Page 50 of Seasonal Fears

The postage stamp yards are green despite the drought, box gardens bursting with flowers and vegetables. He sees more tomato plants than he’s ever seen in February, and thinks the winters must be very mild, for so many things to be blooming already. They’ve lost all connection to the year, here in California, and chart the seasons more by calendar than by anything else.

Oh, he can’t go to school here. The absence of proper seasons would destroy him, whether or not he claims the crown.

Then the university is ahead of them, low and sprawling and dominated by the spire of a clocktower surrounded in scaffolding. It’s clearly under repair. All roads seem to lead there, but none in a quite-straight line, and the street he’s on forks twice before dropping him in a less boutique, more downtown shopping area. It still has an old-fashioned feel that he appreciates. Sleek, modern cities are too far outside the realm of his experience, and he prefers the places that feel like they grew up organically, like people really live there.

He gets lucky after one more turn, and comes on a parking space just as the car that occupied it is pulling out. He slides smoothly into place, turning off the engine, and twists to look at Jack.

“Is this good enough?” he asks.

When she nods, he pulls the keys from the engine and tucks them into his pocket before turning to the sleeping Melanie and shaking her shoulder. Her skin is cold where it brushes against his fingers—not chilly, cold. He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to that.

“Hey, sunshine, wakey-wakey,” he says, as jocularly as he can. “We’re here.”

Melanie makes a small noise, quietly resistant to waking up. He’s not sure how she can be so comfortable sleeping strapped into the car, then supposes it’s probably not that different from sleeping in a hospital bed. He doesn’t like that thought, and so pushes it aside, to join all the other thoughts he doesn’t want to have. One day they’ll form some vast ur-thought, entirely terrible, too large to be ignored, and then he’s screwed. But it hasn’t happened yet and it isn’t happening today, and so he shakes her again.

“Mel. Come on, honey, wake up. There’s a Starbucks.”

She opens her eyes. “Real coffee?” she asks. “Coffee that doesn’t taste like burning and cat piss?”

“I’m glad to hear that you haven’t killed all your tastebuds yet,” says Harry. “Yes, real coffee, with so much whipped cream and flavored syrup it doesn’t even deserve the name anymore.”

Portland isn’t as coffee-focused as Seattle, but they have enough independent coffee shops and carts that have survived even in the face of the big chains that he always feels a little traitorous when he goes to Starbucks. But there’s a Starbucks in the hospital lobby, and Mel’s been addicted to the stuff for as long as he can remember, even with her doctors telling her over and over that she shouldn’t go anywhere near caffeine. She sticks to decaf and cocoa for the most part, and defends her love of Starbucks by saying it’s the same everywhere she goes, and she deserves a little predictability.

At this point, maybe they both do.

“Jack, you coming?” he asks, opening his door.

“Where she goes, I go,” says Jack, and scoots across the backseat to open the door that will put her out on the sidewalk. It’s nice when she remembers to pretend to care about her own safety, even if he has no faith at all that she means it. She thinks she’s invincible. He supposes that if all this seasonal stuff had started when he was twelve, he’d think that too.

God, if any twelve-year-olds are candidates for the crown, he has no idea what he’ll do. Probably just die. He can’t fight a twelve-year-old. He still has a heart.

Melanie limps a little as she gets out of the car and puts pressure on her feet, and he hates that he’s still glad to see it. If she’s limping, she can feel pain, and if she can feel pain, she’s still his Mel. He’s glad she can walk on her own, even if it hurts her. She’s never done well with enforced stillness. Just one of the many reasons her illness has been so cruel.

Now that he knows it’s not something she was always going to have to live with but something her father did to her, he wishes he’d been less polite to the man. Forcing a confrontation with his girlfriend’s father wouldn’t have been politic, but it would be so satisfying in hindsight.

Motivated by the thought of caffeine, Mel beelines for the Starbucks, pausing there to let Harry and Jack catch up. She glances over her shoulder with her hand on the door, effectively stopping traffic until they reach her, then smiles like the sun and pushes it open, releasing the smell of brewing coffee, sugar, and baked goods. It’s a sweet, familiar perfume. The sight of Melanie beckoning him inside is equally sweet, and equally familiar.

He lets go of thoughts of crowns and coronations, seasons and sacrifices, and steps into the Starbucks. Time for coffee.

The line is short. They move through it quickly, and when Mel reaches the register, she flashes the barista a sunlight smile before she chirps, bright as anything, “Venti gingerbread hot chocolate, extra syrup, extra whipped cream, chocolate syrup drizzle on top, please.”

If the barista is distressed by the thought of how much sugar Mel’s putting in one cup, she doesn’t show it: she doesn’t bat an eye, not even when Harry follows with a somewhat amused “Black coffee, large, room for cream and sugar, and whatever she wants,” indicating Jack.

Jack adds another horrifying concoction of syrups and sugars, although hers contains actual coffee, and, as if to test him, three different cookies from the display of baked goods. Harry pays, and they wait to pick up their treats, waiting for Harry to doctor his before claiming a table by the window. Jack immediately removes the lid from her cup and dunks her first cookie in the liquid.

“Coffee good,” she sighs, taking a bite of sodden cookie.

“I’m not sure what you’re drinking counts as coffee, and if Mel’s drink has coffee in it, they made it wrong,” says Harry mildly.

“Don’t care,” says Jack. “I stand by my statement, because I’m right. Coffee good.”

“If you say so.” A pair of teens roughly their age has just come in the door, and the girl of the pair has some of the most remarkable hair Harry’s ever seen. It’s long and white and—if her eyebrows and lashes are anything to go by—impossibly natural, with undertones of cornsilk green. He doesn’t feel anything when he sees her, no sense that she’s connected to his season in any way, but with that hair, she looks like she should be. That’s a summer child if he’s ever seen one. He glances to Jack, eyebrows raised in silent question. Jack shakes her head.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell,” she says, voice pitched low out of deference for the fact that they’re in a public place far busier and more crowded than the truck stop where they spent the night. “I don’t pick up on any season apart from my own. But the boy she’s with isn’t Winter, if that’s what you’re wondering. They’re not here scouting for their own candidates. If she’s scouting for a Summer solo, and she has her friend with her, she hasn’t taken them very far from where they started, and they’ll be lucky to survive until spring.” She manages to make that sound completely reasonable and matter-of-fact, like it makes absolute and perfect sense.

None of this makes sense. Harry sips his coffee, which has lost all flavor, and watches the white-haired girl and her friend approach the counter. They’re dressed sensibly enough for the season, flannel shirts and blue jeans; the boy has dark brown hair and a kind, friendly face. If not for their coloration, he’d assume they were brother and sister, and when he catches a glimpse of the boy’s eyes behind his wire-framed glasses, he reassesses his belief that the girl’s hair is natural, because their eyes are exactly the same, the clear pale brown of honeyed whiskey.

Colored contacts exist, but it’s such an odd color to choose that it’s easier to believe the girl has access to the only white mascara he’s ever seen. They’re talking to each other, heads so close together that they’re almost touching, and he shouldn’t be staring at strangers, but he is. He envies them so much in this moment that it hurts. Their lives are normal. His was normal a week ago, and now it’s never going to be normal again.