Snowsisters Read online

  On our way down the stairs, Tess and I run into Chris, who asks, “Where is everyone going?”

  Tess invites her, and Chris thinks about it, but, as Orly comes down the stairs behind us, Chris shakes her head and goes up the stairs. It’s a big relief to me. I wouldn’t have asked her.

  We meet at the front door; we’ve successfully evaded the adults, even Grace. Janaye has a cool, dark brown shearling coat on. Yin appears ready for the Arctic in a quilted thing with a huge hood, gloves, and a knit hat. Orly has on the same coat she wore yesterday, with a matching scarf and earmuffs. Tess is in pink, no surprise.

  I pull the door open slowly so it doesn’t make any sound. The cold air hits my face, making me wince. We sneak down the steps and stand in the driveway beyond the light from the lodge. “Okay, Tess, where to?”

  “Down the driveway and to the left. I think it’s about a mile.”

  Away from the lights of the lodge, it’s pitch black. Huge pine trees tower over us on both sides of the plowed access road. It’s a little spooky, frankly. The City is never this dark.

  “A mile,” Orly gasps. “In this cold? Y’all must have thought we made some baaad chili!”

  I hope they’re not having second thoughts. I assume Tess knows what she’s doing. “C’mon, that’s only twenty blocks. Janaye has to walk that far to get a subway in Brooklyn.”

  Janaye laughs. “Manhattanites, folks.”

  Nobody says anything. I forget that most people don’t know how New York works or that Brooklyn and Manhattan are really different. Everyone here seems to think Janaye and I are from the same place. I suppose Janaye and I have more in common than we do with anyone else.

  Tess finally says, “If we walk quickly, you won’t feel the cold so much.”

  Orly sinks into her coat and follows Tess down the driveway.

  Yin catches me shivering. “You people would never survive in Buffalo,” she snorts.

  “Is Buffalo colder than this?” Orly asks.

  “Def,” Yin responds. “The wind is always howling off Lake Erie. We get eight feet of snow every winter, and it’s blinding. This is like a spring thaw.”

  Orly makes a clucking sound and pats one of her earmuffs.

  “Keep your minds on the pizza—that should help,” I add.

  It does help. We walk down the driveway and make the left Tess mentioned. The road has streetlights but no sidewalk. At least it’s plowed, so we aren’t trudging through snow. We fan out across the road in a rough line. There’s no traffic, and the stars are brighter than I’ve ever seen. Scattered here and there along the road are a few houses, most with smoke coming from chimneys and trucks in the driveways. After about ten minutes, we see the lights of town.

  Tess points out our destination. “There: Granite State Pizza.”

  Sure enough, there’s a little square building with a neon sign shaped like New Hampshire.

  It’s very small: two plastic booths in front and a counter with a cash register on the left. The doorbell rings as we come in and a man looks up from the cash register. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, even though it’s freezing out; he’s built like he knows how to eat a pizza as well as make one. He doesn’t say anything.

  Orly moans with pleasure, “Oh, that heat feels wonderful.” She’s right. The place is really warm. It smells like oregano and marinara sauce.

  Janaye walks up to the counter and says to the man, “Can you make me a Bee Sting? Small?”

  The man stares at Janaye, obviously confused. “A what?” he asks.

  “A Bee Sting pizza. Oh, and do you make juice here?”

  “Juices? Yeah, there’s apple juice and cranberry juice in the cooler.”

  Tess taps Janaye on the shoulder. Either she’s blushing or her cheeks are pink from the cold. “Um, I don’t think they have any of that on the menu, Janaye.”

  “But they’re so good. Right, Soph? You’ve been to Roberta’s.”

  “What’s a Bee Sting?” Orly asks.

  “They have spicy sausage with honey drizzled on them over the tomato sauce and cheese,” I explain. “Yeah, Janaye, but I don’t see them either.” I point to a whiteboard above the counter with black plastic letters. It reads “large” and “small” and has a list of toppings. No honey. “No juicing, either.”

  “Oh, okay. Sorry.”

