Icing on the Lake Page 2

  Of course, when I was a kid and I tried to give up gummy bears for a month, I’d failed miserably. When I tried to train to run a marathon in Duluth with my dad last year, I ended up running a 5K instead. And my last volunteer assignment? Well, I think coming here to take care of Brett was the only thing even close to qualifying.

  “Hello. Rink police at twelve o’clock,” Jones said under her breath.

  The guys I’d plowed into—two of them with the same official-looking team jacket—came into the shelter. They pushed and shoved each other on their way over to get hot chocolate, still wearing their skates but with skate guards on. They nearly flattened a small child against the wall, and they had the nerve to complain about me?

  As we eyed them over our hot cocoa, we all immediately, without discussing it, started talking a bit more loudly about where we were going for lunch. Yeah, we can be kind of immature when we want to be.

  I thought I saw Sean look over at me a few times, but by the time I’d glance over, he was always looking away. We were finally about to make genuine eye contact when Jones said, “Let’s make an exit.”

  “Right,” I said quickly. No point getting carried away. After all, hadn’t I had enough contact with the guy already today?

  Emma, Jones and Crystal got into Emma’s Explorer to follow us, while I walked to the minivan to drop off Gretchen and Brett before the girls and I headed out for our farewell New Year’s lunch and celebration. I walked beside the lake and noticed the group of guys had come back onto the ice and were buzzing around, racing each other.

  “Hey! Wait up!”

  I turned around and saw one of the guys from the crash incident. He was the one I’d sort of landed on top of when I fell, the one who had asked if I was okay.

  When he stopped, he sprayed me with ice shavings. He had to have been practicing that stop since birth to be that good at it. Like, you could have taken the shavings and sprinkled them on a gourmet dessert, that’s how good and fine and delicate they were.

  “You lost your hat,” he said.

  “I did?” I laughed, embarrassed, as I reached up to my head to confirm that, yes, I had completely lost my hat at some point. And also to confirm that, yes, despite the fact I’d lost my hat a while ago, I still had really bad hat hair. I think some of my hair was floating straight up in the air from static. “Yes. I guess I did,” I said.

  I reached for the hat, but before I could grab it from him he pulled it over my head, down to my ears, like a sock. I felt like a two-year-old being dressed by my mom.

  “You lost it out on the ice, when you fell,” he said.

  I felt my face turning bright red. “Thanks for bringing it to me. I would have really missed it tomorrow.”

  “Better luck next time,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “With Crack the Whip. The first thing you learn when you’re playing Crack the Whip is to make sure you’re not on the end. But if you are, hang on, no matter what.”

  “Gee. Thanks. I’ll try to remember that,” I said.

  His smile vanished. “Just trying to help.”

  Why, Kirsten? I asked myself as I adjusted my hat and watched him skate away from me. Why did you just act like that?

  Chapter 2

  My friends and I went over to Noodles & Co. in Highland Park for our goodbye lunch. It’s a chain restaurant, but it’s still one of our favorite places in St. Paul because no matter what time we go, there always seems to be a big crowd of people our age, so it’s cool to hang out there.

  After lunch, Crystal, Emma and Jones were driving home, so they could be there for New Year’s Eve. They had big plans. I did not.

  “So, I am going to see you guys soon, right?” I asked after our dishes were delivered to the table and we started to eat. “You’re coming for Winter Carnival at the end of the month. Promise me.” I savored a bit of the spicy Thai noodles I’d ordered.

  “And we’ll show up other times, too,” Emma said. “When you least expect it.”

  “Good, because I think I’m going to be really lonely,” I said.

  “Lonely? No way. We won’t strand you here,” Jones said. “I mean, what are you going to do? What are we going to do at home without you?”

  “Go to school every day,” I reminded her.

  Jones sighed. “I hate you for being smart,” she said. “I do. Except that when you become a rich and successful lawyer or television producer or screenwriter or whatever, you’ll invite me over to swim in your full-length pool.” She tapped my bowl with her fork. “You will invite me. Right?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “If I were you, Kirsten? I’d go back to that skating rink at the lake every day,” Emma said. “Did you see how many cute guys were there?”

