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Blue, Age 11
If Hannah were here, she would make him feel better. Even Miriam would make his mood less bad, although Miriam wasn’t as good at fixing things as Hannah was. It shouldn’t matter that the other sixth-grade boys thought he was weird. Hewasweird. He lived at the inn instead of in town, he was always in trouble for some adventure that seemed like a better idea than school, he was extremely intoMastering the Art of French Cooking(Julia Child was a genius), and he didn’t have a crush on anybody. Why did anyone have a crush on anybody? They were eleven.
Suddenly this year, all anyone had wanted to talk about was “who you liked.” He could have made something up and told them he liked Miriam, but he wasn’t going to lie about something that didn’t matter.
He kicked the stepladder on his way into the kitchen, then scowled as he picked it up, because his dad would kill him if he left it in the middle of the floor. He slammed open the fridge door, grabbing all the ingredients for mole poblano. If they thought him wanting to cook was “gay,” then he was going to get better at cooking. And start wearing eyeliner. And burn his khakis.
Because there was nothing wrong with being gay, and even though he didn’tthinkhe was gay, he sure as hell was not going to try to convince them he wasn’t. They wanted to mock him for being who he was and not fitting in? They would get the most obnoxious, over-the-top, not-fitting-in Blue Matthews possible.
The kids in Advent, New York, would think he was an alien by the time he was done.
He slammed his knife down on the cutting board when the kitchen phone rang, but he answered it the way he was supposed to. Not that it mattered, because customers never called this extension, they always called the front desk, but whatever. He didn’t need to get his mom in trouble.
“Thank you for calling the Christmasland Inn. How may I direct your call?”
“You said there was an emergency but there can’t be an emergency because I called the desk and Cass said you were just being melodramatic,” Hannah said, without a hello.
“Therewasan emergency, which is that you and Miriam aren’t here and I hate school and no one will go on Shenanigans with me,” he said, but as soon as he heard her voice, some of his anxiety lessened. His shoulders relaxed down from his ears.
He didn’t need any of the asshole kids at school. He only needed his friends, who actually understood him, and he would be fine.
Except they weren’t here.
Miriam was trapped with her shitty parents in shitty Scottsdale, Hannah’s parents were filming a documentary about a famous Guatemalan poet, and the only way he could usually talk to either of them was email, but his parents got mad if he tied up the phone lines dialing into AOL, so he could only email at night, and Miriam’s dad read her emails so he couldn’t say anything real anyway. He was basically alone out here in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of Christmas trees—which was ridiculousbecause they were Jewish, and he would never understand why his parents had stranded them all out here.
If they lived in a city, at least he might meet a couple of kids who weren’t small-town rednecks obsessed with how everybody needed to fit into a tiny little box.
“Blue,” Hannah asked, “did you zone out? I’m calling long distance from Guatemala City. Could you at least listen to me?”
“Ugh, sorry.” He went back to chopping onions, the phone cord stretched out as far as it could go, the old faded pink plastic of the headset tucked under his ear. When were they going to get a cordless phone? Like, they were in the twentieth century. Cass always had to do everything “retro.” It wasn’t as charming as she thought it was.
“I should let you go, since I’m just being ‘melodramatic,’” he continued, making air quotes with the hand that wasn’t holding a knife.
“I can see you making air quotes from the other side of the globe, Blue Matthews. I know you’re lonely and you hate going to school out there, but like, I don’t even get to go to school! I don’t even have the opportunity to pretend I want to be like all the other kids, because I don’t know any other kids! Try to make friends with someone.” Hannah sounded exasperated with him. “Or, I don’t know, join an email mailing list with some other cooking nerds or something. I’m working on my parents, trying to convince them to let me do high school at Carrigan’s. But in the meantime, I can’t call you every time you’re lonely. We can’t afford the phone bill. You need to try talking to your mom or something. Or your siblings.”
“Whatever.” Levi shook his bangs out of his eyes. “My parents don’t care. They just care if Cass is happy, not if I’m miserable. Which is not even fair, because we’re not even family. We’re the help.”
“I’m not having this fight with you again, Blue. Just because you’re not a Rosenstein doesn’t mean you’re not family. And your parents obviously do care whether or not you’re happy. I’m hanging up. I love you,” Hannah said, annoyed, her voice getting farther away as she moved the headset from her face. He didn’t have time to respond before he heard the click.
The kitchen door swung open. Cass swept through, all silks and jangles and a trail of perfume.
“Are you crying, sweet drama boy?” she asked, walking over and putting an arm around him. They were almost the same height now, and if he hit another growth spurt, he would be taller.
He prickled, a cactus whose spines only came up when he was touched.
“I was chopping onions,” he said defensively, turning away to dash a tear off his cheek.
“Can I…do something?” She sounded faintly horrified by the idea.
Why was she always pretending she cared about him? When he was little, he’d believed in her, believed she was like a second mom to him, but he’d heard enough customers treat his parents like servants to know better. When Cass’s family was here, except for Miriam, no one paid him any attention, and it was like he was invisible. He might live here, but no one thought of this as his home. He hated being invisible.
“I’m not one of your misfit toys, Cass,” he said sullenly. “I don’t need you to save me.”
“Oh, no, I just meant should I get your mother?” she said uncertainly. She brushed a little flour off his hair, then stuffed her hands into her robe. “If you’re going to cook through your preteen emotions, make sure you clean up the kitchen and don’t bother the guests.” Cass sniffed, floating from the room in her cloud of feathers.
He felt sooooo much better and less lonely now. He rolled his eyes. She wasn’t getting any of his mole.
Maybe instead of Hannah coming to Carrigan’s, he could meet her parents wherever they were. He could cook for their production crew. Maybe they could all travel together. Then he could have Hannah with him all the timeandnever be stuck here.
