Bittersweet

by Sarah Ockler

  Sacrebleu! Verb conjugations and future tense! I totally forgot. I chance a sidelong look at Dani, desperately seeking confirmation that we’re in this big yellow failboat together, BFFs unite hoo-rah, but she’s already got her head down, pen scribbling frantically across the page.

  So much for solidarity.

  “The only way I’ll pass French is if I keep bringing cupcakes,” I say to Dani as we head to lunch later. “I totally forgot about the test today.”

  “Cupcakes?” Dani laughs. “Not to sound all après l’école spéciale, but you could … I don’t know … study?”

  “I could … I don’t know … punch you right now?”

  “Don’t hate on me for being prepared. I tried to quiz you at work yesterday, remember?”

  “By translating your pirate fantasy? Not helpful.” I grab a tray from the stack in the lunch line and slide it along the metal rails. “Sorry. I’m just distracted with skating stuff.”

  I don’t want to fail French or any other class, but with just over six weeks before the Capriani Cup, I have to focus on training, and right now, parlez-vous-français-ing can’t do jacques for my on-ice game.

  “Speaking of distractions,” she says, “hockey hottie, twelve o’clock.”

  Will sneaks into line behind me, smiling at a shy freshman girl who gladly lets him cut.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to appear cool and calm in the wake of Saturday’s touchy-feely fest and ensuing Kara weirdness. “Great game this weekend.”

  “That was, like, off the hook crazy, right?” He loads up his tray with a double order of fries and something that looks like cheese sticks and/or human fingers. Desperate to avoid anything French, I skip the fries and go for a turkey sandwich and carrot sticks.

  “You guys should sit with us,” he says after we pay. Dani and I follow him to a table by the window. A handful of the guys are there, and they shuffle around to accommodate us. Dani ends up between Will and Frankie Torres, with me and Josh side by side across from them. All the boys are still glowing from Friday’s win, and when Josh inches his chair closer to mine and smiles, my stomach fizzes again.

  Brain to stomach: We talked about this! Knock it off!

  “Carrots?” Josh inspects my tray. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re on a diet,” Frankie says. “Because that’s some messed-up stuff right there.”

  “I’m not on a diet,” I say. “Just boycotting France. Besides, carrots are good for your eyes.”

  “So get glasses, Pink,” Rowan says. “Baumler’s a four-eyed freak and we keep him around.”

  “Look who’s talking, carrot top.” Will bounces a fry off of Rowan’s forehead and the rest of the guys crack up.

  “I totally need glasses,” Dani says. “I can barely read that crap Mr. Rooney writes on the board. I’m all, cosine what?”

  “I have Rooney eighth period. I’m failin’ that class,” Frankie says. “I’ll probably be in summer school. Math blows.”

  “At least you can see what you’re failing,” Dani says.

  I point to my food. “Have some carrots. They’re good for your eyes.”

  “Then you have some fries.” Josh nudges his tray toward me. “They’re good for your … I don’t know. They’re just good.”

  “Do any of you guys have Keller?” Will flips through a black-and-yellow CliffsNotes booklet. “I flunked his Scarlet Letter quiz and now he’s making me do an essay on themes. Man, I hate that book. Man, I hate themes.”

  “I have Keller sixth period,” I say. “I like the book. Hester’s a tough broad.”

  “You would say something like that, Pink,” Amir says.

  I hold up a carrot and point it at his chest. “Don’t make me bust a carrot in your ass, Jordan. Hester’s my girl.”

  Will looks at me as everyone laughs. “Good. Since you’re so in love with her, you can help. You around Friday night?”

  “I think so. I should totally charge you, though.”

  “I’ll give you whatever you want,” Will says. The boys roar, fries flying everywhere.

  “I’d read the fine print on that deal if I were you,” Josh says.

  Dani taps my foot under the table. “We were gonna check out that ballerina movie Friday night.”

  “We’ll see it over break.” I pop one of Josh’s fries into my mouth. Yum. Boycott of all things French officially over.

  “No ladies’ night, then?”

