Holly in Love: A Cooney Classic Romance Read online

  Holly in Love

  A Cooney Classic Romance

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  One

  IT WAS COLD ENOUGH to make a polar bear shiver. I stood at the bus stop listening to my blood, which I was quite sure had frozen solid and was now breaking up into icy little splinters, traveling like miniature red icebergs up to my heart valves.

  I’m only seventeen, I thought, and I’m about to die of winter.

  Kate came leaping and bounding over the snow. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and she didn’t seem to notice the snow crawling down inside her boots each time she stepped in a drift. “Oh, Holly!” she said ecstatically. “Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t you just love the first snow of the year?” Kate hugged me, sharing her joy.

  I hugged her back because I like Kate, but I detest snow. In fact, I detest winter.

  Kate and Henderson and Stein and Ayers began rolling a snowman. We live in a northern New Hampshire town renowned for three things: a men’s college, a ski slope, and the annual Ice Sculpture Festival. In other towns, you might not see too many high school seniors making snow people all over the place. In this town, it’s practically a federally mandated activity.

  Kate actually took off her mittens to use her bare hands for molding a few snowy features. Henderson gave the snow person a pony-tail—you have to be a real snow expert to do that!—and Ayers began pressing its upper regions to give it a Miss America figure. It made my whole body ache with cold just thinking about snow on that part of my anatomy.

  I stepped back slightly so I could stand behind Jamie Winter—I couldn’t imagine having to say that word all year round—but his shoulders did not have any particular effect at blocking the horrid, biting wind. He was wearing earmuffs, a form of protection I have always found useless, and his thick blond hair blew over and around the muffs, dancing in the wind. I have long brown hair, and I rarely wear it down. If it blows in the wind, it gets in my mouth and my eyes.

  The school bus was late. “I’ve decided what I’m going to do when I graduate,” said Kate. Miraculously, she did not slip any snowballs or ice packs down my back. Turning seventeen had done wonderful things for Kate’s behavior.

  “I thought you decided last week to write advertising slogans,” I said.

  “That was last week. Saturday I was buying a new lipstick and I changed my mind. I’m going to be a New Lipstick Namer.” Kate dug her new lipstick out of her purse and showed it to me. “My lipsticks will be named Cinnamon Snowhaze. Frozen Plum Wine. Icicle Peach.”

  Even the lipsticks around here are wintry, I thought. “I happen to own Cinnamon Snowhaze,” I said. “That one’s taken.”

  “That’s not what you’re wearing, is it?” said Kate, peering at my mouth.

  “I’m wearing Chap Stick,” I said, “so that I can keep my lips in working order.”

  Jamie and I grinned spontaneously at each other, as if we were both active in the Chap Stick industry, and I thought what a nice smile Jamie had. It understood me completely.

  “You should put lipgloss over your Chap Stick,” said Kate. “To get color.”

  She had a point. Since my blood had ceased to circulate on exposed areas like my face, I needed some false coloring there.

  “How do you like Burgundy Chill?” said Kate. “Or Wine Glacier?”

  Jamie had been listening with interest. “You should be honest when you name them,” he said firmly. “I suggest Isopropyl Lanolate. Or Microcrystalline Wax.”

  I laughed, and he chuckled and shook his head and the sandy hair fell in new patterns. I couldn’t decide if Jamie needed a haircut or not. It was such nice hair, it would be a shame to discard any of it. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold, as though someone wearing Burgundy Chill lipstick had kissed him a hundred times. His golden hair framed that face perfectly.

  “Somehow,” said Kate, “Microcrystalline Wax lacks rhythm.”

  The bus finally arrived, its exhaust hanging in the air like a dragon’s breath. I clambered on, my poor frozen joints creaking. Technically the bus has a heater. Factually, however, the heat is generated by forty high-school bodies. I personally could not afford to lose any more body heat. But at least being on the bus was an improvement over having my feet on solid ice.

  “What do you want for Christmas?” said Kate dreamily.

  “Christmas! Kate, we’ve hardly finished up Halloween!”

  “Snow makes me think of Christmas. Gosh, last year we didn’t get snow till January. Remember how crummy last year was?” she said, clearly still grieving for those snowless months. “And look at this, Holly! November tenth and we’ve got six inches of snow. It’s going to be a wonderful, wonderful year, Holly. I can feel it in my bones.”

  What I could feel in my bones was frozen marrow.

  “I think I’d like a goose down comforter,” said Kate. “Or an Atari video game for snowless days. Or a one-year ski lift pass.” Kate stared dreamily at the roof of the bus. “What do you want for Christmas, Holl?” she said.

  “Acapulco,” I told her. I looked out the bus window. Winter’s color is gray. Gray sky, gray clouds, gray streets and buildings. The only relief is the white snow and the black tree branches. I’ve read descriptions of our town, which is considered one of the most beautiful in New England. “Especially worth a visit in winter,” say the guidebooks, “when the exquisite village green is frosted with snow and the church spires rise against a pure blue sky. The campus, with its lovely gothic buildings and endless holly hedges, presents a view far too beautiful to miss.”

