Chapter 26
The Smell of Snow
Paisley
Gwen doesn’t have a bed. Instead, she’s got a rabbit named Bing Crosby. I know that because there’s a sign on his cage saying: Hell yeah, call me Bing Crosby.
She sleeps on a thick down blanket, a pillow that looks like it belongs on a garden chair, and a red yoga mat. Levi and Aaron are squeezed next to each other on the blanket, their legs tucked in, and I look over to Gwen questioningly.
She shrugs. “It’s better for your back.”
“After training, you seriously manage to sleep on the floor?”
“It’s a matter of getting used to it.” She closes the door behind her, freeing up a view of an oversized poster of a guy whose palms are shooting blue lightning bolts.
“Who’s that?”
Gwen looks at me as if I’ve personally offended her.
“Seriously?” Levi says. His face is so skeptical I count four furrows. “You don’t know who that is?”
“Umm. No?”
“It’s Magnus Bane,” Aaron says, as if that explained everything.
I’m still confused. Am I supposed to know who that is? “Is he a K-pop superstar or something?”
Gwen snorts. “He’s the High Warlock of Brooklyn!”
I blink.
“Shadowhunters?”
I shake my head.
Levi buries his head in his hands, Aaron groans.
“Cultural philistine,” Gwen says, grinning.
“I’ll let you borrow the books, if you want.
” Then she points at a lilac-colored piece of material covering her entire desk.
“Here, I’ve been working on this the last couple of days.
” She presses a lever on her sewing machine so that the needle moves upward and pulls the fabric out from underneath.
It’s a dress. For her program. Gwen’s face is glowing with pride as she holds it out under my nose. “Nice, right?”
More than that. The straps lead in an elegant herringbone pattern into a perfect neckline that only just covers the cleavage and frames the completely open back.
“My God, Gwen! You sewed this yourself?” I take a few steps forward and run my fingers over the ruffles. “It must’ve taken you ages for the sequins!”
“Show her the bow,” Aaron says, and Gwen turns the dress over. At the lower back the herringbone pattern shifts and becomes a delicate bow.
“This isn’t a dress for a program; this is a party dress for Kate Middleton.”
Gwen laughs and punches my shoulder. “Kate Middleton’s eyes are brown. That would never match.”
“Your eyes are brown, too.”
“Yeah, it’s not for me.” She pushes the dress against my chest and jumps up and down twice. “Do it, try it on!”
“You made this for me?” I can hardly breathe. Really. The last time I received a gift was in kindergarten. Josephine Hangster didn’t like her Tater Tots and nudged them onto my plate. “Gwen, this is…too nice. I can’t…”
“You can. Mine’s been ready for weeks already, and if you don’t wear it it’ll just rot away in my closet.”
“On top of it, we can’t let you go out on the ice in your training dress tonight,” Levi says.
He says the word “training dress” with a rumpled nose, as if it had to do with the lice that Josephine Hangster found on my head after giving me her tots.
I close my eyes a moment to collect myself, suddenly everything’s just a bit too much for me.
Although it’s just a dress, it means the world to me.
“Thank you, Gwen. Really, thank you.”
She shrugs as if it were nothing. As if it were normal.
Maybe it is now. Normal. The idea that my life could simply be normal triggers a tingling feeling in my body; “normal” is the most beautiful word you can use.
It wasn’t clear to me how much I had missed, how much I needed to have friends.
From the moment I took off, I’ve been a castle with thick walls.
Secure. But lonely. Levi, Aaron, and Gwen pulled me out.
It’s nice out here. Frightening sometimes, but beautiful.
I pull the dress on, twirl around in a circle. Levi whistles and Aaron says, “Shit, Paisley. If I wasn’t gay, I’d eat you up.”
Gwen falls onto her desk chair. She’s wearing thick Frodo socks, really, his face is everywhere, and pushes off the ground with them to spin in circles. Then she says, “If you ate her up, Aaron, you’d have a big problem.”
He runs a finger down the freckles on his arm. “Why?”
“Because Knox is into her,” Levi and Gwen say in unison. They look at each other, the corner of Levi’s mouth curls in amusement and Gwen laughs in her way, which always sounds a little bit like a pig’s grunt.
“Can we please not talk about Knox?” Pulling my wool sweater over my head, my voice comes out muffled.
A week from now it’s Christmas Eve, and today Aspen’s Christmas party is taking place at Silver Lake.
