Coffeehouse Angel (3 page)

"You'd better." She wandered off.

The principal smoothed her short hair and caught her breath. "Katrina, please explain to your friend that this is not an open campus and that in the future he must check in at the office. We can't have that kind of disruption again. In our post--9/11 world, we must be steadfast and firm with our procedures."

"He's not my friend." I turned my back on some eavesdroppers.

"There's no need to lie." She sighed. "You're not in trouble. He's very handsome and I can see why you'd want to go out with him." She fiddled with her blouse. "Just make certain it doesn't happen again."

"I don't want it to happen again," I said. "I don't even know him."

"Well, he obviously
knows
you."

I made it to World Mythology just before the bell rang, taking my seat behind Vincent, next to the windows. Whispers buzzed around the room. I looked out the window to avoid the curious stares. A row of naked cherry trees lined the parking lot.

The winter sky was thick with clouds, turning our little corner of the world gray.

I must reward her good deed.

I didn't expect to be rewarded for the pastries and coffee. And those chocolate-covered coffee beans had been an afterthought. I didn't even expect a thank you, but not making a spectacle would have been nice.

He'd be waiting for me at three o'clock.

"Vincent, do you still have that shelter address?"

Vincent reached into his sweatshirt pocket and handed over the torn piece of notebook paper. "I'm guessing he's not homeless," he said. "I bet he just got messed up at a party and ended up passing out."

"Yeah, that makes sense. But just in case."

If I ran into him, I'd say "You're welcome, but don't worry about rewarding me," and he'd go away, never again to walk into the middle of an assembly and point at me.

Soon the incident would disappear from the collective conscience, replaced by someone else's embarrassing moment-- maybe a tumble in the cafeteria or a fart during study hall. But the World Mythology teacher, Mr. Williams, was not ready to let my embarrassing moment evaporate.

"Katrina," he said as he plunked some books onto his desk. "Your visitor this morning, what was that he said?"

My cheeks heated up. "He wasn't my visitor. I don't even know him." I pretended that I had something to erase.

"But didn't he say he wanted to reward your good deed?"

Some of the other kids laughed and repeated, "Good
deed."

"I bet it was
goooood,"
Aaron said, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

Great. Give a stranger a free cup of coffee and suddenly everyone thinks you're a slut.

"Well, this is quite a coincidence because today we begin a chapter about good deeds." Mr. Williams picked up a text and sat at the edge of his desk. His thighs spread out like corduroy logs. "The good deed is a common theme in mythology.

Sometimes the doer is rewarded with fortune, fame, or power. But sometimes the good deed leads to the doer's
downfall."

Winter air seeped under the classroom windows. I shivered. I was too young for a downfall, wasn't I?

"We begin this section with a fable called 'Androcles and the Lion.' "

I only half listened as Mr. Williams read the story about the escaped slave who finds a lion in the jungle and removes a thorn from the lion's paw. As a reward for the good deed, the lion spares the slave's life when they later encounter each other in the Coliseum. I fiddled with a yellow reminder slip that someone had stuffed into my locker:
Guidance counselor appointment, Wednesday, 8:00 a.m.
My vision blurred across Vincent's sweatshirt, which was damp around the collar from his wet swim-practice hair. Vincent didn't need a guidance counselor. He knew exactly what he wanted and where he was headed. Likewise, Elizabeth's dream to open an art gallery in New York City guided her every move. They knew.

I didn't know.

Mr. Williams closed the book. "One of the major themes in these good deed stories is that we should never underestimate those who appear to be inferior, like when a lowly slave helps the King of the Jungle. Sometimes the small, meek creature surprises us.

Your assignment this week is to write your own good deed story, three to five pages, based on personal experience, and bring it to class on Friday." He smiled at me. "We shall await yours, Katrina, with bated breath." The bell rang. "Oh, and read the next story for tomorrow."

For the rest of the morning I endured the questions.
What did you do? Where did you
do it?
No one cared about truth. Rumors were set free to roam the hallways like hairy tarantulas.

Elizabeth and I ate lunch in her car, hidden behind tinted windows. I pulled my lunch bag from my backpack and told her everything. "That's it? Coffee and some pastries?"