  “Kirsten, I know! You could take skating lessons there!” Crystal cried. “Then you’d meet tons of—”

  “Girls, six-year-old girls,” I interrupted her. “With wobbly ankles.”

  “Oh.” Crystal’s nose twitched, a little like a rabbit’s. “Kids. Yeah. Probably.”

  “Just once I’d like to meet a guy with wobbly ankles. He’d need to lean on me. A ton,” I said. “He’d be an even worse skater than me and I’d hold him up around the rink and laugh at him when he fell down.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t sound like the kind of guy we’d fall for,” Emma said.

  “But…wait a second. Back to this skating class idea.” Emma tapped her chopsticks against her bowl of mac and cheese. She insisted on using chopsticks every time we ate here, no matter what type of noodles she ordered and no matter how difficult they were to pick up. “I think we’re onto something. Because I wonder who would be teaching the class. Maybe one of those hotties on the skating squad from today.”

  “What was the deal with those rink police guys?” Jones complained. “Some people should not be allowed to have power. They completely let it go to their head.”

  I smiled, thinking of the way the one guy had pulled my hat over my ears. Maybe he was a bit obnoxious, but he was cute, too. I quickly told everyone the story, pointing out he couldn’t be that terrible of a person, since he bothered to find me to return my hat.

  Then again, he hadn’t been all that suave about it, had he. Especially not after he’d tried to be nice and I’d been rude in return.

  “He brought your hat back? Cool. That means he likes you,” Emma said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said. At least, not so much anymore.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “Otherwise, why would he bother? He was looking for an excuse to talk to you.”

  “Or to harass me,” I said. “Come to think of it, if he really liked me, he wouldn’t have made fun of me. And, he would have kept the hat in the Lost & Found, so I’d have to come back and he could see me again.”

  “Well, drop your hat again the next time you go skating at the lake with Brett. Just in case he wants to keep it. As ransom,” Emma said with a grin.

  Jones rolled her eyes. “Guys don’t do that.”

  “Can it hurt to try?” Crystal wondered. “The dude was cute. Leave your phone number inside the hat next time, maybe.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sew it in,” Jones said, rolling her eyes.

  “I think actually it would be a knitting project,” I told her. “And I can’t knit, so don’t worry. Anyway, I’ll see if he’s around the next time I go.”

  “Go tomorrow,” Emma urged. “Or maybe tonight. Skating on New Year’s Eve’s so romantic.”

  More romantic than my current New Year’s Eve plans, anyway, I thought. Emma and Crystal both had plans to go out with their boyfriends that night. Jones was going to a big party with them, too. I’d be sitting around home with Gretchen and Brett.

  Just once I wanted to have romantic New Year’s Eve plans. Was that so much to ask?

  “I know you hate New Year’s resolutions, Jones. But I was thinking, if we all wrote something down, it would be a great start to my writing project. You know, for my Independ
ent Study—it’s going to be a collection of different forms of writing.” I was compiling poems, stories, and various fragments of writing: mine, as well as famous people’s, as well as not-so-famous people’s (my friends). I had told my English teacher and project adviser, Mrs. McCutcheon, that I’d study how editors decided to do anthologies by deciding what to put in and what to keep out. The theme of the project was “Life & Times: Mine and Others.”

  “You guys can help me kick it off. We can check in later with a progress report—just a sentence or two, no big deal. Write down a goal, a wish…anything.” I got a small, striped notebook out of my bag along with a pen and gently pushed it to the center of the table.

  “Why do we have to have goals?” Jones complained. “Can’t we just exist? Isn’t that hard enough in January?”

  “Hey, I’m the one who hates winter. You’re not allowed to,” Crystal said.

