by Donna Cooner
“You okay?”
I release a slow breath. “I am now.”
“How about that snow cone?” he asks me, and I nod.
We walk over to the concession stand. I order a grape one from the middle school girl behind the counter. She smiles at Alex, revealing a mouth full of braces.
“Not pickle juice?” Alex asks me when the girl hands over the purple mound of ice.
I gasp. “Is that really a thing?”
“Yep. My sister’s favorite. They just pour the juice off those pickles”—he points to the big jar on the countertop—“right over the shaved ice.”
“No, thanks.” I make a horrified face that makes him laugh. “Your sister, Isabella, she’s a freshman, right?” I ask him.
He nods, taking a bite of his strawberry snow cone.
“I’ve seen her around. She’s cute.”
He nods again. “Her fifteenth birthday is coming up and she’s having a huge party. It’s a big thing in Mexican families.”
“A quinceañera? I’ve heard of it, but haven’t ever gone to one. It’s sort of like a sweet sixteen party?” I ask.
“Yes, but with a church blessing. The party will be after the mass.”
“And it will be big?”
“Enormous. Izzy is having fourteen damas … attendants … and each one of them will have an escort called a chambelan. One for each year of her life,” he says. “And that’s just the beginning.”
“Wow. That’s going to be quite the party.”
He nods. “We’re having it out at Magnolia Lake.”
“I went to a wedding reception there once. It was beautiful.”
He grimaces. “Yeah. My family is going all out on this party.”
“You don’t look that happy about it,” I say.
“It’s all-consuming. I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
We take our snow cones over to the now half-empty bleachers and sit down. I want to say something, but being together outside of the library feels different. This is Alex’s world. It makes me long for my comfort zone deep in the book stacks, far away from cheering crowds and baseball fields. I want to be noticed, but I can’t imagine what it would feel like to have every eye on me while I put a book on the shelf and then, if I do it just right, for the watching crowd to break out in wild cheers. I take a bite of the ice and hold it on my tongue until it melts.
Finally, Alex breaks the silence and asks, “Want to taste?”
He holds out his red snow cone. I lean in to take a small bite, but I can’t stop looking at him. The ice breaks away into sticky red chunks under my lips and drips down my chin. I cover my mouth with my hand, trying to catch the slippery mess before it lands on my shirt.
“Sorry. I’m a mess,” I say, then laugh.
Alex doesn’t laugh. “You missed a spot.” He brushes a thumb against the corner of my mouth, leaving a trail of tingling skin behind. Heat bubbles up my neck.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
Time freezes.
Then he clears his throat and the trance is broken. He looks away toward the baseball field and I look down toward our feet. His cleats are covered in the chalk from the batting box.
“So what’s your favorite summer food? Ice cream, Popsicles, watermelon?” I’m sure his question is meant to cut through the awkwardness, and I’m grateful.
I think for a minute. “S’mores. My family used to go tent camping every vacation and the campfire was my favorite part.”
“Even when it was hot?”
“Yes. My dad was kind of obsessive about it. He’s a park ranger out at Huntsville State Park and being outside was always his thing. It wasn’t a camping trip until my dad made a fire and we roasted marshmallows … ”
“And made s’mores.” Alex smiles.
I nod. “It’s probably about the memory rather than the actual food.”
Then he tells me about his abuela’s tamales, which they have every Christmas Eve, and says, “Sometimes the best food is all wrapped up in memories.”
“Exactly,” I say, and my heart kind of flips over.
We sit for a moment, eating our snow cones in silence, but I’m not uncomfortable with it anymore.
“So does your family still go camping?” Alex asks. There is a tiny piece of strawberry ice on his bottom lip that suddenly fascinates me.
I swallow hard, trying to focus on the conversation and not on his mouth. “No. My mom has this new job. She’s a firefighter,” I tell him. “It’s a lot of work right now and she doesn’t get off much.”
“And you miss those family vacations.”
