Hearts of Ice

  Title Page

  Dedication

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  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  There was always an empty seat on the school bus next to Evangeline Reynolds. It wasn’t because she was mean, or had a frightening appearance, or because she oozed poison from her pores like an Australian cane toad. No, Evangeline was a kind, plain-looking person with run-of-the-mill pores, which people would have found out if they got to know her. But they never did. She was never around long enough.

  Today, Evangeline was the new kid yet again, at Lakecrest Middle School, or was it Crestlake Middle School? She was dressed to fade into the background—her mother didn’t like flashy colors. But just in case someone did notice her and decide to sit down, she pushed her gray knapsack under her seat. She pulled her beige coat tightly around herself so it didn’t puff over into the other seat. Plenty of room.

  Evangeline took out her pencil case and held it next to her ear against the window, where no one could see it very well. “Yes,” she said, as though she were talking on a phone (her mother didn’t approve of cell phones). “I can teach you all about sword fighting. Come to my house next Tuesday.” She glanced at the line of students passing her in the aisle. Nobody cared about sword fighting, apparently. Which was just as well, because in truth, Evangeline couldn’t tell a sword from a swordfish—her mother would never have let her learn anything as interesting as that.

  “Cookies?” she said into her pencil case, a little more loudly. “Of course. I have cupboards full of homemade cookies. I can’t possibly eat them all by myself. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Again, nobody noticed. Evangeline watched her classmates board the bus, one by one. A girl with blue-striped hair passed by without a second look. A boy wearing a yellow T-shirt that said GOLDFISH CLUB in glitter plopped down next to his friend. Nobody looked at Evangeline and said, “Hi! You’re new, right? What’s your name?” They all just continued to shuffle by and choose other seats until there was nobody waiting in the parking lot to get on.

  Evangeline looked away and put her fingers on the window glass. Her stomach felt icy, shards of coldness that spread through her skin, even though it was a warm May day outside. She had that feeling again—a strange, old feeling that there should be someone in that empty seat. Not quite a memory, and not quite a ghost, it was something more like a space. On the school bus, at the dinner table, in the darkness of her room at night—Evangeline had always had the peculiar idea that there was someone missing. Someone who would notice her.

  The last to board the bus were two girls carrying muddy track shoes. They took the seats across from Evangeline. She caught their eye and they looked over at her curiously.

  Evangeline’s heart jumped. She smiled and waved. “Hi!”

  “Uh—hi,” the girl closest to the aisle said, like she thought it might be a trap. “You’re Norma Jean, right? The new kid?”

  “Evangeline,” Evangeline said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Okay,” the girl said. “Well, I’m Bridget.” There was an awkward silence. Evangeline tried frantically to think of something to talk about before the girls went back to ignoring her—if she played sports or had blue hair, or even if she belonged to the Goldfish Club, maybe she’d have something to say. But there was really nothing special about her. Nothing except—

  “It’s my birthday on Sunday,” she blurted. Everyone was special on their birthday, right?

  The girls across the aisle laughed. Was that good? “Happy birthday,” said the one near the window, the one who wasn’t Bridget.

  “Thanks.” Evangeline swallowed. “Hey—do you want to come to my birthday party?”

  She immediately regretted it. Did kids at Crestlake Middle School even have birthday parties, or were they just for babies? Not to mention, Evangeline hadn’t actually asked if she could have a party, and her mom would say no. Her mom always said no.

  But the girls shrugged. “Okay,” not-Bridget said. “As long as there’s cake.”

  “There will be!” Evangeline said before she could stop herself.

  The girls laughed again. “I’ll text you tomorrow, okay?” Bridget said. “What’s your number?”

  Luckily, Evangeline already had her new number memorized. She pronounced the digits clearly. “It’s a landline,” she said, a little embarrassed, but they didn’t seem to care.

  The bus creaked to a stop at a busy corner store and both girls rose to get off. “See you Sunday!” Evangeline called after them. “Bring your friends!”

  “Will do. Thanks, Emmaline!”

  Evangeline watched them go, her heart still jumping. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the bus window.

  Bring your friends? Cake? I must be out of my mind, she thought.

  But then again, she was turning twelve. She was old enough to make her own choices. Maybe—maybe—her mom would let her have this one party this one time. She’d never ask for anything again. She and her mom would probably be gone from Lakecrest before her birthday next year. Bridget and not-Bridget and their friends would never remember her name, even if they ended up ever getting it right. But if she had this one birthday party, then forever after, she would have a memory of smiles and sugar and all the brightest colors.

  As the bus groaned to a stop in front of Evangeline’s boring, tan house with the boring, scraggly trees out front, she bounced out of her seat, afraid and excited. By the time her feet touched the driveway, it had started to snow glorious, fat flakes. And where her forehead had touched the window, a beautiful spiderweb of frost began to form.

  As the snow flurries intensified, Evangeline slid to a stop halfway up the driveway. “Not again!” she said to herself. “Not now!” It always seemed to start snowing at the worst possible times, when Evangeline was worried or nervous or excited. And the only thing her mother hated more than flashy colors, cell phones, and birthday parties was snow.

