“You’re not playing?” Maggie glanced up at Elena.
Elena shrugged. It was a non-answer answer.
“Good for you.”
“Over here!” Brian shouted.
Elena spun around and watched as Brian and Danny, along with two other Santabucks patrons—older Joyces in their Christmas sweaters—hurried to the back corner of the cafe, right outside the ladies’ room.
“‘What was Stash’s favorite subject in high school?’” Danny read out loud. “Hell if I know.”
Elena’s jaw tensed. She knew this one. It had been on this silly card Chestnut’s had printed up when Stan Stashiuk was a rookie, like a baseball card, but for hockey and with a lot more personal information. His favorite subject was biology. She considered sneaking into the bathroom for a second to answer it.
“Gym?” Brian guessed.
“Biology,” Elena blurted. She clamped her hand over her mouth.
Danny, Brian, and the other players spun toward her in unison, completely shocked.
“How did you know that?” Danny frowned. “No one knows that.”
Elena shrugged. “Just do. I don’t know.”
Maggie grabbed Elena’s mom’s arm and pulled her toward the back room. “Let me show you the new cups I bought for Valentine’s Day.”
Her mom safely behind a closed door, Elena snuck over to a table with her latte and pulled out her phone. The Santabucks Stash had disappeared for now, but Elena started clicking on the little blue bubbles floating around her name on the main screen. She pressed one. It opened up and gave the info of another player in her vicinity. It had the person’s name, score, and a button to start chatting.
She hit the other three bubbles. None of them was Stashiuk4Prez, which meant Danny wasn’t Stashiuk4Prez, not that she really ever believed he was. Stashiuk4Prez would’ve told her he had a girlfriend—at least she hoped that’d be the case. The guy in her mind wouldn’t string anyone along.
“Glad to see you’re all enjoying the game.”
Elena’s eyes swung toward the door, and she found Mr. Prince standing there with his chest puffed out and shoulders back, watching the crowd, smiling. He towered above all of them like a king in his castle. His smile diminished, however, when his eyes landed on Elena. It got even smaller still, regressing to a full-on frown, when his gaze reached Elena’s mom, who was stepping out of the back room just behind Maggie Garland.
Mr. Prince nodded slightly toward her, his eyes on the floor. “Emily.”
“Nice to see you, Trip.” Elena’s mom’s voice was steely, and she eye-rolled hard at Maggie Garland, who nodded.
“I bet.” Mr. Prince stepped toward the counter, turning his back on Emily Chestnut.
Elena shoved her phone in her pocket as her mom gestured frantically toward the door. They hurried out of the store and down the street toward Chestnut’s, their coffees sloshing over their mittened hands.
“What was all that about?” Elena asked, when they reached the door to their own store.
“Ancient history,” her mom said, discussion over. She glanced one more time down the street toward Santabucks, pulled open the door to Chestnut’s, and slid inside with a huff.
Elena stared down the street at the cafe. From where she stood, that history didn’t look so ancient.
…
Trip Prince had made sure that Oliver and Regina knew how to do every job in each of the many shops the family had owned. “You can’t understand the business side of things if you don’t know how to deal with the day-to-day operations.” So, Oliver knew how to make sandwiches, bake a pizza in a brick oven, and sell a pair of skis, even though he had no idea how to use those skis himself.
Today was his day to stock shelves and take inventory inside Prince’s Sporting Goods. He was on the floor in the summer clearance aisle when the front doorbell rang. Their new employee, Craig, who was manning the cash register, said, “Good afternoon. May I help you?”
“Help me? This is my store,” Regina said, followed by a massive giggle that hadn’t come from his sister’s mouth.
Oliver peeked around the corner and saw Regina standing at the counter, checking her phone. Harper was right next to her. She only came up to Regina’s shoulder, and she was bouncing on her tiptoes either to get Regina’s attention or to peek at her phone. Regina turned away, hiding the screen with her body.
Shoulders slumped, Harper scanned the rest of the store.