I glance over at him and then say, “You just made me realize I do.”
“I guess I’m good for something,” he says with a half smile.
“You’re good at a lot of things,” I say. I look down at the purple streak melting down my hand from the snow cone, then back up to meet his eyes.
“Like what?”
“Like baseball,” I say, licking a bit of sticky grape off my thumb.
“I’ve been waiting for my turn to start for a while now. The coaches always play the seniors first, but it’s been hard watching from the bench,” he says. “I think it surprised everyone how hard I’ve been working on the off season.”
“Now it’s your turn to shine.”
“I’m not letting anything go to my head. It’s only one game and there’s a whole season left. Besides, there’s always someone waiting in the wings who is better,” he says, and I see a muscle twitch in his jaw. “I think that’s why I hate running so much. It’s never enough. There’s always faster. Even when it’s only one second. That one second is better.”
I realize he’s opening up to me, showing a different side of himself. “When you hit that finish line and realize you ran the fastest ever, there’s still another second faster,” he continues, looking over at me. “It isn’t the best.”
“I feel that way sometimes,” I say. “Like I’ll never be good enough.”
“What do you want to be good at?” he asks.
I think for a minute. “Writing,” I say, surprised I’ve said it out loud. “It’s kind of a dream of mine.”
He smiles. “Really? That’s so cool. Why do you love writing?”
I chew on my lip for a minute, tasting the cold, before I answer. “In real life, it’s hard to really see through someone else’s eyes. But I can do that when I’m writing. I can be in their head, seeing what they see, hearing what they hear. And sometimes I notice things. Little things.” I point to a spot above center field. “Like that perfectly white line across the blue sky means there was a plane there not long ago. I wonder where it’s going and who is on board.”
Alex looks up to find the streak in the sky. “I didn’t even see that.”
“Most people don’t.” I shrug. “I can’t really explain it, but my brain just wants to put words around all those things.”
“I’d love to read one of your stories.” Alex must sense my reluctance, because then he adds, “If it’s okay.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Sorry. I like to write stories, but I’m not very good at letting other people read them. I want to … but … ” I look out at the pitcher’s mound and change the subject. “What do you like about baseball?” I ask him. “It seems like a lot of pressure to play that well in front of such a huge crowd.” Kind of like showing my writing to the world, I think. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Being a catcher is probably the most dangerous position on the field,” Alex says thoughtfully. “Not only do you have the ball flying at you like a streak of lightning, but you also have that batter standing just inches away from your outstretched glove. I don’t think about it anymore. It’s all instinct. I squat down behind the plate, and somehow I know exactly how much space I need between me and that swinging bat. I know exactly where to move my glove when I see the ball leave the pitcher’s hand.” He looks over at me. “It’s instinct and lots of practice.”
“And tale
nt.”
He laughs. “But I make mistakes. A lot of them. Sometimes I get a little too close to the batter, and when the bat swings around it catches my glove.” He shrugs. “But I know I’m going to put that hand right back in that glove, squat down, and keep playing no matter how much it hurts.”
I feel myself relax, leaning back against the bench behind me. Before I know it, I say, “I volunteered to be in charge of the prom publicity. Like posting to the Hornet and stuff.”
He stares at me, the snow cone halfway to his mouth; then he says, “That sounds like fun.”
But he says it in a way that doesn’t seem like he thinks it’s fun at all, and then he changes the subject really fast. “Are you working at the library tomorrow? I thought I’d drop by before practice and check out another audiobook … ”
I nod and take another slushy bite, glancing down at Alex’s dirt-covered cleats. I don’t tell him he can download the books from the library’s website because I really want to see him again. Withholding that information probably breaks some kind of librarian code or something, but I’m not sorry.
“Great,” he says. “I’ll see you then. And, um … ”
I can feel him looking at me. I glance at him, waiting.
“Would you like to go out with me on Saturday night?”
