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  “Saw Blackthorn earlier,” Will says, running a hand through his wavy, dark blond hair. “I didn’t know you were training again. I thought you quit after—”

  “I’m not training again.”

  Will raises his eyebrows. “Does that mean my co-captain’s full of—”

  “No. I mean, sometimes I hit the ice for fun. Exercise. It’s nothing.”

  “Not according to Josh. He said you, uh … kick ass. More or less.” Will smiles again, leaning in a little closer. Mmmm. He smells … expensive. The delicious kind of expensive that erases your mind right while you’re standing there, which is why the cologne ads always show a pack of jar-eyed girls draped all over the chesty, good-smelling guy as if they forgot their own names the second he showed up.

  “Well, Josh said … I …”

  “He asked me about getting you ice time at Baylor’s,” Good Will Smelling says. “And I think I can swing it, but on one condition.” He grins at me like he did that night in the closet, right before he moved in for the kill.

  I swallow hard. “Condition?”

  “More like a proposition. For the Wolves.” Will lowers his voice. “Hear me out. I know my boys are strong. A little unmotivated at the moment, but talented. Thing is, we’re not good with technique, edgework, stuff like that. And our coach is useless—he doesn’t even call practices. Spends most of his time with the football team. Unlike us, those guys win championships.”

  “What are you saying?” I ask.

  “You need rink time. I need a special techniques coach. I get you the ice … and you teach the boys how to skate.”

  My legs go all wobbly again. Convincing myself to skate with Josh was hard enough. Training an entire pack of notorious thugs who haven’t won a single game for as long as I’ve been at this school? A bunch of puck-slapping meatheads who’d probably rather skate naked at Fillmore during a lake-effect snowstorm than learn a single lesson from a girl?

  Has this boy been sniffing too much of his own cologne?

  I lean back against the lockers, arms strategically folded over my stained sweater. “I don’t know anything about hockey. And I’m already behind on school stuff, and I’m about to pick up a few more shifts at work, and—”

  “Where do you—oh, right. The cupcakes. Man, my mom loves those things. I don’t know how you do it. I could never work for my parents—they’d take over my life.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not my dream or anything. I have my own life.” I don’t elaborate. I don’t care how amazing he smells. No way I’m getting all self-disclosey with a guy I’ve only spent about nine minutes of my life with, and that’s including the seven in the closet way back when.

  “Good,” he says, his hand landing uninvited on my shoulder. “Because I’m serious about this. We need each other, Hud. Admit it.”

  I meet his gaze, ready for a fight, but there’s an unexpected softness there—a bit of playful humor behind all the cocky attitude that takes me off guard. No wonder Kara fell so hard for him. I’m beginning to feel a bit drugged by the whole thing myself.

  “Just think about it, okay?” he says quietly. “I called a practice after school this Friday. Text me if you want to check it out.” He grabs one of my notebooks and the pen from behind my ear—the nerve!—and scribbles down his info. I scan the hall for those video cameras again, but my eyes instead find Dani, already sitting at her desk in the classroom. She raises her eyebrows and points to her wrist.

  “So you’ll text me?” Will hands over my stuff and leans in close, his breath tickling my neck. “Or do I have to work on you? I can be pretty convincing, you know.”

  “I have to go, Will.” I duck into class just as the bell rings and slide into the spot next to Dani, my skin rippling with goose bumps.

  “What. The hell. Was that?” she asks.

  I shrug, shaking off the eau de Harper. “Josh asked him about the Baylor’s thing. Not gonna happen.”

  “He said that? And what’s with all the touching and, like, smoldering looks?”

  I laugh. “Smoldering? You still reading that pirate romance?”

  “No. I mean yeah. But whatever—I’m serious! The boy kisses you once, and that gives him perpetual license to put his hands on you? After basically ignoring you for three years? I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not like that,” I whisper as Madame Fromme shoots us le mauvais œil—the evil eye. “He wants me to—”

  “Commencez, s’il vous plaît, Mademoiselle Avery.” Madame beckons me to the front of the class to set up for my presentation. Of course she wants me to go first—she’s probably been eye-fondling those cupcakes ever since I dropped off the box this morning.