  “Hold up,” Amir says. “You guys have ladies’ night?”

  Dani shoots me a look. “We used to have them. Then you guys came around and started hijacking all the Fridays.”

  “How do I score an invite?”

  “I don’t know,” she teases. “We may have a spot opening up soon.”

  “I’ll see the movie with you,” Frankie says. “Ballerinas are hot.”

  Dani smiles. “You’re on.”

  Something buzzes next to my right leg, and Josh digs the phone from his pocket. The caller ID confirms my suspicions: Abby’s cell. Josh sighs and pushes out his chair.

  “I’ll catch up with you guys later. Hud, eat the rest of those fries. Seriously. Oh, and let me know what you thought of the music mix.” He wriggles his thumbs in the international sign for “text me later” and ducks out into the windowed hallway that branches off from the cafeteria, taking my fizzy stomach with him.

  Who is this Abby girl, and why is she always calling him during school? Doesn’t she have her own classes to go to? Or is she in college? Out of college? Or … oh no! What if she’s some kind of dyed-blond middle-aged cougar ex-stripper nympho with a smoker’s cough who wants to teach him a thing or two about—

  “See, this is why I never answer my phone.” Frankie reaches for Josh’s abandoned fries. “It’s like she’s got the boy LoJacked.”

  Rowan punches him in the arm. “You don’t answer your phone because no one ever calls your broke fugly ass.”

  “It’s better that way, trust me.” Amir nods at Dani and me. “No offense, you two, but females are trouble. Uh, don’t tell Ellie I said that.”

  “I don’t know, ninety-nine. Some of them are worth it.” Will stares at me from across the table, Mr. Razzle-Dazzle himself.

  “Oh, barf.” Dani piles her lunch scraps onto a spent tray. “I’ll see you guys later. I have to check on some stuff for photo class. Text me about Friday,” she says to Frankie. “You better not stand me up. I’ll LoJack you for real.”

  She waves bye and joins one of her photography friends at a nearby table, leaving me alone with the partial wolf pack. The boys trade insults and jokes and food for the rest of the period, but Josh doesn’t return. He’s still on the phone, still pacing the windowed hallway. I can’t hear their conversation, but I watch him through the glass; his face is tight, the lines of his jaw set. He runs a hand over his hair and looks up at the ceiling, as if to ask some unnamed god for intervention.

  I look across the room at Dani, but she’s already got me in her sights, totally busting me for spying on Josh. I shrug and give her a half smile, but she turns away, folding herself back into the conversation at her table as if I’m not even here.

  Amir is totally right. High school girls, French girls, dye-job cougars, adulteresses from the Puritan days—the lot of us are nothing but trouble.

  With the promise of a free cupcake at Hurley’s every Saturday for the rest of the year, I secure permission from Principal Ramirez to hang a few of those cupcake ads around school. After my government class at the end of the day, I stop by my locker for the flyers and the masking tape Mom shoved in my bag this morning.

  But before Operation Mortification commences, someone taps my shoulder, and not all that gently, either.

  “Hey,” Kara says when I turn around. “We really need to talk.”

  Perfect. Apparently, since she ran out of the party after catching me and Will together, she’s miraculously rediscovered her vocal cords. Judging by the crazed look in her eyes, she spent the
rest of the weekend prepping for this confrontation.

  I loop the roll of tape over my wrist and hug the flyers to my chest. “I’m kind of busy right now, so—”

  “I’m serious,” she says. “I wanted to call you this weekend, but I don’t have your cell number anymore, and …” She trails off.

  I turn away from her to close my locker, but she beats me to it, hand slamming against the door. Kara’s got me locked down, her arms framing my head, our noses almost touching when I face her again. Some dude in the hallway holds up his cell camera and asks if we’re gonna kiss.

  “We need to straighten out a few things about you and Will,” she says, ignoring our audience.

  The presumption shakes me out of my stupor. “First of all, there is no ‘me and Will,’” I say with more confidence than I feel. “And last I heard, there was no ‘you and Will,’ either. So remind me why you’re all up in my face?”

