Free Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler Page B

sick, Hud.” Dani folds up the letter and hands it back to me, her eyes soft and glassy. “I know you skate at Fillmore sometimes, but I didn’t know it was like that .”
    “Honestly? Neither did I. But when I heard about this competition, it was like … I don’t know. Like I could finally have a chance to do something with my life, even if Mom can’t afford college and my father …” His latest e-mail scrolls through my head, sent this morning from a rest stop near the Grand Canyon. God’s country, he called it. The soul of the world. “My father just isn’t here.”
    A gust of wind blows across the near-empty parking lot. Snow clouds funnel and swirl beneath the lampposts, and a string of taillights beads along the overpass.
    “The thing is,” I continue, “when Josh asked me to skate with him yesterday, I thought about what it would be like to do it again for an audience—even one person—and I freaked. I don’t think I’m cut out for it anymore.”
    “What? Hudson, you have to find a way to make this happen. Your whole face lights up when you talk about skating. Look.” She touches my reflection in the glass, and I smile, seeing for just a moment what she sees. Nervousness, yes. But hope. Excitement, too.
    “You can’t walk away from this opportunity,” she says. “You’ll regret it forever. I know you.”
    “You’re the only one.” I look out the door again, the windpicking up snow and depositing it across the few remaining cars.
    “Maybe I can help you train.”
    “You don’t even like the cold.” She takes a breath to speak, but I shake my head. “Even if I had time to work on my routine, and I could lose the anxiety, I don’t have the cash for another club membership. And I can’t train on Fillmore—I need access to groomed, indoor ice.”
    “What a coincidence. I think we both know someone who can get it for you.” Dani smiles, wriggling her eyebrows until I connect all the dots.
    “Are you serious? Are you … no . No! That’s straight up crazy . There is no way I’m—”
    “Suit yourself,” she says. “But once you figure out you want it bad enough—and I know you do—you’ll talk to him.”
    “Miss?” One of the blue-haired knitting club ladies steps out of the bathroom and joins us at the door. She’s a bit winded, and there’s a long piece of toilet paper trailing behind her shoe.
    “Just thought you should know,” she says, leaning in close and pointing a finger at my chest, “the powder room is out of toilet paper, and one of the toilets is overflowing.” With that, she waddles back to her table and smooths a crumpled paper napkin over her lap.
    I believe this is what Oprah refers to as an “Aha! Moment.”
    I look at Dani and sigh, a big one for the ages. “Okay. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

Chapter Six

     

Kill Me, Kill Me Now Cupcakes
     
Any cake, any flavored icing, served in front of the entire school while wearing your most unflattering, back-of-the-drawer underwear
     
    If I detour down the science hall, cut across the gym, head up one flight of stairs and down another, Josh Blackthorn’s locker is conveniently en route to my first class.
    He totally catches me staring from across the hall like the gawker that I’m not, and I flip open my econ book to a random page as if my sole purpose in this hallway at this moment is to save the lives of hundreds of innocent children by defining the term “gross domestic product.”
    Here it is! The sum of all market values of goods and services produced by a nation in a given year. Says so right on page ninety-four. Disaster averted! Lives saved! Awards, um, awarded!
    Still, he’s smiling right at me, and I can’t escape. I waveand head toward him with my best fancy-meeting-you-here-at-your-own-locker face, front and center.
    “Hi, Josh,” I say, super-originally.
    He leans against his open locker door, shoulders shifting under a faded Addicts in the Attic shirt. “How’s it