  Tess smiles at the guy behind the counter. “Granite State makes good pizza. We have one in Castleton.” He smiles back at her, and I can tell it’s going to be all right. She’s not as mousy as I’d thought from our after-hours conversations. Maybe that’s the military thing. “Let’s just share a large. What does everyone like on top?”

  We’re all over the map on that one. No one wants to pick. Yin and Orly do that thing where they say they don’t care and they’ll have whatever. Janaye just seems confused by the lack of New York ingredients. Tess looks at me as if she’s curious to see whether I’m going to be all weird like Janaye or adapt to my surroundings. She looks more comfortable here than she does back at the lodge, as if she’s back in her own world. I’m for mushroom, but I don’t want to be pushy. Tess looks around at everyone and suggests half sausage and half plain, since Janaye wanted sausage originally. We all shrug, so that’s what we order. We each pay for a drink and look in the refrigerator case.

  Janaye’s not there yet. She looks at the bottles and says, “I guess no Boylan’s, huh?”

  “Janaye, we’re not in Brooklyn anymore.” I laugh. “Think of this as normcore eating.”

  “What’s normcore?” With her accent, Orly makes it sound like “know’m cooor.”

  “It’s hipster for Gap from twenty years ago—mom jeans and gray pullovers with little vees at the neck.” Janaye rolls her eyes as she explains. Tess flashes us a hurt-feelings look. Oops.

  Yin snorts. “You guys, there’s a world out here beyond Brooklyn and Manhattan!” Tess nods and works up a small smile. She’s cute when she smiles like that. She still has her pom-pom hat on her head. I should be nicer. Also, I remind myself to focus on Yin.

  We pile into a booth. We don’t really fit, but it’s fun. We’re all laughing as we take off our coats and Orly passes around napkins.

  “So, do you blog about the Buffalo winters, Yin?” Professor Forsythe can’t be that interested in the weather.

  “No. I blog about what it’s like to be a teenage girl in the twenty-teens. You know, popular culture, social pressure, and how our parents screwed up the world for us. Also, sometimes I write about what it’s like to be an immigrant’s kid.”

  “Wow. Interesting.” And impressive, too. She might be stiffer competition than I guessed. “What’s it called?” I might learn something from reading it.

  “Yin Without Yang.”

  Janaye laughs. “What’s the yin if a girl can’t get some yang?”

  “Since yin symbolizes the feminine, I intentionally cut out the masculine symbol of yang so I can put a good spin on it in my college essay. It doesn’t mean I don’t want a little yang myself, Janaye.”

  “Got it.” We all laugh. Tess looks as if she doesn’t get the joke.

  “Oh, yang is so not my thing,” I say.

  Janaye jokes, “You mean ‘thang,’ right?”

  Yin and I laugh, but Tess and Orly don’t. Maybe I overstepped? I’m just putting it out there.

  Tess.

  When the pizza arrives, everyone goes for the plain half, even Janaye, who wanted sausage. Orly is watching her weight, and Yin is “mostly vegetarian.” I wish they had said something before we ordered. We could have had mushroom like Soph wanted, which is my favorite too. I take a slice of the sausage. Granite State uses spicy Italian sausage, and that’s pretty good back home. It turns out this is exactly the same. I feel better, even though most of what Soph and Janaye and Yin talk about doesn’t make much sense.

  Yin talks more abou
t her blog and describes her complicated college admissions strategy. She’s going to apply to twenty schools. She has visited nine of them so far. She plans to take the admissions tour when we visit Minerva later this week. Soph pays close attention to what Yin says. I tell them a little about the Oktoberfest that Minerva does every year and how they have a spring concert that Joey and I came for last April. We had to listen from behind the stage because we didn’t have IDs, but the band was Maple Left from Montreal, one of Joey’s favorites. We both sang along like idiots. After the concert, we walked around town and went for ice cream. Soph seems to like that story, so I’m glad I told her.

  I’m sitting next to Orly. “Are you warmed up?”

