32 #2
there weren’t many in the second semester. I found one you would be required to take that’s offered from 7:30–8:30 a.m. or
2:00–3:15 p.m., and there was no chance you were signing up for the seven thirty in the morning one. Result: be here around
3:15.”
“You terrify me.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Want to take a walk?”
It was January in Vermont, with the wind blowing off Lake Champlain and ripping through the streets. Once they left the relative
protection of the center of town and walked down to the water’s edge, where the promenade was deserted, the cold came at them
like fists. They sat on the swings beside the lake anyway, because no one else was going to and because they were both difficult
people. She gripped the edge of the swing with her knees, clamping her legs tightly together and huddling inside her coat
to try to stay warm.
“You need a real coat,” he said.
“This is a real coat. Speaking of . . .”
She opened her backpack, pulled out the carefully folded coat, and handed it back to him. He cocked an eyebrow as he accepted
it.
“It fits you better,” she said. “I like mine anyway.”
He smirked, but there was no real humor in it. He looked down as he accepted it.
“Okay,” he said. “I get it.”
“Sometimes,” Stevie said, “a coat is just a coat. This coat is too big on me, but it fits you. You should have it. It’s a
good coat. I have my own coat.”
Stevie held out her arm and flashed the cracking red vinyl.
“It looks good,” he said, “but that’s a weak-ass coat for this weather.”
“Which is why I’m wearing this sixty-pound sweater Janelle made for me. It’s from an Icelandic pattern. People in Iceland
know how to keep out the cold.”
David’s face flushed pink in the wind. His curling hair was pressed down by his hat, framing his face. How could someone this
beautiful have ever . . . felt things? For her? Had it been a trick? A joke?
“Let me ask you something,” Stevie said. “You said you thought what I did . . . that it was too much. It was intimidating.
But what if I wasn’t doing it?”
“Doing what?”
The wind slid over the lake, picking up the cold, throwing it at the shoreline and into their faces. Stevie took it straight on, never blinking or trying to get out of its way. Let it come. It felt good, cleansing.
“I am going to stop with the mysteries,” Stevie said, amazed at how placidly the words came out of her mouth. How her shoulders
seemed to fall away from her ears. How she could suddenly hear better—hear the birds and the traffic. “I’m done. No more murders.
No more solving cases. I want to pass my exams. I want to go to college. I want to be normal for a change. Not, like, my parents’
normal. Just . . . no death.”
David shifted on the bench and craned up his neck a bit, like he was considering a strange object in the sky, then he turned
on an angle to face her.
“You’re serious?”
“Deadly,” Stevie replied, forcing a smile. “So my question is: Are you still interested in a Stevie who isn’t into murders?”
It’s a strange thing. When you look at someone long enough, sometimes—nothing changes, and yet, everything is different. David
had the same expression of skeptical dismay, the same small downturn of the mouth, but there was something new in his eyes.
They were locked in to her.
“That’s not all you have going for you,” he said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“I don’t want to kink shame,” David said, “but it wasn’t like I was thinking it’s really hot with all the murder whenever I saw you. That’s not what I’m into.”
“Then what is it?” Stevie asked. “What else am I? Because I really have no idea.”
“You’re smart and you’re weirdly relentless and you don’t seem to be afraid of anyone or anything despite the fact that you have a lot of anxiety. And you’re beautiful.”
Something warm came all over Stevie—a firing of a thousand little nerve endings that had gone dormant for weeks. They sparked
from the sudden reintroduction of power, almost causing her to twitch. Her mouth bent into a sloppy and involuntary smile,
which she tried to hide by brushing something imaginary off her cold and impermeable vinyl sleeve.
“Are you about to say that I’m one of those people who’s extra beautiful because they don’t know they’re beautiful?” she asked.
“Because that’s the kind of negative attention I crave.”
“That’s exactly what I was going to do,” he said, leaning in hard. “And then I was about to tell you that the real answer to the mystery
are the friends you make along the way. And that you can’t buy happiness, but you can rent sadness.”
They were pressed into each other now, circling warmth, pressing the cold back.
“Wait, you can? How much is it?”
“Like, six bucks an hour,” he said. “At Rent-a-Sad.”
“Holy shit. That’s a good deal.”
“Get on it.”
He had the sad half smile of someone forced to laugh, and he looked down at the folded coat on his lap.
“Just a coat, huh?” he said.
“Well,” Stevie replied. “Not just a coat. There’s a gift on it. It has a message. Look.”
Stevie flipped the fold to reveal the lapel, where she had attached the enamel pin Mudge had given her for her birthday. David leaned down to look at the little Mickey and Minnie pin, the one from the happy ride where nothing could ever go wrong except absolutely everything.
That’s when something rose up inside her, pushing her face toward his to kiss him.