All information reported after “Carson” was unnecessary of course because this was Blue Moon and everyone knew everyone else.
“How old are you?” Layla asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Okay then. We’ll be around,” she said ominously as Eden hooked her by the hood of her jacket and dragged her away.
Sammy waited a beat and then worked up the nerve to face the age-appropriate heartthrob. He was extremely cute up close.
“Your friends are… interesting,” he observed. Then, as if to take the sting out of any undertone of judgment, he flashed her that smile again.
She felt her hormones spiral into a riot. On one hand, he was very good-looking. Like “Jason Priestley on 90210” good-looking. Normally, she was more of a broody Luke Perry girl, but she was willing to make an exception.
“They are,” she agreed. “I’m Sammy, by the way.”
“Yeah, I caught that,” he said, amused. “I’m Ryan.”
A Ryan Phillipe look-alike named Ryan? Yes, please!
“I’m from Des Moines,” he added, saying it as if it made him geographically superior.
“I’m from here,” she said, daring him to object.
Instead, his gaze warmed. “Well, Sammy from here with the beautiful blue eyes. What do you say we forget about fried tofu?”
Beautiful blue eyes. Gulp. Okay, she could be into a Brandon Walsh type if he handed out compliments like that.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked. She might have been crushing hard, but that didn’t mean Dr. Anastasia Ames had raised a fool. If the next words were “Want to check out the back of my older brother’s van?” she was out of there regardless of his cuteness and compliments.
He glanced around. “Hot chocolate? My treat,” he offered with another little hair toss. This time, she found it endearing.
Ryan from Des Moines held out a hand. She looked at it and debated. He either thought she was cute or he thought she was a lost eight-year-old who needed to be reunited with her parents.
“I’m fourteen.” She blurted out the words to his ski glove.
“Really? I thought you were at least sixteen,” he said.
It was official. Sammy was in love. She slipped her mitten into his glove and reveled in the fact that she, Samantha Ames of Science Club and long underwear, was holding hands with a cute stranger who thought she looked as if she had a driver’s license.
Sammy did her best to fall in step with him as they headed in the direction of molten chocolate. His legs were longer, but he walked slower than she did. She was accustomed to propelling only herself forward. Having the bulk of another human in tow took some getting used to.
They finally—and a bit awkwardly—arrived at their destination, a tricked-out Airstream trailer. Lesbian lovers and chocolate aficionados Winona and Bettina spent their retirement years traveling New England and parts of Canada. In the winter, they sold gourmet hot chocolate. In the summer, they switched it up to organic lemonade and iced tea.
She ordered a Butterfinger hot chocolate with whipped cream from Bettina.
Ryan grimaced then ordered the same. “I’m trusting you, blue eyes,” he told her.
Bettina gave her a girl-to-girl wink and Sammy relished the confirmation that she wasn’t imagining the flirtation.
They took their steaming cups of delicious goodness and began a slow wander around the park. With their hands still entwined, she was forced to drink with her left hand. The sacrifice of her dominant hand made her feel grown-up in a way that the boobs that had started to sprout last summer hadn’t.
“Merry Christmas, Sammy,” Mrs. Nordemann called out from her place in line at the wassail and eggnog stand. She was wearing an ankle-length black cloak, elbow-length gloves, and a black knit beret.
“Happy Hanukkah, Mrs. Nordemann,” Sammy said with a lift of her cup.
“Was that a Christmas witch?” Ryan asked incredulously.
“No. She’s Jewish, not Wiccan. She’s on the town council.”
Sammy always found it hard to describe her Mooners to outsiders. No list of facts could ever fully encapsulate them. Besides, the relaying of the facts often said more about the person relaying them than the person being described.
She could have told Ryan that Mrs. Nordemann handed out the best candy at Halloween. But what if fifteen-year-olds in Des Moines didn’t trick or treat anymore? She could have told him that when Sammy’s grandmother died, Mrs. Nordemann showed up with a big bottle of wine for her mom and a box of ice pops for Sammy. But what if he thought it was weird to be sad about a grandmother?
“This place is definitely weird,” he said. Before she could take offense, he added, “But if I knew Uncle Carson had access to girls like you, I wouldn’t have waited so long to visit.”
Hair flip.
Heart flip.
Sammy committed the compliment to memory so she could rehash it with Eden and Layla later.
“Hey there, Sammy.” John Pierce, handsome and rugged in a flannel coat and muck boots, hailed her from his farm’s petting zoo. Temporary fences contained two woolly sheep, half a dozen fluffy chickens, and a swayback Jersey cow wearing a Moo-rry Christmas bandana around her neck.
John was too old to be the unrequited crush of a teenage girl. But she still adored the man. He was quiet, calm, and just a little grumpy.
“Do you know everyone here?” Ryan asked when Joey Greer, all long legs and dark, straight hair, waved. She and Jax, the youngest Pierce, led pony rides around a makeshift ring.
She shrugged. “Mostly.”
Carter Pierce, the oldest and, in her opinion, handsomest due to the broody factor, worked behind a folding table, exchanging cash for tickets. Beckett—the middle and object of Moon Beam Parker’s current affection—distributed baggies of organic feed to the participants.
“I don’t even know my next-door neighbors,” Ryan told her. She couldn’t tell if he was bragging about that pitiable fact or not.
“What’s Des Moines like?” she asked.
While he described the city, she watched as one of the Bowler twins, troublemaking four-year-olds with distracted parents, upended his biodegradable container of fried tofu on the sidewalk in front of the petting zoo. He tugged on his mom’s sleeve, announcing he’d finished his supper and was ready for dessert. Mrs. Bowler was mid-gossip session with Bruce and Amethyst Oakleigh and absent-mindedly patted the kid in the face.
Ryan had moved on to the merits of his school, which had a good wrestling team and high-speed internet access in the typing lab. She was doing her best to appear enthralled when a group of Mooners meandered by, animatedly discussing the new movie release Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
She recognized Bill “Fitz” Fitzsimmons, a skinny, bespectacled hippie. He was walking backward, performing some sort of martial arts choreography while clutching an ICEE, when the sole of his winter Birkenstock landed squarely on the mound of fried tofu.
It happened in slow motion. His foot slid out from under him. He tried to compensate, but his other shoe landed in the now flattened goop and skated through it. In cartoon fashion, he stepped, slid, and scrambled half a dozen times before gravity finally won. Flailing backward, Fitz toppled over into the petting zoo’s temporary fence. Purple ICEE soared through the air and splattered all over the bigger sheep, who looked startled by the unexpected bath.