  “Maybe your goal for the new year could be not to hate winter so much, Crystal,” Emma suggested. “You could buy a new, warmer coat. And get out in the cold and just—”

  “Embrace it? You weren’t going to say ‘embrace it,’ were you?” Jones asked her.

  I laughed. “You know how she hates that phrase.”

  “Unless the word embrace is connected to the words Topher Grace, then yeah, I do.” She sipped her soda. “Embrace Topher Grace. It’s a mini-poem. Hey, Kirsten, put that down in your book.”

  “No, you do it.” I pushed the notebook toward her plate.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if she took up a few pages; Jones’s obsession with the actor was well-documented. Her normally cool and detached attitude didn’t apply where he was concerned. She had a “Toph-oto” Album, full of pictures of him. She’d even tried to convince her ex-boyfriend, Chris, to go by the name “Topher” instead. The fact that he hadn’t didn’t make her break up with him, but it didn’t help his cause, either. She actually had never forgiven him for saying that Topher was “just sort of okay” in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.

  “Since you’re so interested in goals, Kirsten, you know what your goal for the next month should be?” Emma asked.

  “Get along with my sister, even when she’s being a pain?” I asked. That sounded like a worthy aspiration. Gretchen had this thing where she treated me like she was my mother sometimes. She didn’t see it, whenever I called her on it, but trust me—it was there.

  “No. Actually, I say don’t make a huge effort to get along with her. You’re doing her a huge favor by staying here and helping her with Brett, and if she’s so self-centered that she can’t appreciate it—”

  “I know, I know. Look, things with my sister will be fine.” I stood up and went to refill my cola. I knew my friends were only trying to be supportive, but somehow there’s something different about me dissing my sister and other people doing it. Like, if I joked about how horrible she was, that was one thing. But if someone else commented on it, I felt the need to defend her, like she was a lion in my pride. Not that I know much about lions. Or pride, after the way I’d fallen ten times that morning.

  I sat back down at the table, resolved to change the subject if necessary.

  “We’ve talked it over and we decided we’re going to give you a task,” Crystal said.

  “Darn it.” I snapped my fingers. “I was at the pop machine too long, wasn’t I?”

  “You like New Year’s resolutions, right? You said so.” Emma smiled at me.

  I started to get that sinking feeling you get when you know your friends are about to dare you. “Okay…” I said slowly.

  “So, starting tomorrow, you’re going back to that lake. You’re—”

  “Learning how to skate better, first of all,” Jones said. “Or not, because you did meet lots of guys today when you knocked them down. Anyway, we want you to meet a guy there at the rink. Preferably one with several good-looking friends—”

  “One of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to Topher Grace, so that I can hook you up, too?” I interrupted.

  “Well. That wouldn’t hurt your case any.” Jones grinned at me.

  “I know I said I liked resolutions, but I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Be more outgoing in the new year.’ How about if I just say something like, ‘I’ll be more outgoing’?” I offered.

  “That’s nice. That’s wonderful,” Emma said. “And best of all, it’ll help you meet a guy you can invite to come with us on Groundhog Getaway.”

  “No,” I said. “Impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible,” Emma said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You have a month.”

  Groundhog Getaway was a weekend trip to a cabin resort, and it was supposed to be our first major “adult” trip. Our parents had given us the okay to go there for a long weekend, right around Valentine’s Day.

  But, natural procrastinators that we all were, we hadn’t gotten around to booking the reservation until too late, and by the time we got around to it, the weekend closest to Valentine’s Day was full…and the only weekend even remotely close that was available was Groundhog Day.

  You have to admit it wasn’t quite as romantic-sounding.

  We’d tried to come up with a cute name for it, like Hibernation Weekend, or Snuggle Down Weekend. So far, it was still being referred to as Groundhog Getaway. And me bringing someone was still impossible.

  “You’re giving me a month to meet a guy and get to know him well enough to invite him on a weekend trip,” I said to Emma. “Are you insane?”

  “Yes, she is, but that’s not the issue,” Jones said. “The issue is that we think you’re great, and you deserve a romantic weekend just like the rest of us.”