I suck in my breath so hard, I almost choke. The lobes of his ears are pink again, but his eyes don’t look away.
I cough a little, then gather myself together. A smile spreads across my face.
“Yes,” I say. “I would love to go out with you.”
“I could get you a job at Sephora,” Nikki says. It’s Friday afternoon and we’re walking through the school parking lot together. “That way you’d always have enough makeup in advance of all your dates with Alex.”
I laugh. “So far it’s only one date with Alex,” I point out. My stomach jumps. That date—our first real date—is happening tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night!
“Well, Sephora’s more fun than the library,” Nikki argues.
The new Sephora just opened out by the highway and Nikki is the makeover queen at the front desk. I hate the stereotype that girls can’t like makeup and books, because I love both. I just love books more.
“I adore working at the library,” I say. She rolls her eyes at me. Nikki has never understood my passion for books and writing. It’s the one thing she and I don’t agree on. I’ve tried to explain that books are as meaningful to me as fashion is to her, but she just can’t see it.
Every summer, when I was growing up, the library had those contests to encourage kids to read. I finished all my books before most got through the first one. I came back so often the librarian finally offered me a job. At first it was a part-time job, just volunteering, but it soon became a paying one when I turned sixteen last summer. I do my homework during the slow times and they are really flexible with my hours. But the best thing is to be surrounded by those walls and walls of books. It makes me smile to think of it.
“Is Alex coming to the library this afternoon?”
“Maybe,” I say, but I think yes. The thought is enough to make my toes curl up inside my boots. My smile turns into a huge grin.
“You got it bad,” Nikki says. I don’t disagree because, well, it’s true. And Nikki knows it. There isn’t anything I can hide from her. She knows all my secrets. And I know all of hers. Or at least I thought I did until Jake came along. I never saw that one coming.
We stop to wait for a car to drive out of the lane in front of us. Heather is at the wheel, and she waves at us like we are best friends. Then Nikki and I keep walking, weaving in and out of the cars still left in the spaces.
I say, “I don’t even know what this is going to be with me and Alex yet.” Which is true. I only have the memory of our eating snow cones together, and then my hopes for tomorrow night.
“But you like him?” She knows I do; she just wants me to say it out loud.
“Yes.”
“Boyfriend kind of like him? Or go-to-the-movies-and-hold-hands kind of like him?”
“How do I know?” I ask, fumbling for my keys in my bag. “Nothing has happened yet. No movies. No hand holding … ”
“No kissing?” she asks.
My heart skips a beat. “Nothing.”
We stop at Nikki’s car, a silver Prius with a big dent in the back passenger door. She opens the driver’s door and slides in, turning on the engine. “Yet,” she says, grinning at me.
I know I’m blushing as I wave good-bye. Then I keep walking across the parking lot toward my beat-up Chevy truck.
Jayla and Taylor are standing by the driver’s side of my truck, looking down at their phones. These two have never been this chummy before, but with the prom queen competition coming up, they seem to be inseparable. I guess it’s all about keeping friends close, but frenemies even closer. The prom campaign has kicked into high gear and neither leading candidate is willing to leave the other alone to implement sneaky, vote-swaying tricks.
The girls ignore me completely, but they’re blocking my driver’s door, so I’m going to have to say something. My truck looks really bad next to Taylor’s red Volkswagen convertible, but at least it’s reliable.
“So, spill. Did you vote yes or no for Raylene?” I hear Taylor ask Jayla when I get closer.
“It’s supposed to be a secret ballot,” Jayla snaps. She finally looks up and acknowledges me. “Hey.”
“Hey. Sorry.” I point at my truck. “I need to get to work.”
“Have you voted yet?” Taylor asks me. She holds up her phone to show Worthy on the screen.
“No,” I say, which is half true. I haven’t voted on Raylene and Ross. But I did vote on Taylor and Liam. I helped her win the overwhelmingly positive endorsement of their relationship. The relationship that is apparently now over.