  “Kiss her!” Someone shouts from the steadily gathering crowd.

  She drops her arms and sighs, but doesn’t put any space between us. “I don’t think you realize what you’re—”

  “Kara, unless you guys got back together in the last hour, this conversation is over.”

  The muscles in her jaw clench, her face turning red and blotchy. I’ve never thought of Kara as a bruiser, but other than Friday night at the concessions stand, we haven’t spoken in three years. What do I know about her anymore? That her best friend bailed on her and never explained or apologized? That a few months later she caught said best friend making out with her soon-to-be boyfriend in the closet at some stupid party? And that three nights ago a near-identical scenario played itself out in Luke’s living room?

  Shared history and risk of suspension aside, I know what I’d want to do.

  “I have to go.” I look down, unable to meet her eyes again.

  “I can’t believe you!” She swipes the flyers from my arms. A snowbank of white papers slips across the hall, lost in the boot-slush undertow of the crowd. “Whatever you think you’re doing with the Wolves, you better forget—”

  “I know you didn’t just threaten my best friend.” Dani appears at my side, calm and quiet, steady, her eyebrows raised in defiance as she takes another step toward Kara. “Because I don’t think you’re that kind of girl, so I probably misunderstood you. Right?”

  Kara looks from Dani to me and back again, eyes glazed with the same tears gathering in mine. She shakes her head and slinks away, and when the crowd finally scatters, Dani scoops up the cupcake flyers, takes my hand, and leads me to the exit.

  Dani passes me a cinnamon-smelling Mocha Morris from Sharon’s Café, the cat-themed coffeehouse near school, and leans against the bench at Bluebird Park. On this cheery, once-a-decade winter anomaly, the sky is the color of sapphires and the entire world is covered in diamond dust, snow sparkling under the rare, white sun. A yellow lab bounds toward us and I lean forward to scratch behind his ears; I have to hold my drink above his head to keep him from slobbering it all up.

  “Feel better?” Dani asks.

  “A little.” I sip the mocha and let the hot liquid coat my insides. “I don’t know why Kara still gets to me.”

  “I don’t know why she’s being such a bitch. No offense, but was she always so … you know.” Dani swipes the air with a cat-claw motion. “Rawr! No wonder you ditched her.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I … it was all my fault.” I take a deep, icy breath. There’s something about Bluebird that forces me to tell the truth. Maybe it’s the trees, stripped of their leafy coats, naked and gray as bone. Or the dogs, living only for right now, running when they feel like running, chasing one another when they’re in the mood for company, no thought wasted on drama and cover-ups. Maybe it’s just this place, made sacred by our regular picnic pilgrimages in the summer, a safe haven whose hills I wouldn’t dare pollute with lies and schemes.

  I tell Dani the whole story about the Empire Games and the party with me and Will, how Kara liked him first, how I was more excited about finally getting my first kiss than I was about staying behind that unspoken line that best friends—even ex–best friends—are never supposed to cross.

  Dani wasn’t the one I hurt, but it still feels like a confession. Guilt creeps over my skin as I speak of my past failures as a best friend, and for the first time in the history of our relationship, I can’t look her in the eye.

  “I deserve it,” I say. “I was a total jerk.”

  “Honestly?” Dani squeezes my knee. “I think you’ve beat yourself up for too long. I’m not saying it wasn’t messed up—if you pulled that stuff with me, I’d kick your ass. The point is, it happened. It’s over. You were both younger, and you had a lot of bad stuff going on. She got together with Will and then she dumped him anyway.” Dani sips her mocha, kicking at the snow beneath our bench. “Whatever happened to forgive and forget? All that happy holidays, give peace a chance, can’t we all just get along stuff?”