Those of us from iSkate are showing a selection from the programs we’ll perform at Skate America. It’s a tradition.
“Why not?” Gwen takes a step toward me in her Frodo socks. “I thought you two got along?”
I mutter something incomprehensible and hope that the issue is now closed, but of course it isn’t.
Gwen covers her mouth with her hand and makes a weird movement, which causes a chair caster to bang into her rabbit cage and makes her wobble dangerously for a second. Bing Crosby flattens his ears and crawls into his little house.
“You slept with him!” she shrieks.
“God, no! Why do you always think that?”
“It’s Knox, Paisley.” Levi wipes his dark bangs off his forehead, slides across the floor to the cage, and tries to lure Bing Crosby out of his house with odd squeaks.
I think it’s more disturbing to the little guy than Gwen’s attack with the chair.
Levi gives up and looks back at me. “I even find him hot, and I think ninety-nine percent of female tourists come here in the hopes of running into him.”
“And hauling him off.”
“I’m not one of the ninety-nine percent of tourists. Hey, can I use this to mend my legwarmers?” I grab a ball of gray wool out of Gwen’s basket and lift it into the air. Gwen nods, hands me a needle, and says, “Something happened between you two. And I want to know what.”
I rummage around in my bag for my legwarmers and begin to sew. “What makes you think so?” I say, putting on an indifferent tone.
“For days you’ve avoided any discussion when his name pops up.”
That I can’t deny. So I don’t say anything and choose to ignore her instead. Gwen starts throwing Skittles at my head. I manage to avoid most of them, but one hits my ear and, being small, manages to find its way in.
“Great,” I hiss while trying to fish it back out. Levi and Aaron double up laughing. I think Bing Crosby may very well become my new best friend. “We kissed.”
“You’re not serious!” At the word serious Gwen slams both of her palms on the arms of the chair. She scoots forward a bit, her eyes wide, hoping to learn everything. Her expression reminds me of Kaa, the snake in The Jungle Book. “Tell me everything!”
I prick myself with the needle and curse. “There’s nothing to tell. He made me hot chocolate, and we hung out. Then there was the kiss, and when I noticed that it was all a bit strange, I stopped things.”
My finger on my lips, I get up to grab a tissue from Gwen’s desk. She watches every move I make with Argus eyes and when I turn to go back to my seat, she blocks my way with one of her Frodo socks. “Are. You. Nuts?”
“What?”
“That’s not how Knox Winterbottom comes on to women! Women come on to him, he sleeps with them, and that’s that. But he made you a hot chocolate, Paisley, a hot chocolate! Do you realize what that means?”
“Umm. I’ve got the feeling that you want me to give you some deep answer or something, but, well…it’s just hot chocolate…”
“It’s love!” she cries, jumping up out of her chair and throwing her arms into the air. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, Knox has feelings for you!”
“Okay, Gwen, you’re crazy. Your rabbit is afraid of you. Do you see that? Bing Crosby is distraught.”
“Knox has feelings for you, and you pushed him away.” Gwen grabs a huge jawbreaker off her desk that, judging by its appearance, she’s been working on for a while and begins to suck it. “But we’ll get it straightened out.”
“You’re going to have to brush your teeth afterward, Gwen, that thing is pure sugar.”
“He’s going to be there, too.”
“Who?”
“Knox.”
“What about him?”
“He’s going to be there,” she repeats, licks her jawbreaker, and raises her eyebrows at me. “At the party.”
I moan. “Guys, can you please get Gwen under control?”
“Naw.” Levi doesn’t even look up as he ties his skates. “No chance.”
Aaron shrugs, a bemused smile on his face. “Tried and failed many times. Dear, you’re at her mercy.”
“Paisley!” Gwen grabs my shoulders and shakes me, causing her jawbreaker shift in her hand and stick to my skin. “Listen. You pushed him away, which means he’ll come back. One hundred percent. And that’s why you really need to consider what’s going on between the two of you!”
I want to say something, but Gwen puts her hand across my mouth to stop me.
“There is something there. Before you lose your job for having your heart broken and he fucks you over, or he has his heart broken because you’re stringing him along and going to drop him, you really need to think things over. ”
What’s going on between the two of us. That’s it exactly.
We’re not a we. We’re not a he and I. It’s just something that’s going on.
Ever since the first night, the two of us have acted as if nothing happened.
Somehow it’s okay. It’s just like that between Knox and me.
Somehow okay. It’s not what I’d really like, but I need it to be this way.