He looked like he wanted to hug me or kiss me. Or something. I clutched the wide, tall bags against my chest and smiled, then kind of shrugged.
He took a step forward at the same time I stepped back. Then I scooted forward and we bumped toes.
Mr. Sheppard cleared his throat.
“Okay, then. Bye.” I fled for the house, opened the door and waved.
Damon and his dad pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the road. I headed upstairs, past the living room where Dad and Mark watched a football game and didn’t even notice me.
In my room I dropped my bag on the floor and laid the paintings carefully on the desk. Then I saw a letter from Kitty on the bed. Front and back blazed with red block lettering.
“Very Important! Urgent! Open Immediately!”
CHAPTER 31
Dear Juliet,
I had the most awful dream last night. It was about you. Damon, too. (He’s really cute, by the way, if he actually looks like he did in my dream.)
In it you and Damon were going into a haunted house, maybe like the one you told me about. You were holding hands (smile!) and he opened the door for you. You let his hand drop when you walked in, then the door slammed shut, all by itself, with him still outside.
First important point: Don’t let go of his hand, okay?
Inside the house all these horrible, scary monsters were trying to get you. I can’t even tell you how awful and ugly they were. There was a vampire that didn’t have any legs, and it crawled around the floor trying to get a hold of your ankles. But you didn’t see it, and I kept screaming for you to run, but you didn’t actually know I was there. You kind of heard my voice, but couldn’t understand what I was saying.
Second important point: Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Listen harder.
Damon went all around the outside of the house, trying to get in, but all the doors and windows were boarded up. He got on the roof and broke a window. When he climbed inside, this huge, yellow snake with two heads knocked him down and almost killed him. But he stabbed it with a tree that he had in his pocket. (I know, that’s really weird. I don’t get that at all.)
He was trying to find you, but you just walked around and looked at things, totally clueless about the danger you were in.
Then the house started to fall down. It cracked down the center, in two pieces. You grabbed a lamp that was plugged into one wall and a picture frame hanging on the opposite wall, and tried to hold the house together. But the lamp’s cord came unplugged and the picture tore down the center.
Third important point: if that happens, grab hold of something stronger, okay?
Then the house collapsed and all the monsters got out and ran everywhere. Damon grabbed you just before a chunk of the roof fell on you, and he carried you away. (But he threw you over his shoulder. Not so romantic. If he ever picks you up, try to make sure he carries you in his arms. Sigh.)
I woke up totally scared to death, and I knew I had to tell you about it. I hope it doesn’t mean anything, and that everything’s okay there.
I’ve got a gazillion math problems to finish before school, so I have to go. Have a great week, and write back soon.
Love, Kitty
P.S. I loved the angel on the last letter. Can you do one with red hair sometime? And I’d still love to have the hawk picture, if you have time. Just asking.
I sat down at my desk to answer Kitty’s letter. When I finished, I did an envelope with the hawk in the tree, just like she’d asked for last time. When I finished it I got my smallest nib pen and did a tiny heart at the base of the hawk’s tree. I put Damon’s and my initials inside it.
Then I fell asleep with Damon’s hand wrapped around my wrist and his lips inches from mine.
* * * * *
The radio-alarm woke me Tuesday morning to snow. It floated down in fat, soft flakes and collected in the corners of the window. When the D.J. read the school closings I held my breath till he announced our county. Then I flipped off the radio and pulled the covers back up to my nose.
What a great birthday present.
Mom usually brought Mark and me breakfast in bed on our birthdays: hot chocolate, waffles or pancakes and bacon, orange juice. I waited for a long time, but finally my stomach grumbled and I couldn’t lie there anymore.
I grabbed Mom and Dad’s framed picture in its butcher-paper cover and took it downstairs, but no one else had gotten up yet. I laid it in the center of the kitchen table, and got out the juice and a frozen waffle.
Just as I sat down the phone rang. I jumped up to grab it off the hook before it woke anyone.