  “Oh, really? That’s sweet, but who are you bringing?” I asked her. As far as I knew—and I knew pretty much everything about Jones—she didn’t have a boyfriend, either. Neither of us had any prospects, exactly.

  “Well. I’m not sure yet,” she said. “If nothing else turns up? I’ll ask Chris.”

  “You dumped him,” I reminded Jones.

  “Yeah, but he’s a good skier and he knows how to build a fire. He’d be fun to have along.”

  “So you’re inviting him because he’s a Boy Scout, basically,” Crystal observed.

  “Was a Boy Scout,” Jones said. “He didn’t make eagle. I think he got stuck at like pigeon scout.”

  We were all laughing, so I decided not to tell her how mean that would be, to invite a guy who was still basically in love with her. “Okay,” I said. “So you want me to find someone to invite. Well, that, uh, begs the question. Does inviting someone count, or do they actually have to show up with luggage and stick around for the weekend?”

  “Ooh…they? You’re bringing more than one guy now?” Jones teased me. “Hot!”

  “Ha ha. Very funny. I’ll be lucky if I bring my nephew and the dog,” I said.

  “Oh, please. It’s not like you’ve even asked anyone,” Crystal said. “There are tons of guys at school who’d jump at the chance to spend the weekend with you.”

  “Okay, but I’m not even going to be home before Groundhog Getaway,” I said.

  “Which is why you can find a guy here,” Emma argued. “It’s not going to be a problem.”

  “Yeah. Right.” I’ve never had a real, or real serious anyway, boyfriend.

  I did go out with this guy Tyler last year for a few weeks, but then he fell for Emma.

  Everyone acts like it’s no big deal that I haven’t dated much, and it isn’t, I guess. Except that at times you do feel a little left out, and a little…old-maid-ish.

  First it was that my parents were being super protective, not letting me date until I was sixteen because my sister was a bit, well, promiscuous.

  Well, that backfired on them, now, didn’t it? Seeing as how they drove away any potential boys in the surrounding area by forcing me to tell them, “No, thank you, I can’t, my parents won’t let me.” Some boys asked me once or twice, and then gave up for good. Other boys met my father when he came to pick me up aft
er a group date and realized he is a very large, very strong, ex-football-playing-lineman-tackle. And they knew my mother from her showing up at school sporting events, like my soccer games, and screaming like crazy until you thought, well, maybe she is crazy.

  You can’t escape your family in a small town. I was doomed to remain a spinster until at least twenty-five, unless I got out of Cloquet.

  Well, here I was, in the Cities for the next month. Leave it to me to antagonize the first boys I saw.

  “You know, if you don’t find someone on your own, we’ll invite someone for you,” Emma said.

  “Yes, if you refuse to come up with a date, one will be provided for you,” Jones said. “And we all have really terrible taste in guys, so you’d better pick for yourself.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re not going to have a problem meeting guys here,” Emma said. “All you need to do is find your inner flirt.”

  “Inner what?” I asked.

  “I saw a TV show about it,” Emma said.

  “Well, then, it has to be true.” Jones rolled her eyes.

  “Let’s get in touch with our inner presents,” Crystal said, lifting a bag onto the table. “You guys ready for gifts or what?”

  The four of us have a tradition of giving New Year’s gifts instead of holiday ones. That way we have something to look forward to after the big celebrations are all over. And, we can shop for more things on sale, and therefore get each other more presents.

  The first gift I opened was a striped scarf from Emma. It matched my pink and orange puffy down jacket perfectly. “Maybe you could drop that at the rink, too,” she suggested.

  “Yeah, just leave random items of clothing there. See what happens,” Jones added.

  I lashed her with the scarf. “Shame on you. I’m not going to disrobe on an icy lake.”

  “Maybe not, but you’d find a date really fast if you did!” Jones said, and we were all laughing again.

  That night, just before midnight, I made a pact with a fake fire.