Geekerella (Starfield #1)(23)

I wonder if he ever waltzed Catherine around the living room. My stepmother has blue eyes, and I can’t think of any happy songs about blue-eyed women. Were Dad and Catherine ever happy? They must have been at some point. After the first night I met her—when she showed up on our doorstep in a tiny white dress, holding a bottle of wine in a fancy little bag—Dad asked me what I thought of her. I was eight. Mom had been gone four years. I wanted to shake him and remind him that Princess Amara dies at the end—that Mom died at the end. That stories shouldn’t get sequels. That sequels are always bad. A rotten on the Rotten Tomatoes critic scale.

But I didn’t.

“I like her,” I said.

Seven months later they were married. Then the impossible happened and Catherine and I were stuck with each other. Stuck together in a world where he no longer exists. Or at least I thought he didn’t. In the jacket, I feel him. In the seams and buttons and epaulets I can hear him humming “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

Maybe everything does die—but maybe, somehow, everything that dies someday comes back.

The door to the Pumpkin swings open and I hide my phone under the notebook. Sage climbs in, two cups of ice cream in hand.

“Oof, remind me never to take a lunch to run across town to the ice cream store,” she says, breathless, and offers me a melting cup. The spoon wedged inside has already begun to tilt to the side. “Butterscotch? Or praline?”

I look at her, confused. “For…me?”

She rolls her eyes and puts both cups on the counter. “No, for the other coworker we have around here. Jeez. I’m eating the butterscotch.” She sits down on the water bucket and begins to eat. “The line was ridiculous. Anyone come while I was gone?”

I shake my head, claiming the praline. I actually really like praline. But something about this feels…weird. And not just the part where Sage is talking to me.

“You bought ice cream,” I say stupidly.

“Uh, yeah. It’s hot outside.” Sage stirs her ice cream soup.

“But ice cream has…cream.”

She blinks her purple-shaded eyelids. “And? Oh”—she grins big—“you thought I was a vegan? No way. That’s just boss lady. I don’t get it at all.”

“Same,” I agree. “I’m too much of a bacon fan.”

“Mmh, bacon-flavored ice cream. Now that would be a sin in a vegan truck.” Sage laughs. “We’d go straight to vegan hell. Though I don’t know how much of a hell that’d be if we’re already in it.”

“You don’t like working here?”

She looks away guiltily. “I mean, if I say no it makes me a bad kid, right? That I don’t want to inherit boss lady’s pride and joy.” She pats the counter like she would a dog, like good boy, it’s nothing against you.

“So…what would you do instead?”

She shrugs. “I try not to think about it.”

“You draw, right? And make your own clothes?”

She glances down at her skirt, which is seven different colors sewn together in vertical panels with tulle underneath. It reminds me of those Japanese fashion magazines she reads, as if she jumped out of the pages. “You can tell?”

“Not in a bad way!” I amend quickly. “You just always look so cool.”

She snorts. I try again. “Do you want to be a fashion designer?”

She eats another spoonful of ice cream and hums. “I want to marry this ice cream is what I want. We’ll abscond to Tahiti.”

For a split second, I think about asking her to explain the sewing video, but before I can even articulate the thought, a voice interrupts me.

“Oh look, it’s our gross sister in her natural habitat.”

Chloe and Cal are sneering into the order window. In the three weeks I’ve worked at the Pumpkin, the twins had yet to find me. Of course that had to end today. Naturally, they’re flanked by the whole Country Club Crew: their mutual best friend Erin, her boyfriend, and a few guys from the football team whose parents own yachts down at the harbor. And, standing a little farther behind, James. Great.

Sage sets down her cup of ice cream and stands. “Can we help you?” she asks, spoon tucked into the corner of her mouth.

Chloe ignores her. Her blonde hair is pulled up into a loose ponytail; she’s wearing short pink shorts and a College of Charleston T-shirt—the college she wants to go to next year. Beside her, a tall and broad guy—linebacker on the football team, buzz cut, stinks like his father’s got money—nods at Sage. “You the only one working with her?”

Sage leans against the counter toward them. “What’s it to you?”

“Might want to be careful around her. She’s crazy,” he says, turning his gaze to me. At the back of the crowd, James shrugs and looks away. The tips of my ears burn with embarrassment.

Sage either ignores them or doesn’t hear. “We have pumpkin fritters, tofu pumpkin spread sandwiches, pumpkin tacos, and pumpkin fries,” she intones dryly. “We’re all out of chimichangas. Although I’m sure we could make an exception if you’d like to be on the menu too.”

The linebacker really looks at Sage this time, from her green hair down to the ring in her lip. “Hey, you’re the chick in my homeroom, yeah?”