Icing on the Lake (7 page)

“Oh, yeah. In fact not only am I cold and unfeeling, I’m a reptile, basically. Thanks, Gretch.”

“Well, you did fall through the ice when you were two,” she reminded me—not that I had any memory of the event, just of this story being told every year at about the time everyone was asking, “Is the lake frozen yet?” I was like the poster child for waiting for a deep freeze before venturing onto questionable ice.

“Think about it,” Gretchen said. “Maybe that has something to do with the fact you can’t keep warm, Kirst.”

Or, maybe it’s the fact that I am Cursed
, I thought.

“You did?” Sean asked. “Let me guess. Were you trying to learn how to skate?”

I glared at him, but I couldn’t help smiling when I saw the look he was giving me. Half amused and half flirty. “It was the pond near our house. I think Gretchen was the one who thought it’d be a nice idea to teach me how to skate even though the ice wasn’t thick enough yet.”

“Oh, no, you’re not blaming this on me,” Gretchen said with a laugh. “You ran out onto the ice. No one could stop you. Then we heard this awful cracking noise.”

“Sounds like something Brett would do,” Sean commented.

“Doesn’t it, though?” I agreed. “We must share the same genetic adventure…ous…ness.”

We both looked at each other and grinned. He seemed interested. Was he, though, or was he just being friendly?

There was no way I’d find out with Gretchen and Brett around. It was hard to really talk with
Gretchen sitting right there. Couldn’t she tell we needed some alone time?

But no. She refused to move off the living room couch from the hours of 9
A.M
. to 9
P.M
., making privacy a little difficult. She was starting to learn all the TV schedules. She knew soap opera plotlines. She’d seen all the TLC makeover shows at least twice.

“I wonder if we could go somewhere maybe like…without Brett sometime,” I said. I looked meaningfully at Gretchen. She didn’t respond.

“You know what would be fun? Before school starts again and I get totally busy, a bunch of us could go skiing at Buck Hill or something,” Sean said.

“That sounds perfect—”

“No way,” Gretchen interrupted me.

“Yes way,” I said, looking at Sean. Did she seriously think I couldn’t have
one
afternoon off to go out with Sean?

“I’m telling you, Kirst, don’t go skiing. You’ll break something.”

“No, I won’t. What do you think, because you broke your leg skiing at Lutsen, I’m going to break mine?” I asked.

“And if you break your leg, too, we’re going to be in such deep trouble—” she went on, not even listening to me.

“I wouldn’t!” I cried.

“Kirsten. You’re not the best skier. Be honest.”

I couldn’t believe her. Why was she trying to shoot me down in front of Sean all the time? She thought it was funny, but it wasn’t. “What? There’s nothing wrong with my skiing.”

“Remember the time you wiped out going down Lutsen Mountain and you nearly impaled yourself on a rock, and Mom and Dad had a heart attack?”

I glared at her. Did she have to tell every embarrassing story in the world about me to Sean? “Gretch? I was seven. It was the bunny run.”

“Still.” Gretchen started laughing. “Your legs wrapped around you three times. You looked like a pretzel. See, Kirsten was super tall and skinny for her age. Her legs practically went up to here.” She tapped her shoulders.

Sean looked at me and smiled, and I sort of sank down on the sofa, trying to look shorter. I am
not
all out of proportion, I wanted to say.
My body has all the necessary parts now. I went through some major growth spurts, okay?

He was looking at me with a kind of knowing smile. “You still have long legs,” he said.

“Come on, Sean. Let’s go to the kitchen and make lunch,” I said. “You’re probably hungry and I know I am. And so is Brett.”

“I’ll have a salad!” Gretchen called to us before she turned the volume back up on the TV.

“Which you can make yourself,” I muttered. “The great thing about my big sister is how incredibly
supportive
she can be,” I said as I got some bread, cheese, turkey and other fixings out of the fridge.

“What do you mean?” Sean asked.

I shook my head. “She just—like, she still has to get her shots in. Like we’re still kids or something.” But that didn’t make sense, since we’d never really been kids at the same time, had we? Not exactly, anyway. Was she making up for lost time, since she couldn’t exactly pick fights with me when she was eight and I was two?

“Okay, so if she’s dead set against me skiing, that doesn’t mean we can’t do something else,”
I said. “How about tomorrow? I mean, I was going to ask if you were, you know, free.”

“In the afternoon I am,” he said.

“Okay, so how about like, ah…”

“How about something indoors?” Sean said. “Since we don’t want your frostbite to kick in again.”

“That would be bad, wouldn’t it?” I smiled, thinking that I liked the sound of “indoors.” Was I supposed to suggest snuggling on the sofa at his house and watching a movie? There was a fine line between being a flirt and sounding desperate. I’d never had a chance to cross the line, myself, but I’d seen others sprint past it.