She unwrapped a hummus sandwich.

"And some chocolate-covered coffee beans."

"Again, that's it?"

"Sorry to disappoint you." I peeled back my yogurt's foil cover. Grandma Anna had shoved one of her Old World sandwiches into my bag--a pickled herring and onion creation. Try eating that for lunch and maintaining a position in the mundane middle.

"Hey, maybe you can ask him to Solstice. And I'll ask Face and we can double-date."

"What? I don't even know him." How many times would I have to repeat that?

"So? He's cute."

"Cute? Yeah, he's cute," I admitted. "But he wears that stupid kilt."

"What's wrong with a kilt? At least it's different. Nordby guys wear sweatshirts and jeans. Boring!"

"But he was sleeping in our alley. Don't you think that's weird?"

Elizabeth peeled the crust off her sandwich. "There's probably a good explanation."

Elizabeth had been my best girl friend since seventh grade, when we had each started our periods for the very first time on the exact same day and had ended up in the nurse's office, crying and confused. Well, I had been the one doing most of the crying, while she had simply been pissed off. "It's not fair!" she had screamed when the nurse handed us each a pad with wings. "How am I supposed to wear this thing with jeans?

Everyone will see it." I had assured her that no one could see it, and she had assured me that no one could see it. Best friends, just like that.

"How come Heidi's in charge of the decorations for the festival?" Elizabeth complained. "I should do it. She's not an artist."

"Heidi's in charge because she wants to be in charge."

"Right. Well, I should volunteer this year. It would look good on my college applications."

"Yeah, it probably would."

Elizabeth opened a bag of potato chips. As I reached in for a handful, Vincent and Heidi walked past. Why was he walking with her? Sure, they were both on the swim team, but he didn't usually hang out with the girl swimmers. And Vincent knew that I didn't like Heidi Darling. He knew that her father's coffeehouse had stolen most of our business. He knew how much I despised Mr. Darling. Heidi laughed at something, tossing her ponytail from side to side. Vincent smiled at her.

"Did you see how she was fake laughing?" Elizabeth asked, stuffing chips into her mouth. "What's up with that? I bet she likes him. I bet she'll ask him to the festival."

"No way. Really? You think she
likes
him?"

"Why not? What's not to like? Why don't you
like
him?"

"Because he's my friend." And because I knew everything about him. I knew that he sometimes got a little pimple on his earlobe. I knew that he got really bad gas if he drank milk. And I knew that he sometimes had nightmares about drowning. Our relationship was way beyond liking. We
knew
each other.

But if Heidi
liked
him, then that would be a total nightmare. If my best friend was dating my enemy's daughter, then I'd have to listen to him tell me how wonderful she was and I'd have to act nice because that's what best friends do. I'd have to hang out with them. I'd become the third wheel.

Heidi and Vincent walked into the science building. Just before the door closed, he touched her arm. A fire alarm went off in my head.

In the grand scheme of things, touching someone's arm is nothing. An arm is just an arm. But I didn't go around touching people's arms. Touching someone's arm is definitely a gesture of fondness. Fondness can lead to all sorts of things.

No way. Never. Not in a million years would I hang out with Heidi Darling. Forget it.

Vincent would have to choose between us. And he would choose me because we had been best friends since the fourth grade.

Wouldn't he?

T
hree o'clock arrived, right on schedule. No way was I was going out the front school doors. Weird kilt-wearing guy might be waiting.

So, after grabbing homework from my locker and creeping out the art room's back door, I hurried past the tennis court and onto the sidewalk, completely avoiding the front of the school. No sign of him. Phew.

I didn't like to ride the school bus home because its designated Main Street stop was right in front of Java Heaven. The students who piled out always headed straight into Mr. Darling's coffeehouse. Never did they walk the dozen extra steps to Anna's Old World Scandinavian Coffeehouse. Only I walked those steps, and that always made me feel like the only kid not invited to a birthday party. Mr. Prince, our school guidance counselor, once gave a speech at an assembly about how everyone secretly feels like an outcast, even popular people. How could Heidi Darling feel like an outcast with so many people crowding into her father's shop?

