I was starting to dislike Gracetown.
“I lost control of my car on Sunrise,” the guy said to the room in general. “Had to ditch it.”
Don-Keun nodded in understanding.
“Need a tow?” Tinfoil Guy said.
“No, that’s okay. It’s snowing so hard, I don’t even know if I could find it again.”
As he peeled off the bags, the guy turned out to be very normal-looking, with damp and dark curly hair, kind of skinny, jeans a little too big for him. He looked at the counter, then headed over to me.
“Is it okay if I sit here?” he asked in a low voice. He nodded slightly in the direction of Tinfoil Guy. Obviously, he didn’t want to sit over there, either.
“Sure,” I said.
“He’s harmless,” the guy said, still very quietly. “But he can talk a lot. I got stuck with him for about a half an hour once. He really likes cups. He can talk about cups for a long time.”
“Does he always wear tinfoil?”
“I don’t think I’d recognize him without it. I’m Stuart, by the way.”
“I’m . . . Julie.”
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“My train,” I said, pointing to the vista of snow and darkness. “We got stuck.”
“Where were you going?” he asked.
“To Florida. To see my grandparents. My parents are in jail.”
I decided it was worth a try, just slipping it into the conversation like that. It got the reaction I half expected. Stuart laughed.
“Are you with anyone?” he asked.
“I have a boyfriend,” I said.
I’m usually not this stupid, I promise you. My brain was on a Noah track. I was still thinking about my idiotic message.
The corners of Stuart’s mouth wrinkled, like he was trying not to laugh. He beat a little rhythm on the table and smiled as if trying to blow my awkward moment away. I should have taken the out he was giving me, but I couldn’t just leave it. I had to try to cover.
“The only reason I said that,” I began, seeing the doomed conversational path open wide in front of me and getting myself into sprinting position, “is that I’m supposed to be calling him. But I don’t have a signal.”
Yes. I had stolen Jeb’s story. Sadly, though, when I spoke, I didn’t take into account that my phone was sitting in front of me, proudly displaying a full range of bars. Stuart looked at it, then at me, but said nothing.
Now I really had something to prove. I would never be able to let it go until I showed him just how normal I was.
“I didn’t,” I said. “Until just now.”
“Probably the weather,” he said charitably.
“Probably. I’ll just try now, really quick.”
“Take as long as you like,” he said.
Which was fair enough. He’d only sat with me to escape a long conversation about cups with Tinfoil Guy. It wasn’t like we were accountable to each other’s schedules. Stuart was probably glad that I was breaking off this conversation. He got up and took off his coat as I called. He was wearing a Target uniform underneath, and even more plastic bags. They came tumbling out of the inner folds of his coat, about a dozen of them. He gathered them up, completely unfazed.
When I got Noah’s voice mail, I tried to hide my frustration by craning my head to look out the window. I didn’t want to leave my pathetic follow-up message in front of Stuart, so I just hung up.
Stuart gave me a little “nothing?” shrug as he sat down.
“They must be busy with the Smorgasbord,” I said.
“Smorgasbord?”
“Noah’s family is tangentially Swedish, so they put out an amazing Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve.”
I saw his eyebrow go up when I said “tangentially.” I use that word a lot. It’s one of Noah’s favorites. I picked it up from him. I wish I’d remembered not to use it around other people, because it was kind of our word. Also, when on a campaign to convince a stranger that you aren’t a few fries short of a Happy Meal, throwing around phrases like “tangentially Swedish” is not the best way to go.
“Everyone loves a Smorgasbord,” he said graciously.
It was time for a change of topic.
“Target,” I said, pointing at his shirt. Except I said, “Tar-shay,” in that French way that really isn’t very funny.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Now you can see why I had to risk my life getting to work. When your job is important as mine, you have to take some chances; otherwise, society doesn’t function. That guy must really want to make a call.”
Stuart pointed out the window, and I turned. Jeb was at the phone booth, which was surrounded by about a foot of snow. He was trying to force the door open.
“Poor Jeb,” I said. “I should lend him my phone . . . now that I have a signal.”
“Is that Jeb? You’re right . . . Wait . . . how do you know Jeb?”
“He was on my train. He said he was coming to Gracetown. I guess he plans on walking the rest of the way or something.”
“It looks like he really, really wants to make a call,” Stuart said, pulling aside the slippery candy cane on the window to get a better look. “Why doesn’t he just use his phone?”
“His phone broke when we crashed.”
“Crashed?” Stuart repeated. “Your train . . . crashed?”
“Just into snow.”
Stuart was about to press a bit further on the train-crashing subject when the door opened, and in they poured. All fourteen of them, yelping and squealing and trailing snowflakes.
“Oh my God,” I said.
Chapter Four
There is nothing about a bad situation that fourteen hyper cheerleaders can’t worsen.
It took about three minutes for the unassuming Waffle House to become the new offices of the law firm of Amber, Amber, Amber, and Madison. They set up camp in a clump of booths in the corner opposite from us. A few of them gave me an “oh, good, you are still alive” nod, but for the most part, they had no interest in anyone else.
This did not mean that no one had an interest in them, however.
Don-Keun was a new man. The moment they arrived, he vanished for a second. We heard muffled ecstatic screaming coming from somewhere in the back of the Waffle House kitchen, then he reappeared, his face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany. Looking at him made me tired. Behind him were two more guys, awed acolytes following in his wake.
“What do you need, ladies?” Don-Keun called happily.
“Can we practice handstands in here?” Amber One said. I guess her basket-toss wrist was feeling better. Tough types, these cheerleaders. Tough and crazy. Who treks through a blizzard to practice handstands in a Waffle House? I only went there to get away from them.