Oliver ducked back behind the shelves and tried to make himself small, crouching near the ground. Maybe Harper hadn’t seen him yet. Maybe he could slither across the floor and sneak into the office undetected.
“I’m going into the back for a minute,” said Regina. Oliver swore under his breath when he heard the office door slam shut. Regina was always quick to leave him alone with Harper, as if she expected Oliver to do her dirty work and break the bad news. Regina was still trying to figure out a way to let Harper down easy.
Oliver could feel Harper’s presence in the room, her aura. He could sense her sweeping the area. She was going to find him, and then she’d bombard him with questions about his sister. The kind thing would be to set Harper straight, to tell her that Regina wasn’t interested and that she never would be, but he couldn’t do it. Why should he have to be the bad guy? This was Regina’s situation, and she should get herself out of it. Just because Oliver didn’t do well in relationships with other people didn’t mean he was cool with destroying the tenuous ones he had.
He heard Harper ask Craig, “Is Oliver here?”
Oliver sent a silent message to Craig’s brainwaves, pleading with him to tell Harper he’d gone home for the day.
“Sale section,” said Craig, that traitor.
Harper’s heels clomped toward Oliver. There was no way out of this. She was going to engage him in yet another Regina-centric conversation. Yet again, he’d have to come up with excuses for his sister’s poor behavior.
“Hey, Oliver,” Harper said, leaning up against the shelves. She was wearing a tight sweater and a short skirt, basically her uniform.
“Hi, Harper,” he said casually. “What’s going on?”
“Not much.” She absentmindedly twirled a strand of her long, blond hair around a perfectly manicured finger while staring wistfully at the office door. “You need any help?”
He stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I’m about done.” He examined Harper’s profile. She was still watching the office door, behind which Regina had disappeared. Oliver’s first impulse was to run, to let the girls handle their own drama; but, going completely against his nature, he gulped, leaned toward Harper, and whispered, “Are you okay?”
Her face swung to his, eyes shocked. Oliver figured she was going to tell him off, to mind his own business, but she didn’t. Her face softened and she said, “I will be. Thanks for asking.”
Oliver grinned, and he noticed his body felt lighter. He couldn’t believe he was about to say this, but, “If you ever need anyone—”
“Hey Harper,” shouted Regina from the front of the store. “Ready to go?”
Harper leaned in and patted his arm. He got a whiff of her perfume—spicy and mature, not at all like the kind of perfume he’d expect Harper to choose. She whispered to Oliver, “I think you’re a good guy, no matter what Elena says.”
As the girls left, he moved to the next aisle—fishing supplies. Beaming like a goofball, he leaned against the shelf and pulled out his phone to open the Stash Grab app. He clicked on his conversation with proud_hoser, which was a thing he did reflexively now. It was second nature. Open app, chat with proud_hoser. “I just found out I’m a good guy,” he said. “Got the info from a reliable source, and I wanted you to know. I have bonafides.”
He started counting lures while waiting for her to respond. He was used to chatting with people online, via Wizard War and his other games, but talking to proud_hoser was different. Their relationship had started out as trash talk, but it had quickly evolved into some
thing he’d never experienced before. She wasn’t just a competitor and sometime co-conspirator. She was proud_hoser, a girl he thought about constantly, and he really, really desperately needed her to know he was a decent person.
A few minutes later, she wrote back, “Glad to hear it. I always trust anonymous sources.” Then she said, “How’s your afternoon?”
Oliver was currently surrounded by boxes, the smell of stale coffee, and Craig, who kept making some unsettling hacking sound up front. “Low-key,” he said. “Kind of boring. How about you?”
“Getting better,” she said. “I’m about to go for a run.”
“You’re a runner,” he said. “A clue!”
“Just one of millions who do it. Do you run?”
Oliver laughed. “I’m not a sports guy.”
“There’s my clue!”
“Are you running outside? It’s like three degrees out.” The Florida boy in him couldn’t spend more than five minutes outside in this January-in-Minnesota weather.
“It clears my head. You should try it. Smacks the life right into you.”