  “Commencez handing out the goodies, Cupcake Queen,” someone says as I finish arranging the Carousels on the presentation table. I turn around quickly, but I can’t tell who said it, and the room goes quiet again. Outside, a tree branch scrapes the window, craggy fingers tapping the glass as Madame Fromme clears her throat, urging me to begin. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

  “Bonjour. Um … je m’appelle Hudson Avery. I am—I mean, Je suis, um …” I lean on the table to steady myself, hands leaving damp prints that fade as I fidget. My fingernails are orange like my shirt. It looks like dried blood.

  Frosting stains are usually just another part of the gig. An occupational hazard. A badge. Yeah, I’m the Cupcake Queen, I hand-tint my icing, and I’ve got the ruined clothing to prove it. But now, when I look at the color under my nails and the cupcakes lined up neatly on the table, I see my father’s suitcases, stacked by the door. The moving trucks that came later to collect the rest of his things, all of us redeposited into separate lives. My walk of shame from the ice rink and all those months I spent hiding out at Hurley’s behind an apron and a mixer. I see my mother, too, rushing from the grill to the dining room and back to the office, where each night she counts the till, twice to be sure.

  If I don’t buck up and do something different, someday that will be me.

  “Je ne suis pas mon travail.” I am not my job. I mumble it in perfect French, just loud enough for no one to hear. Madame Fromme removes her glasses and squints, and in my parallel life, I say it again. In my parallel life, I climb on the table and stomp on all those cupcakes, lions and tigers and bears crushed under my boot as I scream for the class, for the school, for the entire town of Watonka and anyone who’s ever wondered what lies beyond that old smokestack horizon. Je ne suis pas mon travail! Je ne suis pas mon travail! I am not Hurley’s Homestyle Diner! I’m not a waitress! I’m not the Cupcake Queen! I’m just me, alive and whole and happy when I’m skating. When my eyes are closed and my feet glide across the ice. Out there, I forget about my father road-tripping through the desert. I forget about the lines in my mother’s face and her chapped hands, red-raw with burns from the grill and too much time at the sink. I forget about the stains on my clothes and under my nails. When I’m skating, I’m somewhere else. Somewhere better.

  But I don’t know how to speak the language of impossible dreams en français, so I swallow it back, blinking rapidly as if it’s just the Lake Erie wind in my eyes.

  Tap tap tap. Out beyond the window, past the branches to the barren soccer field, snow dances across the expanse and I want to bolt, straight back to the lake with my skates. But like the old saying goes: It takes forty-two muscles to frown, and only twelve to jam a cupcake in your mouth and get over it. So I smile and begin again, distributing my sugar-sweet merry-go-round confections to the class.

  “Je m’appelle Hudson Avery. Je travaille chez Hurley’s Homestyle Diner. Oui, je suis la boulangêre des petits gâteaux.”

  My name is Hudson Avery. I work at Hurley’s. Yes, I am the baker of the cupcakes.

  But not for long.

  “Those cupcakes rock,” Trina Dawes tells me after today’s presentations are done. “Are you doing anything January tenth? I’m having a birthday bash. A hundred people at least.”

  “Can’t make it.” Wrong date? Wron
g address? No way I’m falling for that joke.

  “Make it? Oh, no! That’s not what I meant.” She giggles, her cheeks turning red. “I was asking about ordering cupcakes … I mean … you could totally come if you want to, though. Do you?” She looks up at me and tilts her head, freshly glossed mouth turning into an awkward frown.

  “Wait, you thought … that I thought … you were inviting me to your party?” I pack up the few remaining Carousels, hoping my face isn’t the same color as the frosting.

  She swipes another cupcake from the box. “I mean, you could—”

  “I have a thing that night. An art show. With my brother. He’s, um, exhibiting his … Civil War sculpture. Thing. So I’m busy.”

  “Can you still make the cupcakes?”

  “Not a problem.” Where are those horribly intrusive fire drills when you need them?

  Trina smiles again, her face rearranging itself to happy and casual. “Should I, like, give you my order now? Or do I have to call Harley’s?”

  “It’s Hurley’s,” I say with a sigh. “But you can give it to me now.”