  “I never told her how sorry I was. Never even tried to explain. I wanted to, but … I lost it. I couldn’t. And now it’s been so long …”

  “You could try to talk to her, though. I mean, I’m not telling you what to do. Just that if it’s really bothering you, and you want to tell her you’re sorry—”

  “No. Sometimes it’s, like, too little too late.” I think back to that day with the cheetah bra, the drive home from Luby Arena with Mom and Dad and all that unspoken tension, the endless shouting match that exploded as soon as they thought Bug and I were asleep. I think back to the days that followed, my father’s bags piled by the door like some cheesy brokenhearted country song. The phone call that attempted to explain why this was better for everyone. The news of his planned move out west, the fairy-tale promises that we’d see each other for holidays and vacations and all the important stuff in between. The e-mails and blogs, detailing his perfect new life. And never once did I hear an apology. Would “sorry” have made any difference? Does it ever? It’s just a word. One word against a thousand actions.

  A springer spaniel nudges my knee, cocking his head as if he’s waiting to hear my rationalizations, too. I scratch his ears and swirl the hot liquid in my cup until a thin curl of steam rises from the hole in the lid.

  “I have to nail that scholarship, Dani.” My voice breaks when I say it, but I realize now how crucial it is, here in this place of truth on a bench beneath the trees. “Do you get it now? Why I have to focus on stuff with Will and the team? I have to keep training. I have to win. It’s my way out. Everywhere I look in this town, everyone I see, it just reminds me of the biggest screwup of my life.”

  “The Empire Games?” she asks. “Kara?”

  “That stuff, yeah, but even what happened before. I’m the one that showed my mom the bra. She must’ve already known Dad was cheating, but that’s what made it real. I knew. And the second I dropped it on her dresser, she couldn’t deny it anymore. Why didn’t I keep pretending for her? Maybe they’d still be together …” I shake my head and look over the path that leads to the silver maples on the western edge of the park. Their pale branches bend toward one another in a delicate archway, narrow and knobby like finger bones encased in ice. A cold breeze rolls through and the trees shift soundlessly, hardly moving at all.

  Dani follows my gaze across the bright white park, eyebrows furrowing into jagged, thoughtful lines. “It wasn’t the bra, Hud. Come on. Even if your mom never saw it, she had to know what was going on. You said it yourself. Your dad was cheating on her. Things were already messed up, maybe for a long time before that. It’s not your fault.”

  “I know it’s not my fault that he cheated. Just that he left.”

  “No, that doesn’t—”

  “You know what I remember most about that day? It wasn’t the bra, or even how pathetic my parents looked in the stands. It was what my dad said on the drive home. He kept telling me not to worry, that there’d be another chance. But it was the way he said it. Like he wasn’t really talkin
g about skating. It was like he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t the end of our family, even though he obviously wanted out. And I kept thinking, all the way home while Mom wasn’t saying anything, and all night when I crawled into Bug’s bed and covered his ears so he wouldn’t hear them fighting … I kept thinking that if I’d stuck it out, if I’d just done my best and won that event, that maybe it would’ve given my father something to root for. A reason to stay.”

  Dani and I sit in silence for a long time, watching a pair of dalmatians romp on the path, their tails flinging snow all around them.

  “Hudson, no one can be your reason to stay. You have to want it. Your father wanted to leave, and you guys couldn’t be his reason not to. Harsh, but there it is.”

  I down the last of my mocha. She’s right. And despite our friendship, despite my mother and my baby bird of a little brother, despite the town that’s all I’ve known my entire life, I want to leave, too. More than Will and hockey, more than the mistakes of my past, more than canceling ladies’ night, if anything can come between me and my best friend, it’s that.

  I look out at the craggy silhouette of the steel mill that’s always visible in the distance—the backdrop of our lives. Behind our bench, the wind shakes the branches of the oaks, and an icicle dives from the top bough, spiking the snow like a dagger.

  “We should head back,” Dani says, dropping her Sharon’s cup into the trash. “School locks up in an hour, and we’ve got cupcake flyers to hang.”

  I toss my cup in after hers and we head out, ducking under the ice-coated finger-bone trees, walking arm in arm as the snow crunches like hard candy under our boots.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dirty Little Secrets

  Vanilla cupcakes with crushed chocolate cookie crumbs, topped with Baileys cream cheese frosting and a light dusting of cocoa powder