“Happy Birthday,” Damon said.
I smiled. “How’d you know?”
“Jimmy told me yesterday.”
Jimmy? “Really?”
“Did you hear there’s no school?”
“Mm-hmm.” The juice shriveled my tongue. I checked the carton. Two weeks past its date. I spit it out and dumped the rest into the sink. “I’ve never gotten a snow day on my birthday before.”
“Yeah. Winter hit really early, huh?”
The window over the sink had filled in completely white. “That’s a freaky lot of snow.”
“What are you going to do?”
I filled my glass with some water from the tap. “I don’t know yet.”
“Want to go for a snowmobile ride?”
“How many kinds of bikes and cars and stuff do you guys have?”
He laughed. “Maybe a few.”
“Don’t you need a license?”
“Nope.”
“Even on the road?”
“Nope.”
Cool. Totally cool.
“So?”
“Yeah. I’ll go.”
“Fifteen minutes?” he asked.
“No! I just got up. I’m not even dressed.”
“An hour, then?”
“Okay.”
Within forty minutes I finished my cold waffle, took a shower, dried my hair, and got dressed in Ginger’s cowl neck sweater and my black Olympics pants. I put on the little makeup I had, grabbed Ginger’s portrait and left a note on the table with the painting for Mom and Dad, then I snuggled under Nonnie’s afghan in the living room window seat and watched for Damon.
Snow settled over the driveway and yard, over everything, soft as fog. It hid every bump and ditch under a blanket of frozen froth. A drift piled up under the window, and crystalline flakes clung to the glass as though etched there by the hands of miniature, elven engravers.
I heard Damon before I saw him and wondered why guys like their vehicles so loud. He flew down the street trailing plumes of snow that sparkled in the white light like powdered diamonds. He came all the way up to the door, and I locked it behind me as I went outside.
“You’re still carrying those around?” he asked.
“This is the one for Ginger. Is it okay if we stop by her house? I’m not really sure how else I’m going to get it to her.”
“If you know where she lives.”
The snowmobile felt a lot like a motorcycle, but more solid, and we didn’t tip quite as much around the corners. I held the painting between us with one hand and reached around it to grasp Damon’s coat with the other.
“Warm enough?” he called back.
“I’m okay.”
We got to Ginger’s neighborhood and had to make a wide circle around a car, buried in snow, half on and half off the road. We turned onto her street and found her house. I meant to leave the painting under the awning outside her front door, but her sister Kelli came out just as we pulled up. She stared at us as she shook the snow from the morning newspaper. I took off my helmet.
She smiled at me, but not in the most friendly way. “Juliet,” she said. “From the midway.”
“Hey, Kelli.” I stepped off the snowmobile. “I just wanted to drop something off for Ginger.”
“Your cowardly brother couldn’t do it himself?”
I wince
d. “It’s not from him. It’s from me.”
Ginger appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a pink flannel robe over darker pink pajamas. “Juliet? What are you doing here?”
I walked up to the door and handed her the package. “It’s the drawing I did of you. That day. I finished it, and I just wanted you to have it.” She’s going to think I’m a complete moron. “Just kind of, you know, to say thanks. And I’m sorry. That Mark’s such a jerk.”
Kelli snorted.
Ginger cinched her robe tighter, then leaned to the side and looked around me. “Is that him?” she whispered. “Damon?”
I bit my lower lip to squelch an insanely stupid grin and nodded.
“Bring him inside,” she said. “I want to meet him.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. We’re all up. Mom’s got a huge pan full of hot chocolate on. She always makes a gallon.”
I waved to Damon and he shook his head. I waved again and he took off his helmet.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Kelli didn’t even bother to whisper. “Holy smokes, that’s a cute boy.”
“He’s fourteen, Kelli,” Ginger told her.
Kelli tucked the paper under her arm and headed inside. “Even so.”
“We’re invited in,” I told him.