“Maybe someday,” he lied. Though, a part of him wondered if he wouldn’t like running better if he had a partner—someone exactly like proud_hoser, perhaps. Oliver caught himself blushing. What was he doing? Was he actually imagining they could take this relationship offline? Danger, Will Robinson! Oliver wasn’t an offline guy. “What needs clearing?”
“Huh?” she asked.
“From your head.” For the second time today, Oliver was sticking his nose into other people’s business. It shocked him to discover that he really did want to know how proud_hoser was doing—and Harper, for that matter. He was going soft without his video games.
“It’s dumb,” she said.
“Try me.”
Oliver waited as she typed a longer response. He straightened the fishing poles and tackle boxes. Each second was an hour. He jumped when his phone pinged with a new message.
“Remember you’re the one who asked. I was thinking about how we only show other people a carefully curated version of ourselves.”
Oliver exhaled. That was unexpected. Oliver had imagined she’d tell him something like, “I don’t like chicken soup” or “I think we should stop chatting, Stashiuk4Prez. I know who you are and you’re an awful, boring person.”
“Deep stuff for a Wednesday afternoon,” he replied.
“I have a lot on my mind at the moment.”
Oliver considered Regina, the person he knew best on the entire planet. Regina always seemed so cool and confident, but deep down she cared more about being popular than she’d ever let on. She and Oliver were really two sides of the same coin—she was afraid of losing the popularity she’d always had, and he was afraid of being rejected by the same crowd, so he never sought out the popularity. “I definitely put up a wall in real life. I act like I don’t need anyone else and that I’m kind of bored with all the social garbage, but maybe I’m afraid of being told I don’t belong, you know? Ha-ha, that’s for sure the most honest I’ve ever been with anyone, and you’re just a tiny avatar on my phone.”
“I guess it’s easier to be honest with an avatar.”
Yes, it was so much easier to be honest with a non-corporeal image than a real, living person. Oliver could carefully select every word, delete the ones that came out wrong, and answer in his own time. There was no fretting about coming off cold and callous or accidentally turning someone off because of “tone.”
“What has you wondering about all this?” he asked.
“Ah, my mom. She said something that got me thinking about how she had this whole life before I was born. My dad, too. What were they like? What were their dreams? Did they always know they’d end up together? That kind of thing.”
She had parents. She had parents and she ran and she knew more about Stan Stashiuk than any high school girl should. proud_hoser was taking shape in his mind’s eye, and he ate up every morsel of information like his grandma’s famous pumpkin pie. “I never really thought about all that, but you’re right,” Oliver said. “They were young once. I suppose.”
proud_hoser wrote, “Did they have secret, anonymous chats about life with strange boys in high school? :)”
He blushed. “I don’t know, but—”
“Oliver!” shouted Craig from the front of the store. “I need your help!”
“Damn it,” Oliver said. He wrote, “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“Me, too,” she said, “I’ve got to get that run in. Talk tonight?”
“Definitely.” Always. Whenever she wanted.
“And I promise to keep the conversation lighter. We can talk favorite movies and TV shows.”
He couldn’t end the chat. He was physically unable to do so. Forget Craig. Forget work. “Captain America: Winter Soldier and The Simpsons,” he said right away.
“Oliver!” shouted Craig again.
“Save it for later,” said proud_hoser.
Oliver went up to the front of the store. Craig was standing alone in front of a display of snowboards. “What’s happening, Craig?”
“There’s a glitch,” he said.
“A glitch?”
Craig held up his phone. The Stash Grab app was open. “When you click on this Stash, nothing happens. Watch.” Craig clicked on the Stash. He was right. Nothing happened.
Oliver opened up his own app.
“You’re playing, too?” Craig asked, craning his head to see Oliver’s phone. “Isn’t that cheating? You created the game.” Craig’s eyes scanned the room, like he was about to pull an alarm somewhere, if only he could find it.
Oliver hid the screen. “I have a dummy account,” he said. “For just this kind of thing.”
