And then the truth, clear and crisp as the winter sky the morning after a storm: I never really left the ice. I never will. Ever since I blew the Empire Games, I thought I was hiding out in the diner, staying below the radar until the mistakes lost my trail. But I wasn’t. Tonight, here, this is where I’m hiding. Not from my past. From my present. From my real life and everyone I care about.
This competition belongs to Parallel Life Hudson. We’re not fused—our paths diverged a long time ago, long before that night in Rochester.
I open my eyes and slide out of the box, but instead of skating to the center of the ice, I give the organizer the cut sign, grab my blade guards, and hobble back to the locker room. Commotion floats through the stands as the announcer receives word of my forfeit and locates the next skater’s bio and music, but soon the crowd settles, ready for her to appear.
After I pull on my leg warmers and boots, I peek into the arena one last time. The skater, a tiny blonde in a black-and-silver dress, is in position. She waves to two people in the stands who are out of their seats with pride. The music starts and her face turns serious as she poses for her first step, toe solid on the ice. Maybe she’s found my butterflies, or some of her own. Maybe she’ll win the scholarship and go on to train and compete and win the Olympic gold, looking back on this night as the one that changed everything—the once-in-a-lifetime golden ticket moment that made all of her impossible dreams come true.
I hope she does.
“Good luck,” I whisper, touching the silver rabbit on my shoulder. The skater glides into her first loop, and I slip unnoticed out the back door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Friend of the Devil Cupcakes
Red velvet devil’s food cupcakes topped with red, orange, and yellow swirled buttercream icing peaks and a thin red apple curl
I pull into a spot close to the Hurley’s entrance and kill the engine. It’s so quiet I can almost hear the snow fall, big fat flakes plopping on the pavement, the windshield, the roof of the truck. The lights are on inside the diner, but the blinds are drawn, and in the muted hush, I feel it—that edge of wrongness. I shouldn’t have come back here. Mom will never forgive me.
I sink back into the driver’s seat and slip the keys into the ignition. My heart races and my breath fogs up windows as I reverse out of the spot. I’m leaving tonight. Now. I’ve got my snow-stomping boots and my backpack and everything I need to escape Watonka, escape New York, escape everywhere. Train or not, this time …
It’s the old man that stops me.
Earl—the regular from my first day of training. The one with all the dimes. I recognize the blue sedan as it pulls into my just-vacated parking spot. He sees me when he gets out and nods—not a wave or a smile, not a greeting, but something else. Something that in its utter simplicity says only, I know, Dolly Madison. I know all about it. We lock eyes for an eternity, conversation floating soundlessly through the winter air, and then the moment vanishes, footprints covered quickly by the snow as he shuffles up the path and disappears inside.
I pull into a different spot and slam the truck into park. No way I’m leaving them again. Not now. Not after everything.
Earl leans on the front counter, tapping his foot to the jazz riff floating from the kitchen. The knitting club is there, along with three other occupied tables, familiar patrons chatting in a low collective hum as silverware scrapes against plates. Clink clink. Storm’s coming back around, believe that? Clink clink clink. We’re putting the house on the market this spring. Clink clink. Etta’s boy’s back from Iraq. Getting married next month….
Marianne, Dani, Nat, Mom—none of them are in the dining room. Bug’s not around, either. I pour a cup of coffee for Earl and push through the double doors into the kitchen. “Looks dead out there. What hap—”
“Close the doors!” A blur of voices snuffs out the rest of my question. Nat, hovering next to the doorway like she’s on guard duty, shoves me out of the way and pulls the double doors tight. She’s shaking so hard, even her sleek pink bob looks nervous. Some kind of unidentifiable meat is burning on the grill, Marianne and Trick are frantically stacking full plates onto a serving tray, Mom and Dani are crawling around on the floor like someone lost a contact lens, and Bug is tucked into a ball under the prep counter, clutching his backpack and wiping his eyes with a dish towel.
“Nice of you to join us,” Mom says. She doesn’t get up from the floor.
“What happened? Did the reviewer show up yet?”
“Came and went,” Nat says. Her eyes sweep the floor like she’s searching for a mouse. “Hardly ate a thing. Lousy tipper, too. And that was after—”
“He didn’t like it?” My stomach knots up. “How could he not—”
“Excuse me?” One of the knitting club ladies calls through the window over the grill. “We put our order in a while ago, but I think our waitress went on break.”
“Be right out!” Nat’s bordering on hysterical. “Hudson, watch the door. Close it right behind me.”
“Is everyone in here crazy, or—”
“Close it! I’m not screwing around!”
“Is Nat all right?” I ask when she’s out of the kitchen. “Doesn’t even look busy out there. What are you guys—”
“May be half-dead in the dining room,” Trick says, “but we’re kinda scramblin’ back here, in case you haven’t noticed. So if you could skip the third degree and maybe flip those Polish sausages, help Marianne run this food, or locate your brother’s hamster—”
“Mr. Napkins?” I don’t wait for an answer. I duck under the counter and reach for Bug. “Come here, sweet pea. Tell me what happened.”
He pulls himself tighter into a ball, shrugging me off. “Mr. hiccup Napkins hiccup is gone!”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I had him right here, and now he’s”—hiccup—“MIA.” He opens his backpack to show me the dark space inside, nothing there but a few shreds of hamster hay and an old T-shirt stuffed into the bottom.
“You brought Mr. Napkins here? In your backpack?”
Bug blinks behind his tortoiseshell glasses, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I didn’t want to leave him home alone again.” Hiccup. “He gets lonely.”
“I know he does, Bug. I’m sorry.” My throat is dry and tight, knees aching against the cold tile floor. If I had just stayed here earlier, helped Mom out, maybe things would’ve gone better with the reviewer. Maybe I could’ve taken Bug home. Maybe I—
“What if he gets outside?” Bug’s crying harder, eyes wild with this new fear. “He’ll freeze! What if someone hamster-naps him? What if he gets hit by a snowplow? What if he—”
“Bug, listen to me. Mr. Napkins is the smartest hamster alive. He’s not outside. He’s somewhere in this diner, and we’ll find him. But you have to calm down.” I put my hands on his shoulders and inch closer. “I know I haven’t given you any reason to trust me tonight. I don’t blame you if you’re mad, but we have to put that aside so we can find Mr. Napkins. Can you do that for me?”
His big brown saucer-eyes blink twice. One more sniffle. Another hiccup, then a nod, and he follows me out from under the prep counter.
“Do you have your notebook?” I ask. “The one you use to write down clues for important cases?”
He digs out the notebook and a pencil from the front part of his bag and flips to an empty page.
“Good. Now think. What do we know about Mr. Napkins? What kind of environment does he like? What are his favorite hiding places at home?”
Bug’s tongue sticks partway out of his mouth as pencil races across paper. “Hates the cold,” I read over his shoulder. “Goes near heat vents. Small spaces. Likes food and the dark.”