Page 2 of Fake Skating

CHAPTER ONE February—Senior Year Dani

“Wake up—we’re here.”

I opened my eyes, but instead of seeing my bedroom, I saw snow and gray skies through the cold window that my forehead was resting on.

The same things I’d stared at for countless hours before finally falling asleep.

Damn it—it’s real.

“Remind me again why we’re moving here,” I said, leaning down to shove my feet back into my Chucks.

We drove seven hours in a moving truck full of our stuff (that’d been incorrectly shipped to our old address in Minot— thanks, Air Force ) so we could now live in a place where there appeared to be multiple feet of snow on the ground and the windchill was subzero—like, make it make sense. “I mean, why not California?”

“We’ve been over this. Too expensive, too hot in the summer, and you’re going to love living here,” my mom said, shutting off the truck and pulling the keys out of the ignition. “You loved it when you were younger, remember?”

The main reason I loved it was because of Alec.

My stomach instantly knotted at the thought of him and the reality that I was going to have to face him after he’d ghosted our long-distance friendship.

I was dreading that awkward reunion with every fiber of my being, and still slightly pissed, but I was also hopeful that once the embarrassing moment passed, he’d be the best thing about the move.

Or at least he’d help it be… marginally less nightmarish.

Because Alec Barczewski had always been a hilarious ray of sunshine with the uncanny ability to make everything better. It’d been a long time and we were obviously different people now, but in my heart I knew that my dorky friend would somehow make this okay.

“Loving a place you visit once a year—in the summer—is totally different from living there year-round,” I muttered, opening the door and jumping down from the truck, the icy wind slapping at my cheeks as I jerked up the hood on my jacket. “Especially when the winter climate is abysmal.”

Dear Lord, it feels like there are shards of glass in that wind. Whyyyyy do people choose to live in a place so cold? I’d lived in the cold before, so it wasn’t new to me, but I’d somehow managed to forget just how harsh it felt.

“Quit complaining. I just drove through White Castle, so you’ve got a slider and fries in your bag,” she said, coming around to grab my arm and loop it through hers after I shut the door.

“Seriously?” My stomach growled and I caught a whiff of onion as I looked down at my tote. “Perfect last meal before I freeze to death, thank you.”

“And we are now officially residents of Southview,” she proclaimed with a terrifying amount of finality in her voice. “Like it or not.”

I sighed and thought a thousand times NOT as I pulled out a tiny burger and lifted it to my mouth. I took a bite and stared at the big white house in front of us, my stomach heavy with dread as I chewed.

Which kind of made sense, since the last time we’d been there, my dad and I had been loading the car in silence while my mom argued with my grandpa in the driveway.

You traded in your family and your entire life to follow that asshole from base to base—was it worth it? Do you like your rootless existence, where Dani doesn’t even know what family looks like?

“He doesn’t appear to be home,” I said, taking in the closed curtains and empty driveway. “He knows we’re coming, right?”

“Of course he’s home,” she said. “He’s probably just parked in the garage.”

“He never parks in the garage,” I corrected, taking two more huge bites and saying through a mouthful of food, “That’s where he keeps his tools.”

Or it was where he used to keep his tools before he decided to cut us out of his life.

“It’s been a few years—he could have cleaned it out,” she said. “And don’t talk with food in your mouth.”

“Then don’t engage me in conversation while I’m eating.”

But when we went up to the door, he wasn’t home.

My mom gave me a smile and acted like it was fine, but there was the telltale wrinkle between her eyebrows that let me know she was nervous. She dialed his number and raised the phone to her ear, nibbling on her bottom lip as she waited for him to answer.

“Oh. Dad. Hey,” she said, her words making puffs in the frigid air in front of her face. “We’re here with the moving truck—are you on your way?”

I crossed my arms, trying not to freeze to death as I watched her listen to his response.

This wasn’t good.

The wrinkles stayed on her brow, and she started pacing.

“Well, I know. Yes, that’s fine,” she said, “but we thought you’d be here to help.”

Fabulous. Grandpa Mick was AWOL on the moving. I’d be pissed, only I was too cold to feel human emotion anymore.

My rage was an icicle.

“Sure. I get that,” she said. “But you knew we were coming, right?”

Of course he knew we were coming, I thought. It was probably his way of giving us the finger.