He found the Stash in Prince’s and tried to click it. Nothing happened. “Damn it.” He closed the app, fiddled with the settings, and tried again. Still nothing.
“Can you fix it?” asked Craig. “It’s worth three hundred points.”
“I can’t.” He glanced at the office. Maybe he could hack into the computer. Maybe it was worth a try. This kind of glitch was unacceptable. What was Regina doing with her time?
Oliver marched into the office and shut the door behind him. He sat in front of the computer and cracked his knuckles. A wave of emotion hit him. “Hi, old friend.” He rubbed the cover of the laptop, like he was petting a dog, before opening it.
He pressed a key and the screen whirred to life. A login box popped up, asking for his username and password. He tried one he knew Regina had used before—nothing. He tried his dad’s email address and another old password, still nothing. They had really done their due diligence. His dad did not want him to get on this computer.
But they weren’t that smart. They wouldn’t have created these new logins without leaving the information somewhere. He opened the desk drawers, one by one, searching for some clue that would give him access to this computer.
What he found instead, in the bottom drawer, was the old photo album Regina had found a few weeks ago, the book that had sent his dad running into the office and slamming the door behind him. Gingerly, like it was a bomb he had to diffuse, Oliver lifted the book from the drawer. He placed it on the desk in front of him and slowly opened it, bracing himself for whatever lurked inside.
His heart slowed as he surveyed the first pictures. They were just family photos of his grandparents with his dad and Aunt Becky. There were shots of the store and of his dad playing basketball for North Pole High. Then there was a page near the back that made him pause. It was his dad, but he was much younger. He had a full head of auburn hair (like Oliver’s) and no beard. He had his arm around some woman—not his mom—and the two of them were gazing into each other’s eyes.
The woman gave him a sense of déjà vu, like he’d seen her before, but couldn’t figure out when. She had a very familiar look about her. Then he knocked the album to the ground as he realized why. She was the spitting image of Elena Chestnut.
&nb
sp; His dad had his arm wrapped around Elena’s mom. Was this what Regina had seen? Did she know any more about it? Did Elena?
Slowly, still trying to figure this out, Oliver reached down, closed the book, and placed it back into the drawer. He now understood completely what proud_hoser had been talking about. What did he truly know about anybody, especially his dad?
Chapter Six
Elena checked her skirt in Harper’s bedroom mirror after dropping her parka on the bed, which was already a sea of other people’s coats. She smoothed down a wrinkle, then frowned and dropped her shoulders.
“Hey, Elena,” said Katie Murphy, depositing her coat at the summit of the outerwear mountain on Harper’s bed. “Haven’t seen you out in a while.”
“I think I’ve been hibernating,” said Elena.
Katie checked her lip gloss. “I feel you. January.”
Elena waved to Katie as she left the room. The fact was, if this weren’t a birthday party for her best friend, Elena wouldn’t have come to this party, either.
She grabbed her purse and a special gift for the always fashion-forward Harper—an amazing vintage capelet Elena had found at a thrift store—and headed out to join the rest of Harper’s guests.
Harper was incapable of throwing a small to-do. Whenever she threw a party, it had to be a blowout, a huge bash. There were balloons and streamers in Harper’s favorite colors—blush and bashful, like from the movie Steel Magnolias, also one of Harper’s favorites—covering every bare inch of wall space. She’d put together little pink gift bags with macarons from Joyeaux Noel, the fancy French restaurant in town and lip glosses. The entire house was crawling with students from North Pole High School, who were shouting at each other over the aggressive thump-thump of Craig’s DJ booth.
As she placed her tiny gift on the overflowing table of presents, Elena checked the clock on the wall to figure out how long she’d have to stick around before making a clean exit.
Her first order of business was getting Harper to notice she was here. Elena pushed her way through the crowd—bumping into dancers, knocking into their drinks and plates of appetizers. Despite the cold, most of the girls had stripped out of their winter gear and into short skirts and tank tops. It was a party, after all.
Any Boy but You (North Pole, Minnesota) Page 6