“How are things with Mason?” I ask.

  “Oh, you know, he’s wicked good in bed. He can’t get enough of me. We do it, like, three or four times a day. Since he dropped out of school he gets bored all day, watches porn while I’m at classes, and then can’t keep his hands off me.”

  “TMI. I thought you said he has a job.”

  “Oh, he does. But still, without having to go to school, there’s, like, so much time in the day. Seriously. Sometimes we’ll be up for like two in a row, and there’s, like, so much time, y’know? Mase and I are like together twenty-four/seven. Sometimes he starts to get annoying, but he knows how to keep me happy, so it’s no big deal.”

  After she tells me this, I’m sure they’re both on meth, and that accounts for the staying up, missing school, bad skin, and everything else. A couple years ago, a group came to Johnson Regional and held an assembly on methamphetamine awareness. I think it had the opposite of the intended effect and drove half the student body to try the stuff, Mason being one of them.

  “So, are you still hanging around with that Even kid?” Brittany asks. I don’t like how she says his name. I’d wanted to tell her about the motorcycle and the trip, but I decide to keep it to myself.

  We pull into the Walmart parking lot. “Yeah. We still hang out. So, who are you shopping for?” I ask to change the subject.

  “Hmmm. Daddy. He’s been really cool about me seeing Mase. He don’t care whether I stay at our house or his. So I want to get him something nice. And Mase, of course. Oh, and my cousin and her daughter. Her boyfriend just left her, and so we was thinking she might come to stay with us, so I should get them something.”

  We walk into the brightly lit store. I’m hoping for Christmas carols or something similarly festive, but clanging shopping carts jostle me as people fight for the last few. I don’t have much to get, so I bypass them and grab a basket.

  Brittany and I cruise through the store, stopping in the electronics section. I get Skunk a video game. Mama is going to be hard, but I find Fat Henry and Stacy a cinnamon-scented candle. At the last moment, I decide not to get myself a new scale. I don’t care that Brittany sees me waffling in the aisle. Before, this would be the kind of thing I’d want to keep from her, but knowing that I’ve already lost a few pounds has given me confidence. I decide I don’t need to know the number, and leave the box on the shelf. Maybe I’ve stopped caring about what she thinks about me because clearly she’s lost track of what she thinks of herself.

  A gift for Even stumps me.

  As we circle back toward the registers, Brittany says, “Hang on; I’ve got to see about something.” She ducks down an aisle in the health-and-beauty department. I mindlessly follow. I see a funny little humidifier in the shape of a UFO and think that might help Mama with her cough. I saw something about it on Dr. Oz. Suddenly, I know just what to get Even. I’m about to tell Brittany that I’m going back to the photo department when I find her around the corner looking at pregnancy tests.

  “Are you—?”

  She looks at me with her eyebrows raised.

  “Four or five times a day, it’s bound to happen,” she says lazily.

  “But don’t you use—”

  “Protection? Nah. Who needs that? I’m on the pill. Well, when I remember.”

  For a long time, I’ve been fixed with the baseline idea that I’m not that smart. Heck, Mama’s told me that I’m as dumb as a box of rocks since I could remember, but now I realize that I don’t win the prize for stupidity. Brittany does.

  “But having a baby is—”

  “I know. But listen, Mase and I love each other. He’s the one. He’s got a job, makes good money. We’ll be fine. Come on, you’ll be Auntie Sugar. Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?”

  While she consults rectangular boxes that will likely forecast an uncertain future, I go to the photo department. I try not to think about how she’s probably not going to pay for her items.

  I’m quiet for the rest of the evening. Brittany claims she isn’t hungry even after I offer to buy her Burger King since she and I decided not to exchange gifts this year. I can’t even tempt her with fries, her favorite. I don’t argue that if she’s pregnant she ought to lay off the drugs, with the hope that she’s mistaken and there won’t be a Mason Junior in her future.

  When I get home, I pull Even’s gift out of the paper envelope. I look at a photo collage of him and me, at the beach, on Halloween, and a couple others I’d taken with my phone. In the most recent one, my face looks slimmer and my eyes brighter. Maybe he’s right, I do have a nice smile. As if on cue, my phone vibrates with a text. It’s from him: Hey. The roads have been a bit rough for riding, but I’m hoping after Christmas you’ll come somewhere with me. I have a present for you, but it will have to wait. Can you get away?

