Stork (3 page)

I turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door, and looked at the large clock on the wall. Six minutes after nine. Only three minutes had passed since I’d walked over to Hulda’s store. How was that possible? I put a hand to my muddled head; no angry red bumps, and the hat was gone. I glanced back across the street through the still-open door. The fabric shop was dark. I was either going crazy or had just had an up-close-and-personal with a coven of witches or a gaggle of Stork ladies. Given a choice, I’d take crazy.

An old junker of a truck came belching down the road and pulled into a parking spot in front of Afi’s shop, the Norse Falls General Store. I noticed the apples in the back of the cab and watched as a guy, lean and lanky, unfolded his long legs from under the steering wheel. Though it was a bitterly cold evening, he wore only a T-shirt.

I stepped back outside and crossed my arms. “You’re late.”

“Sorry. Engine trouble.” He closed the car door with a back kick of a crusty boot, walked the few steps to the back of the truck, and lifted out a bushel of green apples.

Nothing like bad service to jar you back to reality. “You could have called.”

“No cell phone. Where you want ’em?”

“Afi wants them in the back storeroom.”

It took the guy about fifteen minutes to unload, all the while leaving a trail of mud across the plank floorboards I’d already swept. I used the time to work on an English assignment. When finished, he approached with papers to be signed. As he smoothed the crumpled sheets onto the counter in front of me, I could feel his stare.

“Aren’t you even going to say hi?” he finally asked, removing his cap and looking at me.

I clicked a ballpoint pen in and out. “Uh, sure. Hi.” He continued to look at me so intently that I became nervous that the rash or claw marks had returned. I fluffed my bangs over my forehead.

“You know me, right?”

I didn’t recognize him. Then again, the school was filled with flannel-clad, John-Deere-capped, boot-shod farm boys, one indistinguishable from the other. Though as he held his gaze, which was becoming pretty awkward, there was definitely something familiar about the guy. I’d always liked the unexpected combination of blue eyes and dark hair. Didn’t he go to my high school in California? No, that couldn’t be it. He looked like that guy from the TV show about the Valley. Or was it the one about that prep school? Jeez, did the guy never blink? Or was he the local kid who cut my mom’s grass over the summer? By this point, the guy had me so flustered, he was starting to look like a cross between my
afi,
Jack Sparrow, and Bono. There really should be a law, or at least some sort of strict etiquette, regarding lingering stares.

“Should I? I’m the new kid,” I said, knowing for certain that it was a singular distinction. “I barely know anyone.”

“But you know me.”

I was starting to pick up on his tone: a mixture of arrogance and entitlement. He was probably the prom king or quarterback. And I’d put money on him being one of Wade Ivarsson’s buddies. “Sorry,” I said, shrugging.

He didn’t seem satisfied with this response. “Seriously? You don’t know me?”

Man, this guy didn’t give up. “Am I in one of your classes?” I was not going to give him the satisfaction of guessing him as class president, or captain of whatever sport was king around here — probably bear wrestling or log rolling.

He seemed let down. “From before?”

Before what? I’d only been here a couple of months. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been in the store in that time. And I remembered that the kid who cut my mom’s grass was freckled and younger. “I doubt it. I haven’t been here since I was eleven.”

He looked at me with what could only be described as disappointment, though what I could have possibly done to him I couldn’t guess. “I must be confusing you with someone. And I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.” He extended his hand. It looked dirty, but I didn’t see any way around shaking it. “I’m Jack Snjosson.”

At least they taught manners alongside tractoring. “Kat.” I touched his warm fingers. “Ouch!” A surge of cold shot up my arm, leaving me with a sudden ache. He must have experienced a similar jolt because we both pulled our hands away quickly.

He looked up to the lines of exposed wiring stapled to the wall. “When’s the last time you guys had an electrician out here?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, rubbing my arm and looking suspiciously at the jerry-rigged fixture dangling just a few inches above my head.

“Something you may want to mention to your grandfather.”

“Yeah. I will,” I said, though the shock didn’t feel electric to me. I shivered. It got a little more awkward, because he was the one who should have offered an exit line. Yet he kept standing there, all rigid, like he expected something of me, like he was daring me to do it — whatever
it
was.

I sighed, trying to think of something to diffuse the tension. The guy was in such an internal headlock that it really did look like he might hurt himself. “Can I ask you something?” I pointed across the road with the pen. “Have you ever seen that fabric store open?”

He replaced his cap, tugged at its brim, and seemed to come out of his trance. “Kind of a sore subject around here.”

“Really? Why?”

“Old Hulda’s the only holdout among the merchants on Main. They all have an offer from some developer, but she won’t sell. And hasn’t been seen for months, so she’s holding the whole thing up. The developer won’t buy unless it’s a complete parcel. Why do you ask?”

I didn’t know how much to reveal. “I thought I saw a light on over there.”

“I hope not. I hope she foils the deal.”

I had heard my
afi
talking about “cashing out,” but he’d never mentioned an obstacle. “Why? Isn’t it what the shops want?”

“Not the rest of the town.”

“Why not? What’s the developer going to do with it?”

“They’re talking about leveling the whole downtown and building some big-box shopping center.”

“Sounds good to me.” Visions of Starbucks and Jamba Juice flitted across my lashes.

“There’re a lot of people who depend on selling to these businesses. My dad sells apples and cider to the store; my mom sells pies, and strudels, and jellies to the café. And it’s not just our family.” He lifted his none-too-clean hands in a sweeping motion. “Take a walk through the shops one day. Most everything is local. You won’t see too many ‘Made in China’ labels.” He was working himself into a lather, which I hoped he’d at least use to clean the grime from under his fingernails. “And besides, you wipe away a town, you wipe away a piece of history.”