  “You kicked some serious derrière in there, ami,” Dani says after class. “Don’t sweat Trina’s party, okay? Those girls are like a living issue of Cosmo.”

  “Easy for you to say. The whole junior class doesn’t look down on you.”

  “Please.” She empties her backpack into her locker, packing away the Nikon equipment she used in her presentation. “People just don’t know you, okay? It’s not the same thing.”

  “They know me all right. Cupcake Queen of Watonka, remember? A real celeb.”

  Dani drops her books into her backpack and tugs hard on the zipper. “There are what—three thousand people up in this joint?”

  “So?”

  “So why do you assume everyone around here is so tight? You act like Watonka High is this big bowl of awesome and you’re the only one who didn’t get a spoon. Guess what, girl? It’s high school. Everyone hates it.”

  “Not you. You’re always talking to people, smiling, whatever. You have friends here.”

  “So do you—you just keep forgetting it.”

  “Dani, I didn’t mean—”

  “Gotta go. I’ll catch you at work tonight.” She slams her locker, but not that hard, and I let her leave. We never stay mad at each other for more than a few minutes, anyway. I just wish I could be more like her, letting all the bad stuff roll off. Not caring so much what everyone thinks. Full of those confident, front-of-the-house smiles, all the way.

  Maybe Dani’s right—maybe they don’t look down on me. Not exactly. For the most part, they don’t even notice me. I spent those all-important clique-forming years on the ice with Kara. While the normal Watonka kids were having playdates and movie nights and sleepovers, we were practicing our lutzes and spins, learning to balance competitive drive with sportsmanship and ladylike grace. By the time I got to high school, I’d lost my skating friends, Kara got swept up in the current of Will’s popularity, and fate had sorted everyone else into groups like change in the till. Other than Dani, I was alone; the rest of the nickels and dimes and quarters had moved on—not against me, just without.

  Now when they see me in the halls, they remember only one thing: Cupcake Queen of Watonka. That stupid newspaper picture, me cradling a mixing bowl in my arms like a baby. Well extra, extra! Read all about it, Watonka! I used to be good at something else, too. Something that had nothing to do with taking orders from Trina Dawes or following in my mother’s dream-sucking, Hurley Girl footsteps. Something with a real future. Something I finally have another shot at.

  All I have to do is reach out and take it. It’s that simple.

  I stash the extra French cupcakes in my locker, flip open my notebook, and turn on my phone. Orange-stained fingertips quick over the buttons, I punch in Will’s number, take a deep breath, and send my answer up to outer space.

  Chapter Seven

  How to Appear Outwardly Cool While Totally Freaking Out on the Inside Cupcakes

  Chilled vanilla cupcakes cored and filled with whipped vanilla buttercream and dark chocolate shavings, topped with vanilla icing and a sugared cucumber slice

  Blue-and-silver jersey number seventy-seven, harper, skates back and forth in front of his eighteen teammates. From my spot in the player’s box, I check the roster and count the boys three times to be sure, looking them each in the eye as I do. It’s a thing I learned from that show where the guy gets dropped in the jungle with nothing but a pillowcase, a pack of gum, and a tampon applicator: Make eye contact with wild animals to claim your territory and avoid a beatdown.

  Today’s primary goal: avoid beatdown. Check.

  “It’s no secret the Wolves are struggling,” Will says.

  “Struggle. To flounder or stumble.” Thirty-two, FELZNER, defense, taps away on his cell.

  “We’re definitely stumbling, yo.” NELSON, sixty, also defense. He grabs his crotch and spits, then winks at me in the box. Aside from the spitting and groping, which under normal circumstances I don’t find all that attractive, Brad Nelson’s kind of a dead ringer for that model Tyson Beckford.

  I slip off my gloves and lower the zipper on my fleece.

  “We’ve lost focus,” Will continues. “We’re not playing like a team. Our morale is low. I get it.”

  “Eh, we bite.” DEVRIES, oh-seven, left wing. The smallest of the line, Rowan DeVries sports the unfortunate combination of braces, freckles, and tangerine-red curls. He seems better suited to racing hockey players in a video game.