  I am tickled with hope and excitement. I simply reply: Yes.

  In my mind, I shout, yes, yes, yes! His text is vague and he doesn’t elaborate, but excitement about whatever it is pulls at me.

  Christmas is more disappointing than I expected. After Mass, I help package some gifts for soldiers overseas and then go home. Skunk is drunk by noon, apparently still grieving over Petunia. He throws three empty beer bottles at me and thankfully misses each time, the last one just grazing my arm as I flee into the kitchen. I wonder where he’s getting the stuff. Though I know from around school there are a few out-of-the-way liquor stores that sell to kids under twenty-one, plus there are the guys that still party with the high schoolers.

  Mama hates the humidifier and tells me to take it back. I’m hoping Fat Henry and Stacy surprise us, but he calls in the afternoon to wish us a merry Christmas.

  I heat a TV dinner for myself and bring one to Mama.

  “Merry Christmas,” I say cheerfully.

  “Yeah,” she says, not taking her eyes off the TV.

  I leave the room with quiet tears blurring my vision.

  Skunk leaves, presumably to beg his girlfriend to take him back, and I plop on the couch watching A Miracle on 34th Street, eating popcorn, and hoping for one of my own.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Even won’t tell me what my Christmas present is. He just sends me a text instructing me to dress warmly. Like, extremely warm, but also to bring a bathing suit. This doesn’t make sense, but whatever. I haven’t worn a bathing suit in nearly two years, but having lost some weight, I’m happy to see it fits me, barely. It’s saggy in all the wrong places, but the truth is, Even will be hard-pressed to get me into it and then into the water at this time of year.

  In the afternoon, I drive through the newly snowy streets to his house. I’m relieved to see his father is out. Even doesn’t mention Nash at all while he puts some things in his backpack and then juggles some apples before tossing them, along with a thermos, into his backpack. I laugh.

  “One of my hidden talents,” he says with a wink. He’s wearing a knit hat and looks adorable.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I say. I pull the photo collage out of my bag and pass it to him. “I had it printed on smaller paper so you could take it with you, when you go cross-country.”

  “When we go cross-country,” he says, correcting me.

  I’m nervous to take the motorcycle-license test. There’s a class, but I have to get parental permission since I’m still under eighteen. I have a feeling Mama won’t go for it given the fact that it would likely remind her of her ex-husband, my father, and his penchant for motorcycles. Even reasons that, with his instruction, I’ll be better off waiting until I’m eighteen and just straight-up taking the test, so the countdown is on; it’s just under a week until my birthday when I’m eligible, but a three-thousand-mile trip on a bike sounds impossible.

  “I love it. Thank you,” he says. He pulls me into a one-armed hug as he looks at each of the photos carefully. He rests his head against mine. “And here I just thought you took these for your Facebook page.”

  “I don’t have a Facebook page. I closed my account last year after—well, never mind.” I don’t want to tell him about how a bunch of kids, who still haven’t owned up to it, hacked my account and posted photos of pigs dressed in costume with my name underneath and the words “Sugar, World Champion Porker.” They were totally Photoshopped, but still, it was ugly. It hurt. Then the paper airplanes on the day we had the fire drill sail into my mind. It was probably one of Hillary’s crew or Brandon. Even stashes the collage in his room. When he comes back, he has a set of keys and twists them around his finger.

  “So, what’s your plan? You’re being so mysterious,” I say, nearly flirting.

  He winks, his blue eyes sparkling crystalline like the fresh blanket of snow outside.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  We tromp down the stairs and through the deep snow. When he pulls out the snowmobile, I realize it’s a good thing that it snowed for the last twenty-four hours, in one giant storm. I guess I got my wish, just a bit late.

  “Surprise!” he says, flashing another winning smile. Even hands me a helmet and says, “Get on and hold on tight.”

  At different times, out riding on the Harley, I thought he went fast, but I suppose that, without police enforcing speed limits, there’s no risk of a ticket on a snowmobile. Whizzing across the snowy trails, nearly at ground level, is a lot different than speeding across asphalt. I feel closer to the earth, the world, and Even.

