Snow One Like You Read online

  Yoshi glances at me, his brows furrowing like he’s not sure whether I’m joking.

  “Seriously,” I say. “Lark’s an amazing climber, too.”

  “But …” Yoshi’s voice trails off as he stares at Lark’s thin legs. Then he looks over at me with a guilty expression on his face.

  “You know my policy,” Lark says, no anger in her voice. “If you have a question, just ask. It doesn’t offend me.”

  Lark’s dad, Chris, comes in with a tray of hot drinks, and Yoshi takes a half step back. Chris is tall and broad in his blue flannel shirt and jeans, his messy red hair and beard just a shade too long. Chris and my dad rock a similar hippie-ish look.

  “Um, so how long have you been climbing?” Yoshi asks Lark, clearly not the first question on his mind, but the only one he feels comfortable asking.

  “Since I was six?” Lark glances up at her dad, who nods.

  “Right, because you’d already been climbing for a good amount of time before your surgery,” Chris adds.

  Yoshi’s eyes turn to mine, and I give him a little nod to reassure him he isn’t stepping on any toes.

  “Many climbers use their legs for power,” Chris continues, “but because Lark’s legs can’t give her the power and stability she needs, she uses her arms.”

  “I’ve got good guns.” Lark winks, pointing at her biceps under her sweater, and I crack up.

  “That’s really cool,” Yoshi says, still looking embarrassed.

  “He should hear the story about when you climbed that wall after your surgery,” I tell Lark. It’s one of my favorite Lark stories because it’s so perfectly Lark.

  “You start, Mia,” Lark says, taking a mug of tea from her dad and sitting down in a chair.

  “So, about four years ago, Lark had this major surgery on her back,” I begin.

  Yoshi frowns, his gaze moving to Lark’s back, like there might be something he didn’t notice.

  “They went in through my back, but it was really for my legs,” Lark explains. “It’s complicated.”

  I nod. “Anyway, there’s this huge climbing wall outside of town that Lark climbed every summer. She’d been able to get to the platform at the top without a problem before the surgery—”

  “I wouldn’t say without a problem,” Lark says with a smile. “But I could do it.”

  “And then six months after the surgery, she went to the same climbing wall. Nobody thought she’d be able to do it again, not yet. The whole town came to cheer her on. But she started going up, and we were all yelling and encouraging her …”

  I drift off because it’s one of my most powerful memories. Seeing Lark struggling but determined. Soleil and Chris standing at the bottom, their hands clasped together. And there was Lark, steadily climbing the wall, one handhold and foothold at a time.

  “We all figured there was no way she could do it,” Chris takes over. “She’d just had this major surgery, and it seemed impossible. But Lark was determined. Except, she got up about eighty percent of the way, and she stopped climbing.”

  “The plan had always been that if I couldn’t get to the top, it was no big deal, I’d just keep working on it and try again later,” Lark says, her gray-green eyes bright with determination. “But that was not going to happen. I’d done this climb every year, and I didn’t care if I’d had surgery or whatever. I was climbing that wall. I was not letting them bring me down.”

  “And that’s what she yelled from the almost-top of the wall,” I say, the memory of Lark’s bravery making my voice quiver. “She was yelling and crying, saying: ‘Do not bring me down! Do not bring me down!’”

  Lark shrugs and gives me a little wink. “And I did it.”

  I remember. Everyone was crying. The whole town had come to see her succeed at whatever she’d be able to manage. Nobody had thought she would get to the top of the climbing wall. But she was that committed.

  “Okay, that was a fun stroll down memory lane, but I’ve got to get back to my office,” Chris says, kissing the top of Lark’s head. “Give me a holler if you need anything else to drink. You may be able to climb mountains, but I don’t want you carrying hot liquids.”

  Lark rolls her eyes. “As if I’d do that.”

  “It’s a balance thing,” I explain to Yoshi as we sit down on the couch. “Lark usually has a fifty-fifty shot of getting a drink from point A to point B without spilling it.”

  “Fifty-fifty is generous,” Lark corrects, and I roll my eyes right back at her.

