Stay Sweet(7)

Not to mention that Amelia planned to spend a big part of this summer on this couch with Cate. Since Amelia was Head Girl, she could ensure they worked every shift together. They’d take their meal breaks here, maybe fit in a quick game of Boggle, depending on how the younger girls were handling the lines. All their plans would have hatched on this couch—what parties, what movies, what day trips. They’d include the other stand girls in most of their exploits, but Amelia also hoped there’d be a few special adventures just for the two of them while they still both lived in Sand Lake.

Amelia senses these intangible things, her every hope for her last summer, slipping away as the sun shines through the lace curtains and drifts across the office, landing on the filing cabinet, then the desk, then her feet, then the floor.

A fly hums near her cheek. Another lands on her arm. Another hovers near her ear. She swats them away, rolls off the love seat, and walks back into the main room of the stand. Flies swarm the pool of melted strawberry ice cream on the floor. Quickly, Amelia props open the stand door and aims the office fan to help shoo them out. She fills a bucket with warm soapy water and mops up the pink from the floor.

And then she continues cleaning, as if they were still opening in two days, because it’s easier for her to pretend Molly’s death won’t change anything than to acknowledge that it will. She wipes down the marble counters, and the white subway tile backsplash, and vacuums away the cobwebs. After carrying the rest of the spoiled drums to the dumpster, she takes a second bucket of water outside and scrubs out the trunk of Molly’s pink Cadillac.

By the time she’s finished, she’s sweating through her polo. She knows just what to do to cool down. She heads back into the stand, passing the purple ski jacket that hangs on a hook, and wrestles with the door of the walk-in freezer, trying to break the seal. Where the ski jacket originally came from is a mystery. The girls put it on when the walk-in freezer needs to be reorganized. When it’s too hot to think straight, they’ll go inside for a few seconds without it.

A few tugs and the seal unsticks. An icy fog billows out.

It’s just as Molly said in her letter. There wasn’t one single scoop left to sell at the end of last summer, but the walk-in freezer is completely restocked, save for the few gallons that spoiled in Molly’s trunk. Every shelf is packed tight with cardboard drums of ice cream, maybe a hundred total, each one marked in Molly’s handwriting. Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Home Sweet Home. Molly’s been at this for weeks, maybe even months, getting her ice cream stand ready for opening day, the way she has every summer since she lost her true love.

A sadness hangs on Amelia. Though Molly’s ice cream was beloved and though her business ultimately became a success, surely she would have traded everything to have Wayne come home.

“Amelia?”

Amelia steps out of the freezer and sees Cate at the open stand door. Cate’s not wearing her Meade Creamery polo. She’s in a denim mini, a striped tank top, and flip-flops. Her blond hair is wet from the shower, split down the center of her head in a straight part.

“You haven’t answered any of my texts!” she says. “I was worried!”

Amelia pats her empty pockets. “Sorry. I left my phone in the office.”

Cate bites her bottom lip as she tentatively glances around. “Did . . . they take her away already?”

“Yeah, she’s gone,” Amelia says, dazed.

“Come on, then. Let’s get out of here.”

Amelia follows for a step, then stops. “Wait. I can’t leave. The newbies are going to show up any minute to fill out applications.” This happens on the first day back. A handful of recently graduated eighth graders descend, hoping to claim the spots of the departed. Despite her overall nervousness about being Head Girl, Amelia has been looking forward to this part—to trying to find herself and Cate in a pile of applications, giving two new girls the chance to build what she and Cate have with each other.

“So put up a sign.”

“Saying what? That Molly Meade is dead?”

“Um, no! Definitely not. Just . . . keep it vague. No Applications Today, something like that.”

Amelia goes into the office to make the sign. This time, the black-and-white kitten comes right out from under the desk. She makes the split-second decision to take him home with her, even though her mom is allergic.

While Cate struggles to lift Amelia’s bike into the back of her pickup truck, Amelia closes the stand door, clicks the padlock shut, and hangs the cryptic sign. With the slightest hesitation, she pushes her key underneath the door.

She didn’t get to use it, not even once.

On the way to Cate’s truck, the kitten must realize that Amelia is trying to kidnap him, because he stops purring and starts wriggling in her arms. She tries bringing him close to her chest, but he flexes his claws and tears the inside of her arm in four red stripes. As Amelia flinches, the kitten leaps free, crashing through the tall grass of the fields, splintering it until he—like Molly—is gone too.





CHAPTER FOUR


AMELIA WATCHED CATE ACE HER driving test from a bench outside the DMV. Cate could have been a model out of a driver’s ed handbook, her back straight, her hands at eight and four, making complete stops, checking her mirrors.

These days, Cate likes to tuck her left foot up underneath her body as she drives. She steers with one hand and holds the wheel down at the bottom, exactly how they say not to. With her free hand, she fiddles with something—the radio, her phone, her hair, Amelia’s hair. And she treats posted speed limits around Sand Lake as mere suggestions.