“But if the stores aren’t making it, that’s just the way it goes. Right?” I knew I was grinding his gears, but, seriously, strudels and jellies? And apples were computers, period. “People like to see the quaint downtowns, sure, as they drive by in their SUVs on the way to the mall. It’s the natural selection of economics; if you can’t adapt, you go extinct.” I gestured toward the rear of the store. “Just take a look at the old abandoned railroad back there, if you need an example.”

That did it. He snatched the paperwork from the glass countertop. “What the hell would you know about it, anyway? If people like you had their way, the whole world would look like Disneyland.” He stomped more mud across the floor and slammed the front door on his way out.

I sat and replayed his remarks, chafing under his tone.
Testy, testy,
I thought. Someone needed a visit to the Happiest Place on Earth. I shook my head in bewilderment. What a night. First the Stork ladies, and then eye-locking, freezer-zapping, angry Apple Boy. I
so
had to get back to California.

The next morning, Wednesday, I felt chilled, even though a southerly had arrived with bags of balmy air and warm breezes. I hoped I wasn’t getting sick, though at least an illness would have explained the hallucinations from the previous night. Maybe something nasty and viral was a good thing — a symptom, not a psychosis. I dressed in jeans I’d slashed and then lined with polka-dot panels, a Michael Stars tank top layered over a thermal T, a silver Burberry quilted jacket, three black crosses, and a Cole Haan turquoise belt. I sat down at the kitchen island to a bowl of Kashi Nuggets and my mom’s scrutiny.

“A little warm for all those layers, don’t you think?”

“It’s cold in here,” I said. “Did you leave the fridge open all night?” For longer than I could remember, I’d had an almost pathological aversion to cold. Even in LA, I was known for my jackets and sweaters.

My mom wore a short-sleeved polo, cropped khaki pants, and Birkenstocks. My style gene definitely came from my dad’s side, the French side. From my mom, besides the blond hair, I got my ability to recite pi to the twentieth place, not necessarily a skill I would have chosen. “No. And it’s not cold.” She put a hand to my forehead. “Are you feeling OK?”

A loaded question. Technically I was miserable. Hated Minnesota. Hated school. Hated Kashi Nuggets, for that matter. I dumped a heaping spoonful of sugar onto my cereal. “Yes. Fine.”

I wasn’t. There was more on my what-sucks list. My seriously stupid hot and heavy with Wade Ivarsson, for one. I thought, with dread, about that night two weeks ago — the night before school started — at the abandoned quarry. Also making the list was the way he and his stuck-up girlfriend, Monique Tomlin, had since shunned me. The capper, of course, was my parents’ divorce. But why worry my mom, who had cried for three months after Dad moved out? Especially now that she was finally acting happy.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Of course.”

My mom moved back to the kitchen counter. She sliced open a package of beef and plopped it into a Crockpot. She added a bag of baby carrots, diced onions, wine, beef broth, and a heaping spoonful of paprika. Pot roast meant only one thing: Stanley. I was grateful for the warning.

“You’ll be home for dinner, honey, won’t you?” She ground pepper into the pot.

“Can’t. I’m helping Afi again tonight,” I lied.

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately. It’s not cutting into your studies, is it?”

“No.” Not a lie. Norse Falls High was, if nothing else, academic pabulum.

“Too bad. Stanley was hoping you’d be here.”

Then he was even more of a doofus than I thought he was, because I’d been giving him the stink eye ever since he burst into our lives like gum on the face. The whole thought of my mom having a boyfriend made me want to retch. For starters, it was way too soon after the divorce. Plus, Stanley was a bore and a nerd. But worst of all, he tethered her to Minnesota, which made a return to California unlikely. Stanley, therefore, was a sore subject.

As was the ink-still-drying-on-the-paper divorce. Ten days ago, my mom had to track my dad down at the San Francisco Airport to get him to sign the final papers. He had been on his way to Vancouver to meet with a project engineer for his newest venture. She had returned all flushed and in the mood to celebrate. My dad is an entrepreneur, and he can’t help it if his job requires him to travel a lot. The affair he definitely could have helped, and it still pissed me off, but he had said he was sorry about a thousand times. And he really was a good guy and a good dad. If I could forgive him, so could she. She just needed more time and space, without complications like Stanley.

My mom checked the clock on the stove. “Yikes. Gotta go. Eight o’clock lecture.” She kissed the top of my head and hurried out of the room with a jangle of keys and a rustling stack of graded papers. My mom is a mathematics professor who left a tenured position at UCLA to return to her hometown and the nearby podunk Walden College, in a post-divorce molting of everything she associated with southern California: crime, traffic, materialism, and my dad. And as much as I loved my mom — and knew she was heartbroken, and wanted her to be happy — I had never been, and was still not, on board with the move.

The back door slammed and I sighed, dreading another day of torture at school.

I dropped my satchel on the worktable and fell into a chair. English had been a joke. Social Science had been a snore. And the butchery Madame Klabber, the French teacher, committed to the French language was, as
ma grandmère
in Santa Monica would say,
un massacre
. At least fourth period was Design, the only class and teacher I found remotely interesting.

Ms. Bryant leaned against the front edge of her desk, crossing one booted calf over the other. Her look that day, a chunky brown belt over a rolled-at-the-sleeve tweed jacket, was one I’d be borrowing. I asked myself again how this smart, attractive native Chicagoan had settled in Norse Falls.

“Today I’ll be assigning partners for the semester project.” Everyone quieted down. You know a teacher’s cool when she doesn’t have to shout for attention. “We’ll be helping with the drama department’s spring production of
The Snow Queen
by assembling a portfolio of costume and set designs. Does everyone know the story by Hans Christian Andersen?”

I sat wondering how even a high-school play in this alpine village had to be Norse-themed and snowbound, when I heard my name called.