He looked at Ginger. “You sure?”
“Please,” she said.
Damon turned off the snowmobile, smacked his hand on a red button at the top of the handlebars, then took the key out and stuck it in his coat pocket. We followed Ginger inside.
The house smelled amazing. Sausage and syrup, coffee and chocolate. “Are you celebrating something?” I asked.
“Just a day off. And that everyone’s home. Dad’s skipping work today, too.”
She led us into the kitchen where her other two sisters sat at a big table on the other side of a long counter lined with barstools. Her mom flipped a pancake at the stove and her dad sat on a stool and snapped open the paper.
Ginger put the package in the middle of the table and introduced us to her parents and to Marty and Holly.
“Sit down,” her dad said, and the girls moved over to give us two places next to each other at the table. “So you’re Mark’s sister?”
I cringed and nodded.
“Fear not,” he said. “We don’t believe in guilt by association.”
“I just want to say, for the record, that Mark’s an idiot,” I told them. “He will never do better than Ginger.”
“Didn’t I tell you she was sweet?” Ginger said, and put two cups of hot chocolate in front of Damon and me. She picked up the portrait. “Can I open it?”
I nodded and lifted the cup to my lips. Rich, creamy chocolate laced with cinnamon and clove flooded my mouth and warmed my entire body.
Ginger unwound the twine from the envelope’s flap and slid out the portrait. “Oh my gosh. Juliet. This is so beautiful.” She turned it around to show everyone else, and they made the hugest deal out of it.
Her mother wiped her hands on her apron and took the painting. “That looks exactly like you. Juliet, you’re a remarkable artist.”
Ginger propped the portrait up on the sideboard and her mom brought all this food to the table. She didn’t even ask if we’d eaten yet, but slid plates and silverware in front of us. We feasted on pancakes, sausages, baked apples, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Holly talked about her job at the hospital, how she and the other nurses were lobbying for eight-hour instead of twelve-hour shifts. The discussion went from school to skiing, to the world series, to Reaganomics, to whether the Chrysler corporation would survive the year, to Knight Rider and Remington Steele.
“I’m stuffed,” I said, and leaned back in my chair. “Thank you, Mrs. Jacobson. We didn’t really mean to come for breakfast.”
“What’ve you got planned for the day?” she asked.
“It’s Julie’s birthday,” Damon said.
Ginger’s dad ate the last bite of sausage on his plate and looked at Damon. “What are you doing for it?”
“He didn’t even know till yesterday,” I said.
Damon just smiled and shrugged.
Ginger’s dad grinned. “That looks like a man with a plan to me.”
I glanced at Damon. “Just out for a snowmobile ride for now.”
“Those look like so much fun,” Marty said.
“You’ve never been on one?” Damon asked her.
“No.” She hesitated, then smiled really big. “Will you take me for a ride, too?” she asked, then she turned to me. “Would you mind?”
Damon looked at me.
They’re asking me?
“Me too?” Ginger asked, followed by Kelli and Holly.
Then everyone in Ginger’s family ran upstairs to get dressed, so Damon and I cleared the table and put the dishes in the sink.
“You don’t mind this?” I asked him.
“Nah. We take turns with cooking and cleanup at home. I do this all the time.”
I rinsed syrup off a plate and down the drain. “I meant giving out rides.”
“Absolutely not. That’s a blast.” He dropped the forks and knives into the sink. “As long as you don’t mind.”
“Why would I mind?” A piece of pancake clung to a plate, and I picked it off with my fingers. “It’s not my snowmobile.”
“No. But it’s your driver.”
“My driver?” I asked and looked up at him.
He shrugged and reached around me to turn off the water. “Yeah. I’m yours.”
Fizziness exploded everywhere, and I had to look away before he saw it all over my face.
He’s mine. He’s mine. Mine, mine, mine.