  I flip past the roster and scan the rest of Will’s notes. According to the files, the Watonka Wolves haven’t been to a national competition in over twenty years. The last time our varsity hockey team even won a division championship, these particular boys were still in diapers.

  I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me this month.

  As I make my steady, intentional eye contact, the packmates stare back. Hard. Rowan aside, they’re all about the same size, big and broad-shouldered, muscle and attitude. Just as Will promised, everyone showed up, skipping their Guitar Hero matches or raw meat–eating contests or whatever it is boys do in their free time, but most of them don’t really mean it. They’re only half-equipped, some of them in worn jerseys while others are just wearing sweatshirts and track pants. Five didn’t bother with helmets. Two keep checking their phones, texting and scrolling, counting down the seconds until someone calls with a better offer.

  Will skates to the center of the pack, his skates stopping in a T. He nods toward me in the box. “We have a guest today.”

  I wave, forgetting all about the cool man-nod I practiced in front of the mirror. Josh smiles at me from the line. Oh. Is the pancreas on the left side? Because I think mine just twitched.

  “Some of you guys probably know Hudson Avery,” Will says. The statement elicits a few grunts. One discernible “yeah.” Two sneezes. A yawn. Wow. Just as I suspected, I’ve made quite an impression at the Watonka Central School District. Perhaps I should refresh their memories with a few stories from the good ole days, like the one where right wing Parker Gilgallon wets his pants during sixth-grade crab soccer, or where defense Eddie Dune got the nickname “Gettysburg” for flashing the crowd during center Micah Baumler’s recital of the Gettysburg Address, right after the four score and seven years part.

  “She can skate,” Will continues. “Really skate. And unless you scare her off by acting like your mouth-breather selves, she might be able to help us. Off the record, of course.”

  Shuffles. Groans. Another sneeze. Perhaps my hot-pink zip-up fleece wasn’t such an award-winning idea; much more Barbie on Ice than the Icelandic barbarian skatetrix Dani and I envisioned earlier this week when we discussed the hockey strategy. Still, I expected and planned for this exact scenario, and no one needs to know that behind my confident fuchsia-and-bubble-gum exterior, just above my hockey-boys-you-will-take-this-ass-seriously stretchy jeans, my stomach is trying to run up into my eso
phagus.

  Hudson Avery, you are a professionally trained ice-skater. You can do spirals and axels and lutzes around these guys all day long. You are a beautiful woman with the strength of an ox, …

  Yes! I step out of the box, blades firm on the ice.

  … the ferocity of a lioness, …

  Absolutely! I hold my head high.

  … the grace of a gazelle….

  No doubt! Right foot next, firm on the—firm! No! I said firm! With the grace of a—

  Gazelle.

  I’m flat on my stomach, splayed out in an X, cartoon-falling-off-cliff style. As a competitive figure skater, I spent a good majority of my training perfecting the best way to fall on my ass, and I’m not even doing that right anymore. What is it with me and hockey boys?

  Across the ice, thirty-eight black skates are level with my head. White laces looped through silver eyelets. Toes scuffed. Thick blades. Four of them move toward me. Slash-slash, slash-slash, slash-slash.

  Will and Josh grab my arms and help me to my feet.

  “You okay?” Josh’s face tightens the way it did after our collision at Fillmore.

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “You totally bit it,” Will says through that megawatt smile. “Blackthorn didn’t even have to train-wreck you this time.”

  “You gonna teach us how to walk, Princess Pink?” GILGALLON, twenty-nine. Pretty ballsy for a pants-wetter, if you ask me. “I wouldn’t want you to break a nail.”

  If I wasn’t so utterly pink right now, I might just skate over there and knee him in the—

  “Back off, Gilgallon,” Josh warns. He and Will may be my only allies on the ice. Which is unfortunate, considering there are seventeen other guys staring me down, all looking for a reason to unilaterally dismiss me.

  “So, um, why are you here, exactly?” Grab, spit, grab goes Brad Nelson.

  “Seriously, mamí.” Left wing TORRES, lucky number thirteen, shakes his head. “Hockey rink ain’t the place for candy-ass little girls. Maybe you should go home and play with your dollies.”