  “Send the clowns away—I’m home!” Evangeline shouted, bursting through the door into the kitchen. Sometimes she imagined her mother doing the most outrageous things while Evangeline was at school, like adopting twenty-five puppies or heading up a meeting of a secret society of assassins. Today, she imagined her mother dancing all over the house with a group of clown friends. Wild secrets like that would explain why the curtains were always drawn at their house, why she and her mom wore plain clothes and never did anything fun. Secret clown parties and assassinations were far more interesting than the idea that Evangeline’s mother was just boring.

  “What?” Her mom’s voice came from the living room. “Come tell me about your day!”

  Evangeline shook the snow out of her jacket and hung it up, dropped her gray backpack onto a kitchen chair, and breezed through the doorway by the magnet-free fridge. The house still smelled like paint. It was a new house, so it hadn’t had time to develop any character yet. Evangeline thought her mother probably preferred it that way.

  She found her mom on her knees by the sofa amid cardboard moving boxes, unpacking white plates and extracting them one at a time from their newspaper cocoons. Today, Evangeline’s mother was wear
ing jeans and an uninteresting button-down shirt, and her face wore the same calm expression it always did. Like a flat lake.

  Her eyes sparkled when she saw Evangeline. “How was school?”

  Evangeline sat on the carpet next to her and pulled open a box marked SILVERWARE. “It was—”

  “Sweetie, you’re covered with snow!” Her mother’s head whipped around. She went to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains just a little, letting a beam of light into the dim room. Evangeline’s mother peered out with wide, nervous eyes at where the big white flakes were falling.

  Evangeline looked down. Sure enough, a little snow had collected on her pants. She should have dusted herself off better.

  “It might be slippery out there,” her mom said. That was her usual excuse to stay inside whenever there was even a dusting of snow. “I guess I’ll go grocery shopping tomorrow instead of this afternoon. You don’t mind frozen waffles for dinner, do you?” She gave a laugh, then lifted a stack of plates and headed for the kitchen.

  “Frozen waffles are my favorite.” Evangeline dropped a fork into her pile of forks with a clink. “Maybe we can have them for my birthday on Sunday, too.” She was proud of herself for working birthday into the conversation. Now for the hard part.

  “You’re so funny,” her mom called from the other room. Her voice was lighter now. “But if you want Eggos on your birthday, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Evangeline could hear the clatter of Pyrex as her mom put dishes away. She put her hands on the plastic lid of a tub marked BLANKETS, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. “Actually, I was wondering if … if I could have a party this year.”

  The clatter stopped.

  Evangeline’s mother stepped back into the living room. She still wore her calm lake expression, but now it seemed as though something swirled in the depths, just out of sight—something huge. The hairs on the backs of Evangeline’s arms prickled.

  “A party?” her mother asked. “What kind of a party?”

  “Just, you know, a regular birthday party. With cake and—”

  “Of course.” Her mom smiled.

  “—and a few people.”

  The smile froze. It was still there, but in an instant it turned as cold as the snow falling outside. “People?” her mom asked. “Sweetheart, we just moved in. How could you possibly know any people to invite to a party?”

  Evangeline shrugged. Act casual. “I met some girls on the bus. They’re nice. I just thought—”

  Her mom laughed and patted her on the head. “Oh, Evangeline! You don’t want some random girls from the bus coming over, do you? On your special day? That wouldn’t be very fun.”

  “It might be.”

  Her mom folded her arms, which meant no. “I’m sure you’ll make lots of friends here,” she said. “Eventually.”

  Evangeline rolled her eyes, not even caring how rude it was. “I won’t make friends here. I don’t make friends anywhere.”

  “You’re being dramatic.”

  “No, I’m not.” Evangeline raised her voice a little. “Why would anyone ever want to be friends with me? I’m always just the new girl. The girl who shows up, has nothing special about her, and leaves a few months later. I’m invisible.”

  “I’ve never heard anything so selfish in my life,” her mother snapped. “You know what happens to people who want to be the center of attention? They get what they wish for. And they pay for it eventually.” She put a hand to her forehead.

  “Fine.” Evangeline got to her feet and grabbed the tub marked BLANKETS. “I’ll just keep unpacking and we can go on pretending all of this is perfectly normal!”

  She stomped upstairs to her mother’s bedroom, dropping the tub onto the floor. She would have liked it to crash, but it just landed softly on the squishy carpet. Then she threw herself facedown onto her mother’s bed.

  It was fine for her mother to refuse to meet people and to live in these cookie-cutter houses with the shades drawn. It was just how she was. But Evangeline wanted to be more than ordinary, unnoticeable, an afterthought. She wanted a real life and real friends.

  After a few minutes, Evangeline got tired of feeling sorry for herself and rolled over onto her back. With a sigh, she slid off the side of the bed, onto her feet again. She might as well put the blankets away while she was here. There always seemed to be more unpacking or packing to do.