  Kyle emerges from the basement then, carrying craft supplies, and he brings them over to Lark to examine.

  “You okay?” I whisper to Yoshi.

  “I just feel dumb,” Yoshi mumbles. His long bangs flop over his forehead, and he pushes them back. But the bangs just land back in his eyes.

  “Hair tie?” I offer, pulling out one of the half dozen elastic bands I keep in my pockets.

  Yoshi glances up and chuckles, his fingers swiping mine as he takes the band. I feel a jolt of electricity shoot through me, and then his fingers are gone and my heart is beating out of control. Yoshi seems oblivious, though, as he pulls his bangs back again and this time fastens them behind the crown of his head with a few flicks of the elastic.

  “Don’t feel dumb,” I say, keeping my voice quiet to slip under the sounds of Kyle and Lark discussing crafts. “Unless you’ve lived here forever, you wouldn’t know that story, or that Lark is way more athletic than anyone would believe. But she really doesn’t get offended when people ask. The only thing she hates is when people stare and don’t ask.”

  He nods, not meeting my eyes, but then tilts his chin toward me. “Thanks,” he whispers, and it’s like the feeling of his fingers brushing mine. It makes me shiver.

  And judging from the smirk on Lark’s face when I glance up, she saw it all.

  I’m in for a world of teasing. But somehow, even that doesn’t bother me right now.

  * * *

  It turns out Yoshi is a genius when it comes to creating cardboard facial hair. I’m jealous. My mustaches are cartoonish and uneven, and my beards look like giant brown triangles. In the time it takes me to carefully trace out the pattern that Lark copied onto the paper, Yoshi’s done two or three mustaches and fixed the ones I ruined.

  “I give up!” I laugh when it starts taking him longer to fix mine than to make his own. “You’re so much better at this than I am.”

  “You just haven’t hit your groove yet. There’s still time.” Though, in the space it’s taken him to get out those two sentences, he’s created a pointy green beard.

  “I’m going to work on glasses with Lark and Kyle,” I say, getting up from the sofa.

  “No!” Yoshi implores. “Don’t go to the glasses side.” I know I shouldn’t read too much into this statement, but my heart feels jumpy.

  “Don’t listen to him!” Lark shouts from her chair from a couple of feet away. “Come to the glasses side. We have cookies!”

  “You have cookies?” I ask, even though I know it’s just a joke. The dejected sigh that Yoshi levels at me makes the whole thing worth it.

  Luckily, the doorbell rings before I have to make the difficult decision between my best friend and Yoshi. Though, if she could get a plate of cookies, it wouldn’t be much of a competition.

  But now Kyle’s leaving, and his dad agrees to take Yoshi home as well. And just like that, it’s me and Lark.

  “So, did you say anything to him?” Lark asks as we clean up the art supplies. We have a nice pile of props for the photo booth, but that isn’t what’s making me feel warm and fuzzy inside. “There seemed to be some good flirting going on.”

  “Flirting?” I echo. “No way.” But I think of how I felt when Yoshi’s fingers brushed across mine. Still, he must not have noticed.

  “What if he doesn’t like me like that?” My voice is quiet because I hate even thinking those words. Especially since I’m almost positive they’re true.

  “What if he does?” Lark asks in
a much louder voice.

  “It’s too much of a risk.” I shake my head. “Plus, things looked pretty flirty between you and Kyle. Did you talk to him about it?”

  “Nothing is happening with Kyle,” Lark says, and before I can say anything more, she says the magic words: “Any chance you’re in the mood for making cookies?”

  * * *

  “How was your day, girls?” Soleil asks when she gets home and joins Lark and me in the kitchen. She has dark circles under her eyes, and while her tone is friendly, she’s not her usual exuberant self. She’s clearly exhausted.

  “Mom, sit down,” Lark says, pointing to the chair. “I was about to take the chocolate chip cookies out of the oven.”

  “You were …” Soleil frowns at Lark.

  Lark makes a face. “I meant Mia will take them out. Don’t worry.”

  Soleil puts her hand on her daughter’s. “I can’t help it. I’m worrying about so many things, it all just spills over.”