“Well, not to do the typical out-of-town visitor thing, but have you been to the Mall of America yet?” Sean asked.

I nodded. “Sure, a few times, but I can always go again. That sounds fun.” I’d have to make sure I didn’t mention it to Gretchen, or she’d insist on coming along. She couldn’t resist the pull of the mall.

“We could walk around, maybe go to a movie. I have hockey practice all morning and a game
at night. How about three o’clock or something like that?”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’ll just clear it with Gretchen and then—”

“Clear it?” he asked. “What, is she like in charge of you?”

“No! No, of course not,” I said. “It’s just that I’m sort of in charge of taking care of Brett. Since she can’t move around as quickly as Brett does.”

“No one can,” Sean joked. “He can be out the door and across the street before you even blink.”

“Exactly!” I said. “He’s very fast. So I’ll just make sure she knows she has to be here—set him up with a video or whatever.”

“Sounds good,” he said, settling into a stool at the kitchen counter. “So what kind of sandwiches are you making?”

I grinned. “Grilled. Hot. Something like that. You like cheese? Turkey and cheese?”

“Make three for me, okay?” Sean turned on the TV in the kitchen and quickly found a college basketball game to watch. I handed him a bag of potato chips that I’d stashed in an out-
of-the-way cabinet so that they didn’t tempt Gretchen.

After I put four sandwiches together and put them onto the panini grill, I quickly threw a small salad together for Gretchen. I carried the bottle of low-everything dressing in for her, with a PB&J sandwich for Brett.

“Did you ask him to look after me when I was here, or something?” I asked her in a low voice as I set the food on the coffee table in front of her.

“No. What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Never mind,” I said. I just wanted to make sure that whatever was happening…was happening because it could. Not because it should. “Enjoy your lunch!”

When I went back into the kitchen, Sean was polishing off the bag of chips. I grabbed a couple of sodas from the fridge and handed him one. Somehow I had a feeling that my lunch would be a lot more fun than Gretchen’s.

M
ore
snow, I thought as I was standing by the front door, looking out at Sean at the end of the driveway. Already this winter it had snowed more than last year, and it was still early January. Should I write a thank-you letter to Mother Nature? Or to the KARE-11 meteorologist who had forecast it the night before, giving me fair warning to get up early and be dressed this time?

Gretchen came up behind me as I was standing there, and nearly scared me to death. “Why don’t you see if he wants a hot chocolate?” she asked.

I nearly jumped. I had been so absorbed in thinking about Sean and what to do that I hadn’t even noticed her or heard her footsteps—
or crutch steps. “What?”

“Well, it’s cold out there. I had to farm out the shoveling. But now that you’re here, I guess I can cancel it—I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“No!” I nearly cried. “Don’t
fire
him. I mean, uh, my arms—they’re not that strong. And what if we get one of those blizzards where it takes the entire morning to clear the drive—”

“You’ve really turned into a worrywart since I left home,” Gretchen interrupted my raving.

“What? Me? No,” I said.

“Well, then, if I didn’t know better, I could swear you have a crush.”

“No, I don’t,” I protested. “Still, out of the kindness of my heart, I will go make him a hot chocolate, I think.”

I put the teakettle on the stove to boil, and then I went upstairs and brushed my hair again, and pulled my favorite hat over it, positioning it just so. I stopped in the bathroom to brush a little blush onto my cheeks. Then, back downstairs in the kitchen, I stirred the hot chocolate in a plastic, commuter mug, tossed in some mini marshmallows, and snapped on the lid.

I took a deep breath, summoned my inner flirt, and went outside. I decided to sneak up on Sean. I’d decided the night before that it was time for me to make my move—if this was the New Year, New Kirsten thing, what was I waiting for? Besides, I needed to hook up with him soon if I was going to invite him to the cabin.

I quietly walked up behind him, and as he paused to rest the shovel for a second, I reached around and put my hands over his eyes. It wasn’t easy to do while I held a mug, believe me, but I managed.

“Guess who,” I whispered, leaning closer to him.

“What the—” He wriggled to turn around, but I had him kind of stuck.

“And guess what,” I said. “I made you hot chocolate!”

Suddenly he ducked, scooting out from under my arms. When he whirled around, his face expressing complete and total shock, I nearly fell over backward. “Who
are
you?” he asked.

“What are you here for?” I said. “You’re—not Sean.” It was the bakery guy. The Zublansky’s supermarket guy. The everywhere-I-go guy.

“Nope. I’m Sean’s brother.” He cleared his throat. “We have this mowing and shoveling business together. Not that it’s much of a business, I mean, it’s really part-time and it’s not like I plan to do it much longer—”

“You’re Sean’s
brother
,” I finally murmured.