  She pulled open the big bottom drawer of her mother’s bureau. It smelled like mothballs and made all the blankets smell like mothballs, too, but Evangeline dutifully unpacked the plastic tub and put everything away. She smiled at a puffy quilt with a geometric sheep design, one she’d had as a baby, and spread it over the end of the bed. There was one more blanket at the bottom of the plastic tub, a ratty old green thing spotted with mangy fuzz. But as she grasped it, she felt something hard inside. When she pulled the blanket away, there sat a little metal box.

  Evangeline slid her hands underneath it and raised it to her face. She squinted at it from all angles.

  It felt like secrets, but it didn’t say KEEP OUT.

  It wasn’t locked.

  With a fluttering in her chest, Evangeline settled onto the squishy carpet and lifted the metal lid of the box.

  Inside, photographs of all sizes and colors shifted and rustled as she ran her fingers through them. There she was, in a tiny, cream-colored dress, sitting in the grass. There were her mother and grandparents, waving, in front of a house with peeling shutters. Evangeline thumbed through the pictures, smiling at the smiles, swallowing and blinking at the old sadnesses. Her, her mother, and sometimes her grandparents. Never other people. Never other children.

  She had seen most of the pictures before. This was not really a secret box, then, just a half-forgotten one.

  But there, among the old family photos, was one picture that clearly didn’t belong. It flashed when Evangeline uncovered it, as though it were coated with glitter. She held it in the light.

  There was a sparkling, snow-covered forest, nothing like any of the woods Evangeline had ever known. There was a frozen waterfall and, beside it, a strange tree in the middle of a cracked boulder, as though the tree itself had split the rock as it grew. She blinked—the tree was purple. A purple tree! And there, in the center of the picture, was a young woman holding a violin. The woman wore the most beautiful ice-blue gown Evangeline had ever seen; it sparkled like snow as the woman, captured mid-song, smiled radiantly at the person taking the photograph, whoever that was. Evangeline swore she could almost, almost, hear the violin’s music, just at the edge of her mind. She peered at the photo, as though the woman would start dancing at any moment, her gown shimmering in the evening light.

  And as she looked closer, Evangeline gasped.

  The woman in the photograph was her mother. Her mother, who hated snow, who was the absolute last person Evangeline would expect to see outside in the wintertime wearing that stunning dress and a smile you could see from the moon. Was this what her mother used to be like? What on earth had happened to make her change so much?

  “Evangeline?”

  Evangeline dropped the picture as her mom came into the room. “Hi, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” her mother said, leaning against the doorframe. “I know it’s hard on you that we have to move around so much. It’s my crazy job, you know?” She shrugged. “That’s real estate. Location, location, location.”

  “I guess.” Evangeline could feel her heart beating. Could her utterly unadventurous mom really be the glamorous, gleaming person in the photo, grinning at the camera, playing some mysterious tune on the violin in the middle of a fairy forest?

  “What’s wrong?” Evangeline’s mom took a step, then saw the photo box. “Oh, I’d forgotten about these old pictures.” She picked up a Polaroid from the top of the stack. “Look at how little you were!” She sat down on the end of the bed, tilting her head at the photo. Then she looked at Evangeline. “We’ll do something fun for your birthday, I promise.
Okay?”

  “Okay.” But Evangeline couldn’t contain her curiosity for a moment longer. “Mom, I—I didn’t know you played the violin.”

  Her mother nodded. “I used to play quite a bit. But I sold the dear old thing years ago. You can’t possibly remember that, can you?”

  Evangeline shook her head. “No, but …” She picked up the snow forest photograph from the floor and held it out. “Where was this taken?”

  Her mom’s eyes blazed, widened. She snatched the picture from Evangeline’s fingers and stared at it. Evangeline wondered if her mother would become angry—she almost wished for it. At least anger would be a clue, a secret, a terrible mystery. But her mother’s calm lake expression didn’t ripple for very long. She gave a little laugh and said, “Oh, this old picture. It’s nothing. It was a Halloween party. I went as a princess. So silly.” She turned the photograph over on her lap.

  “But that forest!” Evangeline sat next to her on the bed. “Where is it? Tell me about it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Evangeline.” Now her mother’s fingers curled at the edges of the photo, gripping it. “It was a long time ago.”

  “But that dress—I’ve never seen you wear anything like—”

  “Just a costume.” Her mother got up. She smiled, a calm lake with ice underneath. “Let’s forget it, all right? I’ll go start supper.” And with that, she tore the mysterious photograph to bits, shoved the pieces into her pocket, and left.

  Evangeline dreamt of snow-blanketed forests and fairy birthday parties. She danced in a sparkling blue gown, toes crunching the icy crust, fingers tracing shapes in the air along with the sprightly song of a solitary winter violin.

  She awoke to another boring Saturday in a tidy room that didn’t—wouldn’t ever—feel like her own. It was just the place she would stay for a while, by herself, until they moved again.

  But as she blinked herself alert, she realized her toes were still chilly from that forest snow crust. How … ?

  Then she noticed it was only her bare foot pressed up against the window, which was covered with thick morning frost. She pulled her foot back, wiggling the cold out of her toes. They had been in sunny Lakecrest for only a few days, but Evangeline was pretty sure there wasn’t supposed to be thick frost on the windows in May. Or a mini-snowstorm like the one that had happened yesterday afternoon.