  The oven dings, and I jump off my chair to grab the cookies. Maybe if I hang around long enough, Soleil will let something slip about the festival.

  I put on oven mitts and carefully remove the tray from the baking rack. Lark helps me set the tray out on the table to cool, and I shut off the oven.

  If Soleil wasn’t here, I’d get ice cream to go with the cookies, but that seems like a little much before dinner. At least in front of a parent.

  “Oh, just grab the ice cream, Mia.” Soleil sighs, scraping off a bit of cookie and blowing on it to cool it. “If we’re going to indulge, let’s go all out.”

  Lark gives me a subtle thumbs-up. Apparently, tired Soleil is more likely to be fine with ice cream and cookies before dinner. Good to know.

  Lark, her mom, and I all dig into vanilla ice cream topped with still-hot, mushy chocolate chip cookies. Lark and I have been eating this concoction since we were too young to make our own chocolate chip cookies. But it’s only a Lark’s-house thing. No chance Mom and Thierry would ever go for anything nearly this junky. And Dad and Shannon would never have all the right ingredients at their place.

  “How’s the Snowman Building station coming?” Soleil asks us.

  “It’s going to be epic,” I say, my mouth full of chocolate. “I’m telling you, this will be the best festival ever.”

  “I hope so,” Soleil says. “Right now, I’d just settle on knowing whether we were having the festival or not.”

  I freeze and look at her for more information.

  “Half the folks here think the town will fall apart if we skip one year,” Soleil explains, “and the other half think the town will fall apart if we have a less-than-perfect festival. Which means we’re at a standstill.”

  The kitchen goes silent, and Lark doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “Well, hopefully you won’t need to make a decision because it’ll start to snow!” I say, and Lark rewards me with an impressive eye roll. Okay, I should have kept my mouth shut, but Soleil knows I’m not just one of her constituents. She’s practically my godmother.

  “I wish it was that easy,” Soleil says. She allows her spoon to drop in the sink and walks out of the kitchen.

  Sorry, I mouth at Lark, but she gives me the eye roll again. And now I’m not feeling as warm and fuzzy as I was a minute ago. That, and the chocolate chip cookie goop is starting to churn in my stomach, which means I should probably go home and take some Pepto-Bismol.

  The walk from Lark’s house helps me clear my head a little. There will be a festival, I know it. We just need to have faith that the snow will come.

  I enter the inn the way I left, through the kitchen, mostly so I don’t get in trouble for tracking in mud. I know that Mom’s been overwhelmed by the anxiety of guests possibly canceling, so I’m trying extra hard to fly under the radar.

  The kitchen is empty, but I can hear Mom and Thierry talking right outside in the hall. I pause, listening.

  “Well, one thing that would help is if you could start creating menus that are less dependent on individual portion sizes.” I can’t see Mom, but the tone of her voice suggests that she’s close to losing her cool. Except, Mom never loses her cool.

  “Amy, chérie. It will be okay.” Thierry’s voice is lilting and soft, just like always. If I had to guess, I’d say that his oversize hands are framing her tired face.

  “No, Thierry,” Mom says, a sigh embedded in the words. “You make amazing food, and it’s one of the big reasons that our guests stay with us. But these days, everything is so precarious. We can’t be wasting food if our reservations change.”

  Her voice is getting higher pitched, and I chew on the side of my thumb. The inn serves breakfast every morning and a traditional dinner every Saturday night, in addition to the extra meals we provide during the festival. Saturday dinners include waitstaff and cloth napkins, and the tables are set with the good china. That’s part of the reason I spend Saturday nights at Dad’s house: Mom and Thierry don’t think it’s fair to put me on display at dinner in front of guests. When they have friends for dinner, that’s one thing. But for “Inn Dinners,” I’m happy to spend the time with Dad, Shannon, and my little sisters.

  “Amy, I try as best I can to make food that will easily stretch and that freezes nicely. But I’m a chef. I can’t serve lasagna or stir-fry to our guests if you want them to continue paying for these meals.”

  I’ve never heard this level of exasperation in their voices. Mom and Thierry don’t usually argue.

