The Mystery of Hollow Places(35)

“Who’s this?” she asks. Her eyes are perfectly round, dark mirrors.

“Im. Imogene Scott.” He hands me a form he’s pulled from the drawer. “She’s applying to be a ski instructor.”

News to me. I sit straighter and flick my chin up as she looks me over, from my tangled clump of hair to my shapeless puffy coat to the chubby legs inside my rumpled jeans. I resist the urge to crack my knuckles.

“Imogene . . . that’s a pretty name,” she settles on.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” he says, and lingering awkwardness aside, I can’t help but flash my teeth at him.

“Do you guys know each other from somewhere?”

“Since forever. She’s Jessa’s friend.”

“Your little sister?” Pari’s eyes clear. “So you must go to high school, Imogene. Aww!”

Poisonous steam heats my cheeks and hisses in my ears. This is surprising, to say the least. Chad’s had lots of girlfriends. I never felt jealous (not very, anyway) because whatever tricky feelings I was feeling, at least I was relieved of any responsibility to act on them. And now, in the middle of my search, is so not the time to act. But I can feel my smile shift, widen, and ice over into a smile that Jessa has trademarked. She calls it the Sweetest Bitch, usually reserved for the girls who whisper slut behind her back in the second-floor bathroom.

“Yup, I’m in high school. You must be, like, hundreds of bees older than me, Pari.”

Chad stifles a laugh while Pari’s whole face clouds over. So she’s older and has biceps like basketballs and is presently draped across Chad. I’ve won some kind of girl-on-girl victory, and I take it with me when I leave.

Just beyond the office door, Jessa waits. “What’d you find out?”

I glance over my shoulder. “That I don’t like Pari.”

“Pari Singh? Why? She’s so cool. She can, like, ski the Black Diamond slope backward, Chad says.”

“Probably not that smart, though.”

“No, she’s so smart. She’s studying weather-ology.”

“So? What else does Chad say about her? Is she the ski instructor?”

Smiling, Jessa sucks her bottom lip. “How’s it taste, those sour grapes?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my grapes. She’s just, she’s all, ugh.”

“Then why don’t you do something about it?”

“About what?” I stuff the application into the Marple Grill garbage can, atop half-eaten logs of bratwurst and a soggy pile of cooled sauerkraut. As if I could work here. Dad has never brought me skiing. Too taxing for his couch-and-bathrobe times, too calm for his wander-the-unfamiliar-peaks-of-New-Mexico-at-midnight times. Not that I’ve begged him to go. I’m honestly grateful. On the long list of things I’ll never do, tossing myself off a cold mountain is tied with setting my bookshelf on fire, skinny-dipping in a tank of rhizostome jellyfish, and confessing my love to Chad Price. “It’s not important, anyway.”

I bring Jessa up to speed on what is important as we shove our way out of the lodge, into a wind that carries crystals of snow and shatters them against our cheeks. At least the cloud cover’s lifted, so the snowy hills of the Marple Slopes are bright and blue-lit, though in the east you can already see the sunset smoldering. Where has the day gone? Where have the five days since Dad’s been absent gone?

Jessa takes small crunching steps toward the parking lot in her inappropriately fashionable boots. She swore she would’ve worn her boring boots if she’d known I would drag her up a mountain. “So your mom went home. To Sugarbrook?”

“Obviously not.” I frown. Impatient with Jessa’s stutter-walking, I plow forward only to slip on a glistening patch of snow. I feel myself tilt and fall, but Jessa throws out a hand and catches my elbow.

“Maybe he meant home home, Im. Like, all the way home.”

“Which is—”

“Fitchburg.” She grins, towing me forward by the arm until I get my feet back under me. “So why don’t we go to Fitchburg?”

I will tell you why we do not go to Fitchburg. We don’t go to Fitchburg because:

1) The sun is sinking fast out of the sky, about to extinguish itself against the already-dark horizon, and if another dinner passes at 42 Cedar Lane without me, I’ll be eating lunch in Lindy’s office in Framingham from now until next Monday.

2) I’ve stumbled on a problem that never seems to stop detectives in books: teenage poverty. Whatever shallow pool of money I made last summer working as scoop girl at the Frozen Gnome has dried to mud in the bottom of the creek bed that is my savings account. Dad is usually pretty reasonable with the money-lending, but he isn’t here, and driving back and forth across Massachusetts to find him has wiped me out.

I turn down multiple offers from Jessa to fill my gas tank on the way home, because while it’s great to have her with me, I’m not looking for a financial backer. Instead I do the only thing I can. I go home home.

My stepmother is back from work and reading in Dad’s armchair in the living room. Pilates-thin and only a little taller than me, Lindy’s swallowed by the hulking red seat, the chair back looming above her like an open mouth. It goes with nothing in the living room, otherwise a collection of almost-matching wood and two couches so old that most of the paisley’s worn off. We’ve had them forever. Since I was little kid, at least. I don’t remember a time without them. Most of our belongings are permanent in this way. The dancing-banana magnets on the fridge, the leather padded weights bench in the basement, the little potted plant that would be a towering oak by now if it weren’t plastic. Lindy’s managed a few changes—now we keep our flour and sugar in fancy little canisters instead of rubber-banded bags—but Dad and I like it the way it is. It’s right the way it is, chipped paint, butt-bowed cushions and all.