  We go over a couple of jumps and Even whoops. I haven’t seen him this happy since we went to the ocean, though that was a trip tinged with melancholy because that’s when he told me about losing his mom and having to move away from the place he called home.

  He slows when we go by some houses. I have no idea where we are. After about twenty minutes of winding along a trail buffeted by trees, I see an opening up ahead. An icy white lake spreads before us. Even lets off the gas, and we stop.

  “Fun?” he asks.

  I nod, my helmet bobbing up and down. I’ve bundled up in gloves, a ski jacket, and Skunk’s snowmobile bibs, which are enormous but do their job of keeping me warm. After I take off the helmet, I put on a hat.

  “You look cute with that pom-pom on top of your head. Come on,” he says, bonking it and then taking my hand.

  Even leads me down to the lake.

  I slide onto the ice in my boots. For a moment I’m afraid I’ll crack it, but then seeing all the people skating makes me realize I’ve believed that all the jokes, crude comments, and offhand remarks about my size are true.

  It’s slippery, and I’ve never skated, but wearing boots and not blades makes it surprisingly easy. We glide around the wooded perimeter, passing summer lake houses nearly hidden behind drifts of snow. On the side opposite where we parked the snowmobile, a crowd of unfamiliar faces gathers around a fire on the bank, warming their hands. Kids toast marshmallows and chase each other with snowballs. Around these hooded and winter-wear-clad strangers, I don’t feel quite so awkward and self-conscious. We all look like colorful polar bears with all this clothing on. Even pulls the thermos out of his bag and offers me cocoa.

  “I made it myself.”

  I smile. Not even Mama has ever made me cocoa. The best she used to do was tell me to heat up chocolate milk in the microwave. I savor a long sip of the steaming chocolate then pass it to Even. We warm ourselves around the fire before boot-skating back to the snowmobile.

  “So how’d you find this place?” I ask.

  “The Internet. Google. And the cocoa recipe.”

  “You’re a modern man,” I say, laughing. “And thoughtful. This is fun.”

  “Isn’t it, though? There’s nearly nothing I love more than being outside. I suppose that’s why I like motorcycles, snowmobiles, and camping. I told myself I’m going to try surfing when we get out west. Funny how I never tried it when I lived by the ocean.”

  I realize that with Even’s influence I like being outside, too. I never thought of it much, but since that first walk we took in the woods, we’ve spent most of our time outdoors. Before that, I spent ninety-nine percent of my time inside.

  “Next stop. Hop aboard,” Even says.

  We take off, through glades and enchanting glens with snow-frosted bows of hemlocks and other evergreens. For the moment of a breath, I realize I’d rather be out here enjoying this than eating frosting, fudge, or any other sweets for that matter.

  The faraway winter sun nudges toward the tops of the trees, and its last rays make the snow glimmer like jewels. I feel wealthy, rich with friendship and freedom. As the sun disappears behind the trees, Even puts on the headlights as we meet up with a well-worn trail. A while later we arrive at a log-cabin-style lodge. Even parks among a dozen other snowmobiles. From outside, the light through the windows looks warm and inviting.

  “May I ask what you would have done if it hadn’t snowed?”

  Even smiles. “You asked for snow. I didn’t doubt that it would fall. But we would have come on foot.”

  I give him an “Oh really?” look because we seem a million miles away from town.

  We go up the stairs and into a warm room.

  “Anderson, two for dinner,” Even says properly, even though the hunting-cabin-style lodge and everyone in their snow gear doesn’t suggest formality.

  “Right this way,” answers a woman with a brown ponytail, mukluks, and a hand-knit sweater. She brings us to a table set for two by the large stone fireplace.

  Even excuses himself to the men’s room. I suddenly fear he and Allie are going to jump out with a camera, make pig noises, and laugh their butts off.

  Hot tea arrives at the table while I read the menu. Even returns. I crack a smile, relieved that the only laughter comes from a couple of burly woodsmen by the bar.

  “So, you might have to order for me. If it isn’t packaged in plastic or a box, I’m not familiar with it,” I say self-deprecatingly.