  She laughs. “Yes, for now. But I dread the walk back. I don’t know how y’all do it in this cold.”

  “I liked hearing about your writing. What else are you doing?”

  “Well, you know how you remember some things from when you were really little, but they seem different from what you remember from last week?”

  I do.

  “It’s mostly that. When I was really young, we lived out in the country, near the South Carolina border. I remember things like the time my puppy got lost and we drove around all afternoon in Daddy’s truck, looking for him. We moved to a town near Atlanta when I started fifth grade. Everything before then feels like it happened ages ago…”

  Even though it’s strange for a teenager to be writing a memoir, I know what she means. There’s lots of things that I remember from being little, like going with MeMe and Gramps to the grocery store every Saturday and picking out a box of those little animal crackers or helping Daddy prepare taps for collecting sap during sugaring season. It was only a few years ago, but the details are hazy. I think it’s nice that Orly keeps track of stories like that. I bet MeMe would like it if I write out some of my memories and give them to her before I leave next summer. It’s hard to know how long it will be before I’m allowed to go home.

  Being in the pizza place relaxes me. I have a moment of panic when the guy brings the check because I only brought twenty dollars with me this week and I have used almost half of it for my share and my drink, once Janaye figures out a tip. I hope there aren’t going to be any more expenses like this. But I have to admit, once Soph and Janaye stop comparing everything to New York and I have food in my stomach, the evening is looking more like a success.

  Yin and Soph talk about a summer camp in the Catskills they both went to as kids. Janaye asks Orly about her earrings.

  Soph tells a funny story about trying to ask a girl out on a date in a coffee shop in New York and getting interrupted by the girl’s boyfriend. “Hey,” she shrugs, as though it was no big deal. “She was cute. I didn’t know he was in the men’s room. We had a moment.”

  She and Janaye and Yin all laugh. I have no idea where to look. No one at home would ever tell this story, and they certainly wouldn’t laugh about it. But it feels good, watching other girls I don’t know tell stories and make each other laugh and try to get along. Joey will like it when I tell him.

  I ask Orly about her session with Professor Forsythe. “Did she ask all sorts of hard questions?”

  “No. We read some of it and she pointed out how the words sounded together. I thought only about what they meant, but she suggested I choose words that sound like the feelings I want to convey. She’s very smart, Professor Forsythe. That’s why I asked to talk to her.”

  That catches Soph’s attention.

  “You mean she gave you a private critique?”

  Orly nods.

  “Did you set it up before you came? Is there a sign-up sheet somewhere?”

  It’s odd how intense Soph is about this subject. Orly seems taken aback, but she tells Soph what she knows. “No. She said anyone could ask. She told me that all the teachers are available. I thought I might ask Grace to look at my next chapter.”

  Soph frowns at me. “Why bother with Grace? Helen Forsythe is the important person to know here.” She turns to Yin, “Right?”

  “I guess.” Yin shrugs. “I mean, she invited me to apply, but I don’t really know her. And I think that getting into the conference and maybe doing some good work here is probably what colleges are looking for most. It’s less important to have good recommendations than it is to have an impressive body of work.”

  These girls are really serious. At my school, most kids who are going to college are going to the state university in Durham. Nobody is that worried about anything other than how to pay for it.

  I don’t need college help and I want to stay as far away from Professor Forsythe as possible. I mention that I want help with integrating spells into my writing, when I realize that both Yin and Soph are poets.

  Soph hesitates. She exchanges a look with Janaye before turning back to me. “Sure,” she says. “I’d be happy to help. I don’t really know anything about the show. But I could put together some couplets if that would work.”

  I’m happy that she agreed to help when I asked and nervous about showing her what I’m working on.

  Soph asks Orly about Chris, and the mood changes. I tense up. Orly looks long and hard at Soph.

  “I mean,” Soph rolls her eyes, “Is she any friendlier behind closed doors? Or does she spend all night lecturing you about the proper literature to read and the appropriate response to every occasion?”

  Orly is still staring at Soph. “It’s fine,” she says. “I’m fine.”

