Page 2

Chapter 1

Guy

“Here, here.” I tapped my stick on the ice. Frank cut the puck away from Shane and passed it my way. Our little 3-on-3 game was going well.

The guys were starting to get the hang of some of the stuff I showed them. It was a winter afternoon where we didn’t have any other practice and I could convince a few of the guys to come with me to the rink. I didn’t know how long Maman and I would be staying in West Virginia. It felt permanent. I didn’t want to lose hockey completely just because we moved. It was still my best chance at going to college and getting drafted.

Right as I went to pop it in the goal, my eye caught on Kitty. She was sitting in the bleachers, hunched over a notebook and scribbling something furiously. Probably working on one of her play ideas. My mind wandered to how she had that idea for monsters that—

“Shoot it, Stelle!” Frank yelled. Kitty looked up and raised an eyebrow at me. My focus came back to the ice just in time for Shane to swipe the puck back from me and break away. My cheeks, already red from the cold, went redder. Why was I distracted by Kitty ?

After we finished our game, Kitty helped me put the hockey equipment away. Her arm wobbled as she lifted the other side of the goal, but I didn’t bring it up. She always joked about her weakling status and theater nerd body.

“What were you working on?”

“Just an idea,” she said, dismissing me. The door to the storage closet closed behind us. “Smells awful in here.”

“That’s hockey.” I was trying to make her laugh. She wasn’t having it. “What’s wrong?”

Kitty shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Kitty.” I tugged her arm to get her to turn to me. Her breath stopped as her gaze met mine, shifting quickly between my eyes. Again, something stirred in me. Had I ever really noticed how pretty her eyes were? She’d recently gotten her braces off, and while she wasn’t totally different, she definitely looked more grown up.

“What?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“You can tell me what’s wrong.”

Her face flushed. “It’s nothing, Guy.” I softened my look, trying to convince her to open up. It worked. She shifted a step back, chewing at the loose skin on her thumb. She always picked there when she was nervous. “Your fan club is here today.”

I knew who she meant. Some girls from school noticed that the guys and I went to the rink after school and followed, pretending to have a sudden interest in ice skating. The attention was flattering, but I wasn’t all that interested, particularly when Kitty was around.

“They come for all of us, Kitty Cat.”

“I hear them talking. They’re after you.” My gut turned. Did it bother Kitty that other girls were interested in me? Was she jealous?

And why was I interested in Kitty? We were just friends, right?

It’s true that I didn’t care about the other girls. They weren’t Kitty. Kitty understood me. She knew how to make me laugh when I was down. She respected me. She was always kind when she corrected my English. She was the only person who pronounced my name the French way, and I liked that about her. She didn’t treat me like an alien or an exotic creature like the other girls did. She saw me for who I was. I could be myself around her.

The realization came to me in a flood. Or maybe I’d known it all along and just denied it. Either way, something major changed inside me. I didn’t fully understand it, but it was there.

Kitty wasn’t just my good friend or my best friend’s little sister. I wanted Kitty to be mine .

“I don’t want them, Kitty.”

It was a rare occasion that we were alone. A stray piece of hair had fallen out of her ponytail. Without thinking, I brushed it behind her ear. I didn’t move my hand away from her face, though. I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew without a doubt that I needed to do it.

My lips were on hers before I could second-guess myself. After a moment’s hesitation, Kitty kissed me back, stepping more into my body as I held her tight. Her lips were soft, her scent a welcome change from the humid, dank air of the storage closet. Her lips were sweet, like she’d just put on her favorite strawberry lip balm, a smell I didn’t realize I had memorized until that moment. We were both young and clumsy, but insatiable nonetheless.

I was just starting to think about how soft her skin under her clothes might feel when the door flew open. Shane and a girl from school stood with a hockey goal balanced between them. I shoved Kitty off me out of instinct, afraid it was Frank. I was kissing my best friend’s sister. Who was also my best friend.

Kitty looked at the floor, face red. Shane and the girl stood dumbfounded.

“Not a word.” I was panicking. Spiraling out. “You will say nothing. Do you understand?”

Kitty rushed out of the closet. I was too embarrassed to call after her. Frank would kill me if he found out I’d kissed his sister. But then, I’d just hurt my other best friend, too.

I was an idiot.

* * *

I hated that we had to move. I got why Maman wanted to start over. I got that she didn’t want to live with Papa’s ghost anymore. In Montreal, we were Gabriel Stelle’s family, the ones he left behind. People either pitied us or wanted something from us.

But Maman and I knew the truth. Papa was no saint. And she couldn’t live with the memories being around us all the time. So that summer, we left.

I was fifteen, almost sixteen. I had my friends. I had my team. I was even kind of partial to my school. And Maman was taking it all away.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends. She didn’t want people asking questions. Maman told me my friends could visit when we got where we were going. When I asked where that was, she just responded with, “ Sud .” South.

It wasn’t hard for us to get visas into the U.S., thanks to my dad’s former occupation. Hockey players have to be able to go freely between the U.S. and Canada, and we tagged on to those privileges. Thankfully, it hadn’t been that long since he did some color commentary for the league, so we still had access to easy immigration.

I knew she didn’t know where we were going. I was trying hard not to be a brat. It was hard for me, but it was harder for her. And I loved her. I wanted her to be happy. Some things were bigger than me.

One day in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, Maman sent me to the motel pool while she argued with Grandmere on the phone. When I came back, her eyes were red. She put on a big smile, gave me a silent hug, and we went to the nearby roadside diner. That night as we were falling asleep in the seedy motel room, I told her, “We’re going to be okay.”

