with me? At least it’s out of the snow. My mom would never forgive me if I didn’t ask you if you needed somewhere to go.”
Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances Page 3