  I disagree. What would be beautiful in winter would be Barbados. Or Bermuda.

  “Hot in here,” complained Henderson. He zipped off the sleeves of his ski jacket and sat there with his arms covered by nothing but thin oxford cloth.

  I, too, have a sleeve-zipped ski jacket. I think by now the zippers have probably rusted together. My elbows get chilled easily.

  I would like to live where I’m overdressed in a bikini. Where snow is something so unknown that school teachers have to use film-strips to prove to doubting little kiddies that such a thing actually exists. Where the schools have water polo teams instead of ice hockey.

  I go on these hot-climate fantasy jags.

  Last year this time I was on a Hawaiian kick. I was planning to go to the University of Hawaii. I had the college catalog and everything in the library about Hawaii and everything their State Tourism Department would send me free.

  By January I’d read everything I could find on Hawaii, and I switched to the Florida Keys. That entertained me until March. You’d think March would include a sign or two of spring, but no. March last year—compensating for Kate’s crummy November and December—included seventeen inches of snow. I shoveled our front walk yet again, returned my Florida books to the library, and came home with an armload of books on Mexico.

  Last week in English we had to write extemporaneous paragraphs. Mrs. Audette gave us three subject choices. The first was, What Did We Do All Summer? (I discarded that. All I did all summer was watch the gypsy moths eat the leaves from our trees, and that’s something better forgotten than written about.) The second choice was, Eating Breakf
ast Out. I had to discard that, too. My parents don’t let us eat breakfast out. They feel it’s decadent. How can you thank God for McDonald’s hotcakes? they want to know. I could thank Him just fine, being a fast-food junkie from way back, but I rarely get the chance. So I took choice three, What Do I Plan to Do with My Life?

  Now, a girl whose father is a minister and whose mother is a college professor should surely have some impressive plans for her life, right? She should be marshaling her abilities, analyzing her options, and preparing her attack on the future. Considering careers and professions, discarding those that do not perfectly meet her assets and goals.

  That’s what you think.

  That’s also what my parents think, but right now I won’t get into the various ways in which I have disappointed them.

  “I’m going to get warm,” I wrote for Mrs. Audette. “I shall begin by drifting south. When I reach a state of constant perspiration, I’ll be south enough. Once the icebergs in my bloodstream have thawed out, I’ll lift my previously frozen eyelids and look around at the palm trees and the blistering sun and figure out how to earn a living.”

  I got an A. It turned out that poor old Mrs. Audette is from Mississippi, and she’s here only because her husband is a ski freak and not because she likes it.

  My parents, however, were not thrilled by my little essay. “We’ve instilled our values in you!” they cried. “Pressed our hopes upon you, taught you what discipline and truth are—and this is what you yearn for? Hot weather?”

  I appeased my father by saying maybe I would be a missionary in Africa, but he was suspicious of my motives. “God doesn’t want people to be missionaries in Nigeria just because they got cold in New Hampshire,” he said severely.

  My parents have always worried that I would turn out to be an unstable link in the great chain of society…a rip in the fabric of humanity. Now that they had my essay in hand, their suspicions were confirmed.

  My mother believes in dealing with problems from the most basic, unarguable positions. Toss out those college catalogs from Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Hawaii, she said. Too far away and too expensive. You’re going to the University of New Hampshire where you can go cheaply.

  I said that in cold weather I didn’t get enough red blood up to my brain for proper intake of knowledge, and my father said he’d had just about enough of my so-called sense of humor and we weren’t discussing weather one more time this winter.

  So here we were, in my eighteenth year, a third of the way into November, and my parents were eyeing me sadly and nervously because they were afraid they had failed. It was almost enough to make me want to stay out in the snow, away from their accusing looks.

  I sneezed.

  “Bless you!” said Kate.

  I sneezed again. I wondered if I could transform two sneezes into impending pneumonia and be able to stay home and watch soap operas. Probably not. My parents are very dubious about claims to sickness. Any child who is not running a fever of one hundred and three is probably making it up.

  In front of me, Henderson and Jesperson sat pummeling and jabbing each other the way boys do and talking about the joys of cross-country skiing and whether or not our team could win the championship. Kate had a ski gear catalog open to show me the fantastic, unbelievable pair of boots she was praying her parents would buy her for Christmas.

  If my father caught me praying for material goods, he’d flip. “I wish I had a father who ran a fried chicken franchise,” I said.

  Kate gave me a peculiar look. “I didn’t know you liked fried chicken that much,” she said.

  “I don’t.” It was impossible to explain.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want for Christmas,” she said.

  Bermuda? I thought. Straight A’s? A scholarship to a hot-climate college? A boyfriend? A parent who did not embarrass me by praying in public every time two or three people stood in a cluster?

  I settled on two gifts. A boy. In Bermuda. Perfect combination.

  The bus stopped, and we were at school. Not a perfect combination this year. Not for me, at least. I don’t think my life has ever been less perfect. The truth is, this year I hate school. I would have preferred to graduate last year. I feel too old for high school. I don’t know if I’ve matured more or if the cold weather has prematurely aged me or if I’m just bored silly. Whatever it is, since school started September fifth, I have not felt a part of anything. I seem to be just going through the motions.