“Yes. We are,” she agreed, but I heard her quiet sobs after she thought I was asleep.

I’m not sure why she insisted on staying in crummy places while we went south. She got decent child support from Papa. Maybe she was determined not to spend his money.

I was furious when she stopped in that first mountain town. Didn’t people make fun of West Virginia? Why did she want this to be home? I googled the nearest ice rink and convinced her to go a little farther south to Charleston. I wasn’t about to lose hockey on top of everything else.

But once we met the Gattos, everything started to get better.

Mrs. Gatto, or Heather as she’s always insisted I call her, was a lighthouse for Maman. They became best friends faster than Frank and I did. I remember the night Frankie and I were playing XBox. I kept hearing Maman and Heather laughing over wine in the backyard. We heard them singing Jewel and Prince. I acted horrified to Frank, but I hadn’t heard Maman sing in years. She loved Prince and that one Jewel song was an old favorite of hers.

Later, when I went to see if Maman wanted to go home, our moms had their arms around each other’s necks, tears streaming down both of their faces.

Mark Gatto steered clear when those two hung out, knowing he had no place but to keep their wine glasses topped up and the fire pit loaded with logs. That man is the real saint in the family. He knew Maman and Heather had something special and played his supporting role like a champ. I wished my dad could have been as sweet as Mark Gatto. But that wasn’t my life. Kitty and Frank were the lucky ones to have Mark and Heather as parents.

And then there was Kitty. She acted shy at first, hiding her braces-filled smiles behind her hand. But she had a real cutting sense of humor. Once Maman started working at the restaurant and I had dinner at the Gattos more often, she’d make these really clever sidebars that only Frank and I could hear. Frank would roll his eyes, but I laughed. She wasn’t my sister. I wasn’t obligated to pretend like she wasn’t cool or funny.

Sometimes Frank was cool with all three of us hanging out, which was fine for me. I loved them both as best friends. But because Kitty was a little younger and a girl, we couldn’t ever be close in the same way Frank and I were close. Those unwritten rules of growing up, I guess.

The three of us would watch stand-up comedians on YouTube or old funny movies. Laughing was important for me at that point in my life. Things had been rough, both before and after Papa left. The stable Gattos were a safe haven for me.

Other times, Frankie wanted his pesky little sister gone. He got a pair of rollerblades so we could play street hockey together. He was terrible at first, but I coached him into a pretty strong player. He convinced me to join the soccer team, so when August rolled around, that’s how I made friends. Kitty tagged along to our practices for the ride home when she didn’t have play practice.

I was nervous about being the new kid in school. I had a funny accent, but for better or worse, no one knew who my dad was. It only took a few weeks for the word to get around about me from the ladies, and then my social status took off. I didn’t do anything to charm them other than be fresh meat with a French (to them) accent. That’s all it takes when you’re a junior in high school.

Once school started and I spent hours after school either at practice, at the rink, or at the Gattos, I got to see some of the unrest in the Gatto house. Even in a family as picture-perfect as theirs, things were still off sometimes.

Kitty was awful at math. Like, really bad. And her parents, especially sweet old Mark, didn’t get why. They thought she didn’t pay attention. I knew she was smart otherwise, but things were going so poorly with her and pre-algebra.

Heather had to take Frank to a doctor’s appointment one day that first fall. Kitty and I were the only ones home at the Gattos. I could hear her crying in her room. I paced in the hallway, not sure what to do. Finally, I knocked on her door.

“Go away,” came her quiet reply.

“It’s Guy.”

“I’m fine,” she huffed, still not opening the door.

I knew I could help her if she’d just let me. I was a peer tutor in Montreal.

“I have M&Ms,” I said, tempting her with her favorite candy. I didn’t really have M&Ms, but I knew where Heather hid them from Kitty.

She honked her nose into a tissue, then the door creaked open. She walked back to the middle of her floor. There was a math test with a red forty-two at the top.

“Ouch.” I nudged the paper with my socked foot.

“Dad’s going to kill me,” she sulked.

I nodded, chewing my lip. “What if you know how to fix your mistakes?”

She blinked up at me and narrowed her eyes.

“Come on, ma puce . Get a pencil and paper and I’ll get the M&Ms.” The term of endearment just flew out of my mouth and I couldn’t take it back. Ma puce : literally, my flea. When it’s said to someone younger, it’s cutesy. When it’s said to a girlfriend, it’s very affectionate. I didn’t know which of those Kitty was to me, but the name seemed to fit.

Kitty studied me and got a tiny smile. I fully expected her to question the French, but she didn’t say a word about it.

We settled in on her floor with chocolate and math problems. I looked over what she’d done, and where she went wrong.

“It looks like you skip a couple steps every time. Does that sound right?”

“Probably, yeah.” Her cheeks flushed.

“I’m pretty good with this stuff. I used to tutor back home. Do you want me to be your tutor?”

“Really?” Her eyes brightened. “You’d do that? I’m sure Mom and Dad could pay you.”

I waved that off. “You’re my friend. It’s what friends do.”

By the time Heather and Frank got home, I’d helped Kitty correct her mistakes on half of her test. Her smile had fully returned and she was back to throwing M&Ms at me every once in a while.

An inexplicable warmth ran through my veins. It was a warmth I sought out constantly.

But it was never quite the same if it didn’t come from Kitty. And that one day in the storage closet at the rink, I screwed it all up.