God, I still couldn’t believe we were moving in with him.

To be fair, I had a childhood full of good Grandpa Mick memories. As quiet and surly as he was, the man had taught me to fish and skate and used to call me his “Danigirl” while giving me rides on his shoulders.

But those memories had all been written over the day he literally kicked me and my parents out of my grandma’s funeral when I was in middle school.

In front of a crowd of mourners.

So it was still baffling to me that somehow, some-freaking-how, we were about to move our things into his house as if that nightmare never happened.

Technically, he’d built an apartment for us in the upstairs of his house—my mom loved to say this as if that made a huge difference—but I still couldn’t understand why this was a good idea.

Yes, please, let’s move in with the grumpy old guy who doesn’t like anyone but especially not us.

It was going to be so much fun.

“Oh, okay,” my mom said into the phone. “It’s fine. There’s nothing heavy, so we’ll just get started.”

She nodded and disconnected the call, but before I could open my mouth, her finger came up and she pointed at my face. “I don’t want to hear a word, okay?”

“Oh geez,” I said, shaking my head. “What’s up? What’d he do?”

“Nothing,” she said, shrugging like this was fine. “He just had to help a friend up in Minnetonka with his boat.”

I waited for more, but that was apparently it.

“And…? How far away is that? How long is he going to be helping a friend with a boat?” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I was irritated by how ridiculous it was.

“Also, it’s the freaking tundra out here—what could someone possibly be doing with a boat in this weather?

Every drop of water in the place is frozen solid. ”

“Dammit, Dani, this is Minnesota,” my mom snapped, her voice rising in frustration. “Boats are always in play!”

I opened my mouth but had no idea how to respond to that statement.

“I think I might’ve just come up with a kick-ass tourism slogan.” Her forehead smoothed and her mouth turned up into a little grin. “Let’s start moving our stuff, and he’ll be here when he’s done.”

“We’re seriously moving all our stuff in by ourselves—is that what you’re telling me?” I burrowed my chin into the top of my coat, trying to block the icy wind.

“I will buy you a large cheese pizza and a freaking pony if you cut the sarcasm and just help me carry boxes into the house,” she said, pulling a key ring out of her pocket.

“Can I eat the pizza while riding the pony?”

“As long as you’re safe.”

“Fine, I’m in,” I said, watching her open the screen door. “But I really feel like I was just hitting my stride on the negativity.”

My mom used her key— yes, the key from when she was a child still worked in the door —and we went inside.

The main level was like a throwback, everything seemingly unchanged from the last time I’d been there.

The only difference was that it didn’t smell like cookies anymore; my grandma always made chocolate chip cookies when we visited.

But when we got to the staircase, instead of looking up and seeing the upstairs hallway like it used to be, we saw a pair of French doors. The glass was frosted, so you couldn’t see anything through it, but natural light shone from behind the doors and made them look like they were glowing.

“Wow,” my mom said, running up the stairs.

“Yeah,” I agreed, following. “Wow.”

The upstairs had been completely transformed.

Warm wood floors and white trim made it feel sleek and contemporary, the polar opposite of the old-person vibes of the main level.

Two of the bedrooms had now been made into a living room, the walls removed so it felt like it’d always been that way.

Big windows made it bright—too bright with all that freaking snow—and a white brick fireplace was centered on a wall of white bookshelves.

“This is amazing,” my mom said breathlessly.

It was hard to even remember how it’d looked before.

The two remaining bedrooms were equally gorgeous, with new furniture and a huge shared bathroom, and the small kitchenette had everything the two of us non-cooking people could need.

And when my mom opened the second set of French doors next to the fireplace, we found a deck with stairs leading down to the garage behind the house, where we’d be parking.

It was actually an apartment with its own entrance.

“Are you sure he did all of this himself?” I asked, truly in awe of the transformation. I knew Grandpa Mick had a woodshop and liked to build things, but this was next-level.

“Positive,” my mom said, and for a split second it almost looked like she had tears in her eyes.

But then she gave her head a little shake and said, “Okay, let’s get moving.”

We went out to the truck and started bringing stuff in, but with just the two of us it felt like it was going to take forever. There were so many boxes of random things—books and clothes and pictures and shoes, and taking them in one at a time was just depressingly slow.

“Dani?”