Taylor glances back down at her phone. “I get why everyone has an opinion, but why was Raylene selected? Seriously?”
“What’s wrong with Raylene?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Taylor tells me. “She’s just not in the same league as … ” She pauses and looks sideways at Jayla. “… us.”
Potential prom queens? Chosen ones?
“Raylene has just as much of a right to be on that app as any of us,” Jayla says. I realize how crazy it is to be arguing for an opportunity to be judged by the whole school.
“You’re right. You’re always right. Has anyone ever told you how annoying it is?” Taylor tucks one long strand of blonde hair behind one ear and taps away at her phone. “There. I voted.”
“Good,” Jayla says, but I’m not sure it is. I would bet Taylor voted no. It’s clear she doesn’t deem Raylene worthy.
Taylor finally looks up at me, studying my face. “You’re so much prettier when you smile, Linden. You should try it.”
Evidently, I’m an annoying know-it-all and have a face that says I don’t care about anything. It’s not a surprise. I should be used to it by now. My grandmother used to say the sun came out when I smiled. It was a much nicer way of pointing out that my usual expression is pretty solemn. My brother shares the exact face-altering smile as I do—but no one insists he use it constantly.
Taylor doesn’t know anything about me. I care. I care a lot.
I plaster on a smile and point at the door of my truck. “Excuse me?” I remind them.
They shuffle out of the way—barely—and I squeeze by.
“Will you vote yes or no?” Taylor asks me, and my hand stops midway to the door handle.
“I don’t know,” I admit, though what I really should say is It’s none of your business.
“Do it now,” Taylor says. “I’ll show you how.”
“It’s okay. I can figure it out,” I say, pulling open the door to the truck. The guilt burns up into my cheeks, but I don’t admit I already know how to use the app.
Taylor steps in between me and the driver’s seat. “Let’s see.”
“Fine.” I take
out my phone and pull up Worthy. Neither of them seems surprised I already have it downloaded. I click the heart under the picture and hold it up for them to see. “Happy?”
Taylor makes a face. “Are you sure that’s the way you want to vote?”
“Positive,” I say, and climb up into the truck, slamming the door behind me.
It’s a particularly slow day at the circulation desk, so Kat tells me her dream of joining a roller derby team and I tell her I want to enter the writing contest. She doesn’t laugh or tell me I’m crazy. She just says, “Cool. Your main character can be in the roller derby, and her name can be Kat Killzem.”
I roll my eyes but secretly think it is awesome, and I write it down in my journal for some future character reference.
Everything about Kat is smooth and dark, from the top of her jet-black hair to the tip of her black motorcycle boots. When she isn’t at the library, she hangs out with other übercool girls and watches her boyfriend, Teo, play the drums in a local jazz band called Serendipity. I heard the band a couple of times on Saturday nights at the local coffee shop, and they’re great.
There are rumors that Kat is an elite computer hacker and already has a full-ride scholarship to MIT. It could definitely be true, but there are a lot of rumors about Kat. She is totally the kind of person I could write a story about. A story that would be edgy and brazen and wildly popular.
The front door of the library finally opens and I look up hopefully. It’s just Mr. Hooper. He comes to the library every day about now to look at magazines before the Cyber Senior class starts. I look back down, picking up my pen and drawing a big circle in the margin of my journal.
Where’s Alex?
Cyber Seniors is a group that connects teenage mentors with older people who want to learn about using the internet. Kat saw a documentary about two sisters who began Cyber Seniors for a school project. She talked Mrs. Longshore, the librarian, into trying it out in our library. It makes me feel good to see how happy Mr. Hooper is to Skype with his grandkids in New York, and Mrs. Pirtle’s YouTube video on rose gardening already has ten views. Most of those views are from other Cyber Seniors, but she is still feeling stoked about the whole thing. I think that’s what the internet should be about. Not judging people’s significance with snarky comments. But I’m obviously in the minority.