  “This is a hunting lodge that they convert to a restaurant for snowies on the weekend. I work with the owner’s brother. They catch all the game they serve here. He said they also grow the vegetables in their home gardens and then put them up in the summer. Cool, huh?” Even explains.

  Grandma Boo had a garden, but now it’s nothing more than overgrown weeds tangled up with an odd bucket, a broken resin chair, and some other junk.

  The waitress comes over and introduces herself as Wayne’s niece. I learn he’s the guy Even works with at Vin’s. They chat for a minute, and she makes some friendly recommendations from the menu.

  Before he places our order, I tell Even I want nothing reptilian, which leads into the story about the snake. In no time, Even and I are warm, laughing, and munching on complimentary fresh-baked dinner rolls while we wait for our entrées.

  After we eat what I can only call a proper meal of vegetables, potatoes, and some gamey meat I nudge aside, Even settles back in his chair, clasps his hands behind his head, and stretches his long legs. He looks like time is waiting for him; there’s no rush, no urgency. He looks content and sleepy.

  “Delicious. I could go for a nap,” he says as the warm glow of the fire lights up his eyes and they twinkle. “I’m not big on actual gifts; you know, the kind you wrap. I never know what to get. I suppose that’s another by-product of being my father’s son. I used to get him little things at the school Christmas bazaar and he would nod, mutter a thanks, and toss it aside. After that, I told myself that if I ever had someone worthy of a gift from me, it would be a time to remember. An experience.”

  I say the only thing that comes to mind. “You, Even Anderson, are an experience.”

  His lips turn up. “So far so good?” he asks.

  “Better than good.”

  Even pays and leaves the tip. We get up from our table, and Wayne’s niece directs us down a wood-paneled hall toward the bathrooms. “Follow me,” she says.

  We arrive at a door with a flowing fountain burned into the wood. Even opens it. Inside, there’s a queen-size bed with a purple-and-yellow quilt. Hunting paraphernalia and framed needlepoint decorate the walls. An accordion privacy screen stands in the corner. Across the room are French doors that open to a deck with a bubbling hot tub.

  “I figured we needed to get out of our lives for, oh, fifteen hours or so. I’d go for twenty-four, but I know your Mama needs your help. I hope she can spare you until morning.”

  I want to cry. I’m terrified and so deeply touched at the same time. I haven’t slept away from my house since I used to have sleepovers with Hillary. What if Mama gets mad or worried if I don’t come home? Or what about Skunk? What if—but my inner doubts are frozen when Even tugs off his sweater and starts to unbutton his shirt. I’ve only imagined what’s underneath his clothes. He is my very own version of a Greek god—muscular and bronzed. I swoon at the thought, but I must look alarmed. He’s just in his T-shirt and jeans, reminding me of when we met.

  “Bathing suit?” he asks before ducking behind the screen to finish changing.

  Oh good Lord. What am I going to do? I turn to the bathroom.

  Inside is a Jacuzzi encased in wood, the walls are wood, and I am deeply in the woods. No one but Even knows me here. I tell myself he wouldn’t have brought me on this secluded getaway if he didn’t like me, maybe not like a girlfriend, although that lone, queen-size bed sitting expectantly in the center of the room tells me otherwise.

  I take off my sweater and then my shirt and am down to my bra. Oh, Sugar, you fat, miserable piece of—I stop the script in my head, the one that has played for as many years as I can recall. I think of the broken mirror in the bathroom back home.

  I straighten up a little taller and put my shoulders back. I lift my chin. I whisper, “You are not fat and miserable. You are a good person and—” but the tears threatening to gush from my eyes stop. I hear Even on the other side of the door.

  “You almost ready? Meet me outside.”

  “Be there in a minute,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound like I’m crying. This is my chance. This is like an answer to my prayers, to be normal for just one night. To do something a normal girl would do with a boy. I mean, he’s not just any boy. But when I look at myself I see a girl who isn’t worthy of any of that. My shoulders slump. A draft from beneath the bathroom door cools my feet. I assume he went outside. I’ve never been in a hot tub. A thousand conflicting thoughts play in my mind while I mechanically tell myself how to put on the bathing suit: first a foot, then a leg, now the other, arms through the straps. If I don’t instruct myself, I’m afraid I’ll stay in here forever and ruin the night.