Sometimes I caught a ride with Elizabeth, but on Mondays she had to stay after for math tutoring. Even though I was sixteen I didn't have my own car. Unlike Elizabeth, I didn't have rich parents, or any parents, for that matter. Fortunately, Nordby was small enough to get around on foot or bike.

Nordby is an odd sort of place. The bay is home to a small fishing fleet and a marina.

At the water's edge, two seafood restaurants balance on pilings. Main Street, which is crowded with little shops, runs parallel to the water. The buildings are brightly painted and sweetened with gingerbread trim and folklife murals. A sign at each end of the street reads: VELKOMMEN, which is "welcome" in Norwegian.

In its early years, Nordby was all about Norway--hence the grand Sons of Norway Hall that sits at the north end of Main Street. But over time things got mixed up.

Someone built a Swiss cuckoo clock tower next to the bakery. Someone erected a Dutch windmill on top of the shoe shop. Someone else installed a bronze statue of a little boy in Bavarian lederhosen. I guess the city planners just wanted Nordby to look like a fairy-tale town. And so it does.

The downhill walk from the edge of school to Main Street usually took about fifteen minutes. I passed the new Java Heaven billboard. A picture of the Darling family, made up of Heidi and her mother and father, smiled at pedestrians, golden halos shining above their heads. VOTED MOST HEAVENLY ORGANIC COFFEE IN

NORDBY. Who had voted? No one had sent me a ballot.

We didn't have a billboard for our coffeehouse. My grandmother didn't do modern things like advertise, which is one reason we weren't making much money. To top that, we had unknowingly lost a coffee election. My brain went into "I am such a total loser" mode as I stared up at Heidi Darling's perky face. She could add "Billboard Model" to her list of accomplishments.

"Lovely day."

"Jeez!" I clutched my backpack straps. The guy from the alley was standing next to me. "You scared me."

"My apologies." His sweater was beginning to unravel along the edge and his kilt had a few grass stains. I expected someone who slept in an alley to reek, but a nice scent drifted off him, flowery but not familiar. He noticed me looking him over. "Excuse my appearance. I'm usually not so disheveled, but I just came from a celebration in Scotland. Did you know that they toss trees up there? It's a beautiful country. I hope they send me again, but I doubt they will. I stayed much longer than I was supposed to."

Maybe I should have felt scared. He was a stranger, after all--a very handsome stranger. I'd never seen eyes that dark blue--the kind of blue you'd find on a chart of primary colors. When he blinked, thick lashes brushed against his cheeks. An odd sense of calm washed over me.

A clump of students passed between us. A few pointed at his kilt. No one at Nordby High wore a kilt, not even the president of the Comic Book Club.

"What do you want?" I asked, calm turning to embarrassment.

He folded his arms "What I want, Katrina, is to meet my obligation."

"Oh. You mean you want to
reward
me? You don't need to pay me."

"Pay you? I'm afraid I don't carry currency." He smiled. "I'm here to give you what you most desire."

Okay. Weirdo alert. I pulled Vincent's slip of paper from my pocket. "Do you need a place to sleep? Here's the address for a shelter. I don't think you need
currency
for a shelter. It's just that you can't sleep in our alley again. Believe me, if my grandma finds you out there, she'll call Officer Larsen. She will. She calls him about everything."

He ignored the paper. "I have no plans to sleep in your alley again, but it's not my choice. My job dictates where I sleep. One day I might wake up in the Maharajah's guest bed and the next day I might find myself in a London sewer pipe." He shrugged.

"Fortunately, wherever I end up, I absorb the language. Makes things so much easier."

"Uh-huh." The guy was crazy. No matter how nice he smelled, or how charming his smile, he was nuts. I shoved the paper into his hand. "Well, the shelter will probably be a lot warmer than a London sewer pipe. Okay, good-bye." I quickly walked away.

Don't follow me, don't follow me.

Of course he followed. Once you're on a crazy person's radar, forget about it.

"I don't have any money, if that's what you want," I said, trying to keep some distance between us.