  “But this is a really serious situation,” Mom says. “I don’t know where else to cut from—”

  “I get it,” Thierry interrupts.

  “No, you don’t. I did look into what it would take to sell the inn, but I really hate the idea.”

  I’m straining so hard to hear the rest of her comments that it takes my brain a few minutes to catch up.

  Sell the inn?

  “I talked with Sarah Beth Hart at Plymouth Realty about other inns in the area to get a sense of how much we could expect to see,” Mom is saying. “Because this is a historic building, she thinks that we should be able to get a nice sum. But then we’d need to find another place to live …”

  “Chérie, we can’t think like that yet.”

  “Thierry, we have to. Especially now that they’re talking about canceling the festival. We’re counting on that income …”

  I can’t listen anymore.

  I back out of the kitchen and reenter the cold outside. I feel even sicker to my stomach than I did before. I knew we’d been having cancelations and that finances were tight. But I didn’t think it was this serious.

  If the inn were Dad’s home, I wouldn’t worry. Dad’s a dreamer. He and Shannon manage to make ends meet, even though they live in a tiny log house in the middle of nowhere with three kids under three, and neither of them work full-time. Some weeks they just have less.

  But Mom’s not like that. Not that she needs more, but she’s a planner. She doesn’t let herself get into a position where money isn’t coming in regularly. She believes in college funds and stability.

  And right now, there’s none of that.

  I stand outside in the cold, blinking back tears.

  We can’t lose the inn. We can’t leave Flurry.

  How would I go back and forth between my mom’s and dad’s houses? How would I see Lark? And what about other friends … like Yoshi?

  I manage to gather myself together enough to go back inside the inn. If I bump into Mom or Thierry, I don’t want them to see me so upset, to know I overheard them.

  But now more than ever, I know that the Winter Festival has to happen. This one weekend is a huge financial boost to the inn every year. And there must be something I can do.

  * * *

  I’m seriously dragging when I get to school the next morning. I stayed up late researching weather patterns, and then when I couldn’t understand most of it, I started looking up other winter festivals online. Because it can’t be that ours is the only festival being a
ffected by changing weather. Maybe not this winter, but other festivals in other years …

  I came up with a short list of other festivals that have been affected in the past, but that didn’t prove very helpful. Some canceled (not an option). Others postponed (also not an option given that Christmas is the following week). And others just dealt with ice sculptures that melted too quickly, or skating rinks that couldn’t be open for the festival.

  But nobody dealt with our particular issue of having a festival dedicated to snow … without snow.

  So now I’m sleep deprived and discouraged. And when you add in late for school? Well, I should wear a sign that says STAY CLEAR.

  Especially since the forecast still shows no sign of snow. Showers, yes. Because that’s what we need. Rain.

  I try to keep my head down, but it’s hard when rumors are swirling through the school, picking up steam with every new person they pass through.

  The festival is definitely going to be canceled! (I’m pretty sure Lark would tell me if that were true …)

  The town has declared a state of emergency. (Really? Is that even possible?)

  The Rocking Horse Inn has lost all of its bookings for the festival. (Almost positive I’d know if that were true.)

  “Stop listening to them,” Lark side-whispers to me as we make our way down the school corridor.

  “I’m not,” I lie, though I know I’m not fooling anyone. I’m walking slower than Lark, and that never happens. “But you’d tell me if the decision to cancel had already been made, right?”

  When there’s no answer, I quicken my steps to face her. “Lark, you’d tell me, right?” My voice is doing that oh-so-attractive squeak, but I don’t even care.

  Lark steps to the side, out of the movement of the crowds. “No decision has been made,” she reassures me, staring me straight in the eye. I nod slowly, because I know she wouldn’t lie to me. Not with something this important. “But you saw my mom last night. You need to prepare yourself for the very real possibility that they’ll need to cancel the festival.”

  “No.” I shake my head frantically. I glance up to stop the tears that are already hovering. There are holiday decorations all over the school. Even though Flurry’s a small town, we’re made up of people who come from so many places and identities, and our school’s walls reflect that. There are decorations for Christmas and Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, along with paper cutouts and illustrations of people of all ethnicities and family makeups.