The Cure for Cold Feet by Beth Ain

Author:Beth Ain [Ain, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Hey, how’s Quinn, anyway? Mom asks, her mouth filled with salad because Jasmine tells her pizza is

INFLAMMATORY,

and Mom trusts in Jasmine more than she

trusts in pizza.

Fine, I say, shrugging off her salad eating and her question

at once.

I don’t want to waste time talking about how Quinn is when we are at Mario’s, a pizza place so good you

don’t mind that the chairs spin around and make you dizzy and that the lady who runs the place

chases after unruly teenagers with a wooden spoon.

The spoon lady, James calls her.

James isn’t here tonight, though, so I have no one to joke with.

You didn’t tell me about Jackson’s dad,

I say back,

my mouth half-full of pizza.

He told you? she asks.

I told him he’d be back, I say. He’ll be back, right?

He’ll be back, she says, then she looks down at her phone.

It’s nice that you two are friends now, she says, and I hate that she noticed.

Not friends, I say, dancing partners.

She doesn’t notice that I am being sassy,

that I act sassy when I am embarrassed.

I don’t know where James is, she says to her phone like her phone might answer her back, like this:

James is on his way and will turn back into your

happy-go-lucky favorite child in

five, four, three, two…

But her phone does not tell her that,

cannot tell her that, because

it isn’t possible,

the same way it isn’t possible for me to go back to fourth grade and

hating Jackson Allen, and

loving Quinn Mitchell.

Backward isn’t an option unless you are James, right now walking toward us and wobbling away from us

at once.

The door of Mario’s has swung open and the gust of air is cold but

James is on fire,

his face sweaty, his body swaying, and as he gets closer,

I recognize the smell of alcohol from Mom and Dad’s old New Year’s Eve parties—

bottles and sparkling glasses and

sparklier Happy New Year! horns

lined up for their guests,

James and me lined up too,

in front of the TV with little cocktail plates of

pigs in blankets and cheese and crackers

and tall plastic flutes filled up with

sparkling apple cider,

ready to party in our pj’s on a New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

We should have had a sparkly party and

pigs in blankets because Mario’s suddenly feels

brightly lit and cold and I feel afraid that James has slipped just out of my grasp while I was busy with makeup and dancing and

myself.

Hey, Spoon Lady, he shouts,

waving in a big, weird wave.

James Kline, get your butt over here, Mom says, gritting her teeth and slamming her phone down on the table, and it lights up like the crystal ball in Times Square

just at the moment James’s eyes

light up and he trips over something

himself.

He falls flat on his face, blood trickling out of the scar on his chin from when he once flew over the handlebars of his dirt bike, a long time ago,

before Dad left

and before all of this moodiness and

before he cheated on that Spanish test and

before he cheated me out of a big brother who knows better than to come to Mario’s Pizza

drunk

on New Year’s Eve, when the Spoon Lady is on duty.

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