“Yup.” He chipped at some ice on one square of the sidewalk, where melting ice always collected and re-froze because it wasn’t quite flat. “So, is that how you usually greet Sean when he comes over to shovel the sidewalk? A little hug, a little—”

“No!” I said emphatically. “No. Not at all. Never in fact.”

He gave me a suspicious look. “So what made today different?”

“I…well, see….” This was too impossible to explain and too stupid to lie about. I’m turning over a new, um, leaf? With your brother’s name on it? Ew.

“So if you don’t greet Sean that way, you must have known it was me, then,” he said.

“What? Shut up, I did not.” I shoved him, not realizing that he was on a slippery spot and
he slid backward into one of the juniper bushes, nearly landing in it.

“You’re kind of a dangerous person, aren’t you?” he said as I backed away, apologizing.

As Conor was getting up, I started thinking how so many things made sense now that I knew they were brothers. Why I saw them both at the skating rink that day. Why I’d bumped into Sean outside the bakery—he was probably going to see Conor. So far I’d never really seen them both in the same place at the same time, except that first day at the lake.

They were this whole Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing. One was sweet and nice, the other gruff and insulting. And now that I knew it, I could see that of course they were brothers. They both had the same hazel eyes.

“You’re not like…twins or something. Are you?” I asked.

“Twins? Do we
look
like twins?” he asked.

“Well. You could be fraternal twins,” I said.

“No. We’re hardly even related.”

“Oh. You mean, you have different parents, or something?” I asked.

“No, we’re just not related. In my mind, anyway.” He smiled a little.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“My brother’s okay. I wouldn’t put him at the top of the family tree or anything.”

“Well, no, that would be awkward, that would mean he’s your great-grandfather.”

His eyebrows looked slightly pinched as he thought about that.

“Sean didn’t tell you about me? That I was staying here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “No.”

“Oh.”

“And he definitely didn’t tell me you were on a hugging basis,” Conor said.

“We’re…” We’re not, I was going to say, but that sounded stupid. Also, we were, some of time—at least we’d semi-hugged when we skated together. Why should I explain that to him, anyway?

But why hadn’t Sean mentioned me? Maybe they weren’t close. I didn’t see how they couldn’t be, though, considering they had to be like a year apart in age.

“You were saying?” Conor prompted as my
voice trailed off, not finishing my sentence.

“Nothing. I mean, I’ve gone skating with Sean. Seen him at the rink. You know, like that.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I don’t usually come over here.” He didn’t sound happy about the fact he had to see me. “I have the other side of the neighborhood.”

“Is that the good side or the bad side?” I asked.

He just looked at me for a second, as if he were making up his mind about that.

“Look. You want some hot chocolate or not?” I demanded. “‘Cause it’s getting cold.”

“No thanks,” he said. “Nice offer and all.” He raised his eyebrows, and I realized that I’d been a little rude.

“Sorry. I—I guess I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Yeah, I know how that is. Anyway, I have to get to the bakery pretty soon.”

“Ah. Yes. The bakery.” I nodded.

“You coming by later?” Conor asked, still using an ice pick to chip away the solid slippery spots. He was doing a much more thorough job than Sean had. Then again, I’d interrupted
Sean with my pajama-streaking moment.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Kind of busy today.”

“Busy?” He looked up.

“Yeah. Lots to do. Tons,” I sighed. Like get over the fact I just tackled Sean’s brother.

“Yeah, writing those IMs can be draining,” he commented with a smile.

I couldn’t stand his smug attitude. “Actually, Sean and I might be going to the Mall of America,” I said.

“Ugh. What a horrible way to spend a day. A life. A couple hundred million dollars in construction.”

Not that he had an attitude about malls or anything. I decided not to tell him that I kind of agreed, that I wasn’t a huge mall fan, either. “So. Where’s your house again?” I asked.

“Over there. See, up two blocks that way?” Conor pointed to and described a beige stucco Tudor-style house with deep red trim that sat on the corner. There was a slight curve at the end of the street, so I could see the house from the end of the driveway.

“That looks nice,” I said. I stared at it long enough to commit it to memory—just in case I
wanted to drop by sometime. Not that I would. Not after I’d just tackled Conor.

“Well, see you later. Have a good day.”

“Yeah. You too,” he said. “Look out for the Mighty Axe.”

I turned around to look at him. “The what?”

“It’s a ride that got stuck a few times at Camp Snoopy,” he said, referring to the amusement park inside the Mall of America. “People had to hang upside down for a while. Unless you like that kind of thing.”

I laughed. “Thanks for the tip.”

I trudged back up to the house and let myself inside. I dumped the lukewarm hot chocolate in the sink and made myself a fresh, hot cup in the same mug. Then I collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, where Gretchen was reading the morning paper.

“You didn’t tell me that Sean had a brother. And that his brother works at the bakery,” I said.

“Oh. I didn’t?” Gretchen asked.