“Ladies,” he said, “you can do whatever you want.”
Amber One liked this answer.
“Could you, maybe, like mop the floor? Just this bit right here? Just so we don’t get stuff on our hands? And could you spot us?”
He almost broke his own ankles trying to get to the mop closet.
Stuart had been watching all of this wordlessly. He didn’t have that same glorious look as Don-Keun or his friends, but the matter had clearly made his radar. He cocked his head to the side, like he was trying to figure out a really hard math problem.
“Things around here have deviated from the usual,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You could say that. Is there anywhere else to go? A Starbucks or something?”
He almost flinched when I mentioned Starbucks. I guessed he was one of those antichain types, which seemed odd for someone who worked at Target.
“It’s closed,” he said. “Pretty much everything is. There’s the Duke and Duchess. That might still be open, but that’s just a convenience store. It’s Christmas Eve, and with this storm . . . ”
Stuart must have sensed my despair from the way I began lightly banging my forehead on the table.
“I’m going to get back to my house,” he said, slipping his hand across the table as cushioning and preventing me from doing myself any more damage. “Why don’t you come with me? At least it’s out of the snow. My mom would never forgive me if I didn’t ask you if you needed somewhere to go.”
I thought this over. My cold, dead train was on the other side of the road. My current option was a Waffle House full of cheerleaders and a guy dressed in Reynolds Wrap. My parents were guests of the state, hundreds of miles away. And the biggest snowstorm in fifty years was right on top of us. Yeah, I needed somewhere to go.
Still, it was hard to unwire the “stranger danger” message that ran through my head . . . even though the stranger was really the one taking the chance. I had all the crazy cards tonight. I wouldn’t have taken me home.
“Here,” he said. “A little proof of identity. This is my official Target employee card. They don’t let just anyone work at Target. And here’s a driver’s license. . . . Ignore the haircut, please. . . . Name, address, social, it’s all on there.”
He pulled the cards out of his wallet to finish the joke. I noticed that there was a picture of him with a girl in the picture flap, obviously from a prom. That reassured me. He was a normal guy with a girlfriend. He even had a last name—Weintraub.
“How far is it?” I asked.
“About a half mile that way,” he said, pointing at what appeared to be nothing at all—formless white lumps that could have been houses, could have been trees, could have been life-size models of Godzilla.
“A half mile?”
“Well, it’s a half mile if we take the short way. The long way is a little over a mile. It won’t be bad. I could have kept going, but this was open, so I just stopped for a warmth break.”
“Are you sure your family won’t mind?”
“My mom would literally beat me down with a hose if I didn’t offer someone help on Christmas Eve.”
Don-Keun vaulted the counter with a mop, almost impaling himself in the process. He started cleaning the floor around Amber One’s feet. Outside, Jeb had gotten into the booth. He was deeply entrenched in a drama of his own. I was alone.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come.”
I don’t think anyone noticed our getting up and leaving except for Tinfoil Guy. He had his back turned to the cheerleaders in complete disinterest, and he saluted us as we headed for the door.
“You’re going to need a hat,” Stuart said, as we stepped into the frigid vestibule.
“I don’t have a hat. I was going to Florida.”
“I don’t have a hat, either. But I have these . . . ”
He held up the plastic bags and demonstrated by putting the bag on his head, wrapping it once around, and tucking it in so that it made a snug but strange-looking turban, puffed up at the top. Wearing a bag on your head seemed like something that Amber and Amber and Amber would have refused to do . . . and I felt like making a point that I wasn’t like that. I gamely wound it around my head.
“You should really put them around your hands, too,” he said, passing me a few more. “I don’t know what to do about your legs. They have to be cold.”
They were, but for some reason I didn’t want him to think that I couldn’t handle that.
“No,” I lied. “These tights are really thick. And these boots . . . they’re solid. I’ll take them for my hands, though.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Positive.” I had no idea why I was saying this. It just seemed like telling the truth would mean admitting some weakness.
Stuart had to push hard to fully open the door against the wind and accumulated snow. I didn’t know snow could pour. I’ve seen flurries and even steady snow that left an inch or two, but this was sticky and heavy and the flakes were the size of quarters. Within seconds, I was drenched. I hesitated at the bottom of the steps, and Stuart turned around to check on me.
“Sure?” he asked again.
I knew that I was either going to turn right there and then, or I was going to have to go all the way.
I gave a quick look back and saw the three Madisons doing a handstand pyramid in the middle of the restaurant.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
We took a small back road away from the Waffle House, guided only by the traffic warning lights that blinked on and off every other second, cutting a strobing yellow path through the dark. We walked right down the middle of the street, again in that postapocalyptic style. Silence reigned for at least fifteen minutes. Talking took energy we needed just to keep going, and opening our mouths meant that cold air could get in.
Every step was a tiny trial. The snow was so deep and sticky that it took a lot of force to withdraw my foot from my own footprint. My legs, of course, were frozen to the point where they started to feel warm again. The bags on my head and hands were somewhat effective. When we had set our pace, Stuart cracked open the conversation.
“Where is your family really?” he asked.
“In jail.”
“Yeah. You said that inside. But when I said really—”
“They’re in jail,” I said for the third time.
I tried to make this one stick. He got the point enough not to ask the question again, but he had to wrestle with my answer for a moment.
“For what?” he finally said.
“Uh, they were part of a . . . riot.”
“What, are they protesters?”
“They’re shoppers,” I said. “They were in a shopping riot.”
He stopped dead in his spot.
“Don’t even tell me that they were in the Flobie riot in Charlotte.”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“Oh my God! Your parents are in the Flobie Five!”