  Or it may just be that every day starts out with homeroom, and homeroom is so ghastly it taints my entire morning. When your morning is shot, it tends to spoil the afternoon as well.

  You see, this year there are fourteen more students in the high school than the building was intended to accommodate. I am told that the administration gave considerable thought to the problem of what to do with the extra fourteen when assigning homeroom, that one time of the day when all 846 of us have to sit down at the same time.

  Well, 832 kids got classrooms with neat stuff like windows, blackboards, chairs, and clocks.

  Fourteen of us got assigned to the basement.

  Last year, there was this ugly little hole in the wall down in the basement that was used to store gymnastics mats and vaulting horses. This year, the ugly little hole in the wall stores us.

  Every morning when I walk into that place, I feel like a convict up for a twenty-year stretch. Gray linoleum floors. Gray cement-block walls. Bare bulbs hanging from a gray, water-stained ceiling.

  Once—only once—I complained to my father.

  “Holly,” he said. (He was fresh from a minister’s conference on Hunger Throughout the World, and I should have known better.) “In Latin America, the average length of schooling is 1.9 years. In Bangladesh, they use pieces of cardboard for blankets. In Guatemala, some of the Indians live in huts made of cornstalks.”

  “It’s a beautiful homeroom,” I told him. “I love it.”

  It’s hard to complain in my house.

  Once when I was fed up with cafeteria food and sick of making sandwiches to carry, I complained. My father said that the number of people suffering from severe malnutrition in the world is estimated at 500 million and to eat my peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich and like it.

  So I eat my peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich and like it, but nevertheless, in a very private complaint not to be forwarded to my father, school this year is lousy.

  Starting with homeroom.

  Now, my father feels I should never even think a thing like this, let alone say it, because every person on earth has fine qualities and we must love our neighbors, but the fact is that I am the only decent person in that homeroom. It’s true. The other thirteen are complete and total duds.

  There’s Ted Zaweicki. A fat old thing with a brain like the rest of his lard. Impenetrable.

  And Ron White, whose personal habits are so awful that when I listed them for my mother she said I had a disgusting imagination.

  And Pete Stein, who is a winter sports freak and can’t utter a complete sentence without the word snow. He just sits there massaging his muscles and talking about whether synthetics or wools keep your legs warmer.

  (“Now wait a minute,” said Kate. “You can’t say a homeroom with Pete Stein in it is nothing but duds. Pete Stein is wonderful. You even voted for him for class president.” This was true. I also thought he made a fine goalie for the hockey team, and I had admired through the years all the many cups and trophies Stein had won. I liked him in the way one likes a huge, bumbling mongrel the neighbors own. But Stein was an athlete. A fine breed, excellent for TV entertainment on slow Sunday afternoons, but not the sort with whom I wish to strike up intimate friendships.)

  The only other girl in the homeroom is Hope Martin. Hope is constructed on the cigarette principle: thin, sleek, and dangerous to my health. Hope has a designer label attached to everything she wears, carries, or smells of. Since my father does not allow designer labels in our house (“If God had meant for yo
ur jeans to have somebody else’s name on them…”), I never know for sure whether I’m envious of Hope’s labels or if I despise them. At least I always have something to read in homeroom.

  “Have any dates this weekend, Hollyberry?” said Hope. She knew perfectly well I had not, and she just wanted to expose this fact to the rest of the homeroom. She used my nickname in the most offensive, provoking way possible.

  “No,” I said. “I studied my Spanish.” The one subject in which I always get 100 is Spanish. It’s because I’m very highly motivated. I figure when I move to that hot climate, Spanish will be extremely useful.

  Hope chose to ignore the remark about my Spanish and went back to the topic of dates. “I did,” she said, and she told us about them. Hope used to refer to her male admirers as if a pocket calculator could not possibly keep track of them all, but now she is dating a college junior and has discarded all the children with whom she used to associate. “Grey,” said Hope, repeating his name lovingly. I don’t know whether Grey is his first name or his last or whether the man has only one, and I refuse to exhibit any interest in him, so probably I’ll never know. “Doesn’t it sound suave and well-bred?” said Hope. “So adult. Just like Grey himself.”

  You can see that dating a college man has not done a lot for Hope’s basic personality. Now she walks into high school as if she’s just visiting, especially in this homeroom of rejects. By now the only thing the rest of us hope when listening to her is that she’ll go away.

  Saying “Hollyberry” had sparked the class’s attention. My name has been the focus of jokes since nursery school. A minister’s daughter named Holly Carroll should expect that kind of thing—Christmas Carol, Hymnbook Hannah, and Hollyberry are among the nicer variations I have endured. Everybody but the clods in this homeroom got bored with name-teasing me years ago; here, it’s still a major source of entertainment.

  “Hey,” said Zaweicki, “you know, if Hollyberry married Vice-President Bush, she’d be Hollybushberry.”

  “True,” said Ron White. “But if Holly married Dickie Wood,” he added, referring to a freshman, “she’d be Hollywood.”