“No. You definitely didn’t.”

“I thought I did.” Gretchen stirred a spoonful of diet drink mix into a glass of water. “Well,
I guess I thought you knew.”

“Um. No,” I said. “How would I know that? And you know what else? I just basically hugged—no, attacked—Conor, because I thought he was Sean.”

She burst out laughing. “I know. I saw that!”

“Well, why didn’t you
stop
me?” I looked out the window at Brett and Conor, who were building a snowman together.

“Actually, I didn’t realize that was Conor instead of Sean until you went out there. Honestly.”

“Uh huh.” For some reason I didn’t believe her. Now that I was looking at Conor, I could see he was a little shorter than Sean. “So what’s the deal with the brothers?”

“Well. It’s kind of interesting. See, Sean’s like the star hockey player, star everything, in their school. But Conor isn’t. I guess he was a good player, but he didn’t make the team or something. Anyway, Conor is so totally jealous of Sean—you can see it. He picks fights with him all the time.”

“He does?” I took that with a grain of salt. My
sister always seemed to go for the super-popular star types. It didn’t surprise me that she’d like the star brother more than the other one.

Gretchen insisted on being the prom queen when she was my age. And on dating the prom king. Her ex-husband had been the senior class president at
his
school, etc. You could say she was a little obsessed with status. I shouldn’t really take her advice when it came to this, in one sense. But even though her marriage had ended in divorce, she still knew a whole lot more about guys, and dating, than I did.

Of course that wasn’t saying much.

“Oh, yeah. In fact they argue and fight a lot. It’s hard for us to imagine, because we’re so far apart in age.”

“Right,” I said. But I was surprised she said that it was hard to imagine. We had actually had our own share of sibling rivalry at times. I distinctly remember her pushing me aside at some extended family wedding to grab the bouquet, when she was eighteen and I was eleven. As if I
wanted
the bouquet when I was eleven!

“But the Benson boys are only one year different—”

I burst out laughing.

“What?” She stopped. “What are you laughing so hard for?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know their last name was Benson.”

“What’s so funny about that?”

“The Benson boys? That’s not funny to you?” I laughed again. “For one thing, you sound like Mom when you say that, and for another, the Benson boys—like they’re in a band. They’re not quite the Beastie Boys, but appearing tonight…the Benson Boys!”

“I’m done out there.”

Suddenly, standing at the front door guiding Brett into the house, was Conor. There was a blast of cold air coming through the door, which was about the same feeling I got from Conor. He wasn’t looking at me. He hated me. And I’d hugged him. Closely. Very closely.

I sank down in my chair a little, wishing I could disappear inside my mug as fast as the marshmallows had.

“Thanks, Conor,” Gretchen said. “I was going to introduce you to Kirsten, but I guess
you already met.” She laughed a little. I thought about dousing her with the hot chocolate.

“Oh, yeah. We go way back,” Conor said. “So, Sean will come by later if it snows any more. See ya, kid.” He patted Brett on the top of his head, then he gave me a final glance, and yanked the door closed with a slam.

Okay, so we’d gotten off on the wrong foot.

I thought of the way I’d shoved him into the bushes. No, the wrong feet.

I was just getting back to the house from walking with Bear that afternoon when a small, older red pickup pulled up beside the curb. I cautiously turned to see who was stopping beside me.

Conor lowered the window on the driver’s side. “Hey. I’m driving him to school hockey practice.”

I peered into the cab as I walked closer.

“Coach called an extra practice because we really sucked last night,” Sean said. “We lost the game and it was like the easiest team we played all year.”

I walked around and leaned on the window on Sean’s side. “So you can’t come this afternoon?”

“No. Sorry.” He sighed. “Anyway, this is my brother, Conor.” He gestured with his thumb at Conor.

“Yeah. We, ah, met this morning,” I said. Not to mention a couple of other times, before I knew who he really was.

“Oh, yeah?” Sean asked. “So what’d you think?”

“She thinks I’m great,” Conor said. “I think she said that, actually.”

Sean looked at Conor, and then at me, his eyebrows sort of semi-raised.

“I don’t actually remember saying that,” I said to Conor. I smiled and felt my face turn a little red.

Bear jumped up and put his paws on the window. He started panting right in Conor’s face.

Conor reached down to rub Bear behind the ears. Bear pushed against him, begging for more attention.

“So which one of you is older?” I asked.

“I am,” Conor said.

“Which one is taller?” I asked. “I’ve always been a little shorter than my sister, and it bugs me.”

“I’m taller,” Sean said.

“By like an inch,” Conor said.

“What? I’m six-two. You’re not even six feet.”

“Yes I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re five-eleven.”

“And a half,” Conor added.

“It’s still not six feet. So, you want to come watch practice?” Sean asked, finally turning back to me. Boy, could those two argue about nothing. Definitely siblings.