  Soph seems about to say something else when Yin jumps in, “Oh, Chris is really smart. She’s just intense.”

  Then Orly adds, “Intense, yes. Making that chili surely was intense. We both read the recipe and added things, but she would barely talk to me. I think we both put in the chili powder. That might be why it came out so poorly.”

  Soph rolls her eyes. “I can only imagine she’s already done a thorough investigation into how to make chili and found there is only her way!” Everyone laughs.

  I pretend to yawn so that I can break up this conversation. “Better head back,” I say. I have fifty push-ups to do before bed.

  Everyone is still laughing as we go back into the cold, but I hear Soph talking low with Orly on the walk. I don’t want to know what they’re saying.

  * * *

  From Soph Alcazar’s Writing Journal,

  February 11, 2018

  Disappointed by chili, we venture out.

  I try to determine my rival’s clout.

  Chapter Nine

  From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,

  posted by conTessaofthecastle:

  Clouds darkened the sky above the tree canopy as they picked their way through the forest. Daphne stopped once or twice to close her eyes and repeat the pathfinder chant. They couldn’t use the sun to guide them in this part of the woods, and she wasn’t at all sure that they were headed in the right direction. She didn’t say anything to Astoria, instead relying on the chant. She’d know soon enough if it was wrong.

  Soph.

  After breakfast on Monday morning, we go into a large conference room with Celestine. On one end is a big screen, and Celestine tells us to make sure we can all see it.

  “This morning, we are going to do an exercise called ‘Show and Tell.’ It will seem more familiar to those of you who write nonfiction, but it is useful for every writer. The first part is simple. I want you to watch this short video.” She dims the lights and the screen brightens. She’s right. It is short. When it ends, Celestine turns off the monitor and puts the lights back on. She walks around the long conference table handing each of us a blue exam book and a pen, saying, “Now I want you each to write down what you saw in the video, so that someone who reads what you’re writing will know what happened.”

  I write: In a school library, there are a few wooden tables and a girl sitting at one of the tables studying. She finishes what she’s doing t
hen stands up and leaves. A heavyset girl with short hair walks up to one of the tables, looking for the first girl, who was supposed to meet her there. Then she reaches under the table and picks up a messenger bag. She searches for the other girl again, but doesn’t see her, so she shrugs and leaves.

  After we finish writing, Professor Forsythe, Joan, and Grace come into the room. Celestine says, “We’re going to divide into four groups now. Each of us will take one of the four groups into another room. We’ll read out names of our respective participants and you should follow us out. Bring what you’ve written and your pen.”

  Professor Forsythe calls my name and puts me in a group with Ellen, Peggy, Keisha, Yin, and Tess. We follow Professor Forsythe into a smaller room with a round table and a video screen. I sit between Ellen and Yin. My mother would be thrilled. I can hear her reminding me that I need to seize “every chance to make an excellent impression, darling.” Get out of my head, Mom! But I should try to make up for that fan fiction fight I started yesterday. When we’re seated, Professor Forsythe asks us to go around the room reading aloud what we wrote.

  Ellen, the songwriter, is first. She wrote: A man and a woman meet in a book-filled room but the woman doesn’t like the man. When the woman sees the man approach, she leaves. The man likes the woman and doesn’t understand. When he sees that she left her backpack, he picks it up and goes to find her.

  Yin treats it like a blog, which fits with her work: Another day in a nearly empty study hall. One student leaves, another comes in. The bell rings, and he leaves. I wonder if Professor Forsythe sees how little Yin got from the video. I hope so.

  Peggy, who wants to be a lawyer, has a different take: A high school girl leaves her backpack in the cafeteria. A thuggish guy comes in from outside and steals her backpack.

  Keisha, the historical novelist wrote: This is a transitional scene where two lovers fail to connect. Clearly, the girl and the guy have had some type of disagreement and are trying to avoid each other. The girl, seeing that the guy is coming, leaves so she doesn’t have to see him. He’s relieved that she’s not there.