Mrs. Jacobson came into the kitchen again. “Oh, you two stop it. I’ve got all day to clean up.” She shooed us outside, along with Ginger and her sisters.
We filed out into the snow that continued to fall like fuzzy tufts of cotton. It filled in our footprints and piled up an inch thick on top of the snowmobile. Damon dusted it off, climbed on and reached in his pocket for the key. We five girls circled around the front of him, and everyone sorted out who got to go in what order. Then Kelli looked across the front yard at the next house.
“Shh!” she hissed through a huge smile. “Look!”
We all turned around.
“Oh my gosh!” Marty squealed behind her hand.
Damon grabbed my hand and pulled me closer. “It worked,” he whispered.
Mr. Tollin stood at the threshold of Miss Downey’s front door. His thumb brushed her cheek, and his fingers lay against her neck.
* * * * *
“It looked just like your drawing!” Damon exclaimed and leaned forward on his elbows. “Exactly.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s what happens.” I wrapped my hands around my mug, took a drink of hot chocolate and looked around. Not too many people ventured out to the diner this morning; besides us the waitress only served a couple of truckers. She refilled their coffees, then put the check for our drinks on the edge of the table.
“You can draw anything you’ve ever seen, and make it happen.”
Was that a question?
“Is there anything you can’t draw?”
That day in art class came to mind, when I wanted to do Damon and me on the raft but I couldn’t get it to come out. “Not usually.”
Damon continued to ask questions about what he called my gift, but my mind only wanted to play and replay stuff about him. The way he looked as he tore through the snow with Ginger and then each of her sisters behind him. How solid he felt when I held onto him over snowdrifts and down icy slopes. The breathless thrum of my heart whenever he looked right at me.
“Hello?” He leaned down to catch my eyes.
I blinked hard to clear from my head the memory of my hand cradled in his. “Huh?”
“Where are you?”
“Sorry.” I tucked a stray curl behind my ear and looked away before his eyes turned me into a puddle of trembling jello again.
Outside the window a blue Buick pulled into the diner’s parking lot.
“Oh, crud.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That’s my mom.”
How did she find me? I took a deep breath and prepared to defend myself. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m having hot chocolate with my boyfriend. I’m fourteen now. I’m not a kid anymore.
“No snow on her car,” Damon observed. “Did your parents clean out their garage?”
“Not that I know of.”
Her door opened and she stepped out. She wore a blue dress and her rhinestone pumps.
Another car, a dark green Jeep, pulled up next to her. The driver stepped out and smiled at her across his hood.
I shrieked a little and both truckers turned to look at me.
“What?” Damon asked.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
Jack Pierson followed my mom into the diner.
* * * * *
“I want to go,” I told Damon.
He took a few bills out of his pocket and put them on top of the check.
“No,” I said. “I want to stay. I want her to see me.”
“What’s she going to say?”
What could she say?
What would I say?
I stared past Damon at the restrooms. Bells jingled as the diner door opened. Laughter.
“Julie?” Damon reached over and grabbed my hand.
Frozen, I gripped Damon’s hand and took another drink.
“Stay or go? Last chance,” he said.
The waitress called from behind the counter. “Sit anywhere you like, darlin’s.”
“Window or booth?” Jack asked my mother. He probably had his hand on her back.
Damon’s jaw tightened. “He just looked over here,” he whispered.
“He saw you that day you rode me home. He was in my house.”
“Is that a problem?”
Only if I want to keep you a secret.
“‘The truth shall set you free’, right?” I stood up and pulled him along with me. “Come on.”
Jack and my mother sat at a table near the window. Jack’s eyes bore right through me, and he wore that same half-smile that could mean anything. I laced my fingers through Damon’s and walked up to their table.
“Good morning, Mom. Jack.”
Mom’s eyes looked like two hard-boiled eggs with overcooked turquoise yokes in their middles. “Juliet?” She scooted a little toward the window and looked around. She looked at Jack, then up at me, then out the window, then back at me. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”