Let It Snow

It was true that Brittany didn’t like the Duke, but she also didn’t like JP. She didn’t even like me that much, really. The more we hung out, the more Brittany would get a

God, I hated talking about Brittany, but the Duke brought her up all the time, probably just for the unadulterated pleasure of a

“I don’t have a thing for cheerleaders,” I repeated.

“But,” JP said, “we both have a thing for hot girls who love Twister. That’s not about loving cheerleaders, Duke: that’s about loving freedom and hope and the indomitable American spirit.”

“Yeah, well, call me unpatriotic, but I don’t see the cheerleader thing. Cheer isn’t sexy. Dark is sexy. Ambivalent is sexy. Deeper-than-it-looks-at-first-glance is sexy.”

“Right,” JP said. “That’s why you’re going out with Billy Talos. Nothing says dark and brooding like a Waffle House waiter.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if JP was kidding, but he didn’t seem to be. She reached around and punched him on the knee and said, “It’s just a job.”

“Wait, you’re going out with Billy Talos?” I asked. I was surprised mostly because it didn’t seem like the Duke would ever go out with anybody, but also because Billy Talos was a beer-and-football kind of guy, whereas the Duke was more of a Shirley-Temple-and-live-theater kind of girl.

The Duke didn’t say anything for a second. “No. He just asked me to Winter Formal.”

I didn’t say anything. It seemed weird the Duke would tell JP about something but not me. JP said, “No offense, but Billy Talos is a little bit greasy, isn’t he? I feel like if you wrung out his hair every day or two, you could potentially end America’s dependence on foreign oil.”

“No offense taken,” the Duke said, laughing. Clearly she wasn’t that keen on him. But still, I couldn’t picture the Duke with Billy Talos—oily hair aside, he just didn’t seem very, like, fu

I could have driven down that road for a long time before I got tired, but it was almost time to turn onto Sunrise Avenue and head through downtown toward the interstate and Waffle House. It was 12:26. In the morning.

“Hey,” I said, interrupting them.

“What?” asked the Duke.

I stole a glance away from the road to talk directly to her. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said back. “Merry Christmas, JP.”

“Merry Christmas, asshats.”

Chapter Six

The banks of snow on either side of Sunrise Avenue were huge, as tall as the car, and I felt like we were driving at the bottom of an endless snowboard half-pipe. JP and the Duke were being quiet, all of us concentrating on the road. We had a couple miles to go before we got downtown, and then the Waffle House was a mile east, just off the interstate. Our silence was interrupted by a nineties rap song playing on JP’s phone. “Keun,” he said. He turned the speaker on.

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS?”

The Duke leaned around so she could be heard. “Keun, look out the window and tell me what you see.”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t see! I don’t see you and JP and Tobin in the parking lot of the Waffle House! No word on Mitchell’s college friends, but Billy just heard from the twins: they’re about to turn onto Sunrise.”

“Then we’re fine, because we’re already on Sunrise,” I said.

“HURRY. The cheerleaders want their Twister! Wait, hold on . . . They’re practicing a pyramid, and they need me to spot them. Spot them. You know what that means? If they fall, they fall into my arms. So I gotta go.” I heard the click of Keun hanging up.

“Floor it,” JP said. I laughed and kept my speed steady. We just needed to maintain our lead.

As far as skiing down a road in an SUV goes, Sunrise Avenue isn’t bad, because unlike most streets in Gracetown, it’s pretty straight. With the tire tracks to guide me, my speed crept up to twenty-five. I figured we’d be downtown in two minutes, and eating Keun’s special off-menu cheesy waffles in ten. I thought about those waffles topped with melted Kraft singles, about how they tasted both savory and sweet, a taste so profound and complex that it can’t even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, taste like love without the fear of love’s dissolution, and as we came to the 90-degree curve Sunrise Avenue takes before heading straight downtown, I could almost taste them.

I approached the curve exactly as I was taught in drivers’ ed: with my hands at two and ten o’clock, I turned the steering wheel slightly to the right while gently applying the brakes. But Carla did not respond appropriately. She kept going straight.

“Tobin,” the Duke said. And then, “Turn turn Tobin turn.”

I didn’t say anything; I just kept turning the steering wheel to the right and pressing the brake. We began to slow as we approached the snowdrift, but we never gave even the slightest hint of turning. Instead, we barreled into a wall of snow with a noise like a sonic boom.

Damn it. Carla tilting to the left. The windshield a wall of tar-speckled white.

Once we stopped, I spun my head around in time to see chunks of icy snow falling behind the car, begi

Chapter Seven

The Duke reached over and turned the car off. “Risk of carbon-monoxide poisoning,” she said matter-of-factly, as if we were not stone-cold screwed ten miles from home.

“Out through the back!” she ordered, and the authority in her voice calmed me. JP scrambled into the way-back and then opened the top hatch. He bolted out. The Duke followed, and then me, feetfirst. Having now gathered my thoughts, I was finally able to eloquently articulate my feelings about the matter. “Crap crap crap!” I kicked Carla’s back bumper, as the snow fell wet onto my face. “Stupid idea God stupid God my parents crap crap crap.”

JP put a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”

“No,” I said. “It won’t. And you know it won’t.”

“Yes, it will,” JP insisted. “You know what? It will totally be fine, because I’m going to dig the car out of the snow, and someone will come by, and we’ll get help from them—even if it’s the twins. I mean, it’s not like the twins are going to leave us out here to freeze to death.”