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Smashwords Edition
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Making Faces
Copyright © 2013 by Amy Harmon
ISBN-13:
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Dedication
Prologue
1: Super Star or a Super Hero
2: Have Courage
3: Create A Disguise
4: Meet Hercules
5: Tame a Lion
6: See the World
7: Dance With a Girl
8: Party Hard
9: Be a Good Friend
10: Be a Soldier
11: Beat Up a Bully
12: Build a Hideaway
13: Live
14: Solve a Mystery
15: Make Friends with a Monster
16: Kiss Rita
17: Take a Stand
18: Eat Pancakes Every Day
19: Finish a 1000 Piece Puzzle
20: Get a Pet
21: Climb the Rope
22: Make Fireworks
23: Find the Silver Lining
24: Make Something Disappear
25: Float Across Hannah Lake
26: Invent a Time Machine
27: Get a Tattoo
28: Be a Hero
29: Ride in a Police Car
30: Make it to Twenty-One
31: Always Be Grateful
32: Wrestle
33: Don't be Afraid of Dying
34: Catch a Bad Guy
35: Take Care of Fern
36: Go to Penn State
37: Get Married
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
“The Ancient Greeks believed that after death, all souls, whether good or bad, would descend to the Underworld, the kingdom of Hades, deep in the Earth, and dwell there for eternity,” Bailey read aloud, his eyes flying across the page.
“The underworld was guarded from the living world by Cerberus, an enormous, vicious, three-headed dog with a dragon for a tail and snake heads lining his back.” Bailey shivered at the image that popped into his mind, imagining how Hercules would feel when he saw the beast for the first time, knowing he had to subdue the animal with nothing but his bare hands.
“It was Hercules’s final task, his final labor to perform, and it would be the most difficult quest of all. Hercules knew that once he descended into the underworld, facing monsters and ghosts, wrestling demons and mythical creatures of every kind along his way, he might never be able to return to the land of the living.
“But death did not frighten him. Hercules had faced death many times, and longed for the day when he too would be delivered from his endless servitude. So Hercules went, secretly hoping to see in the Kingdom of Hades, the souls of loved ones he had lost and now paid penance for.”
First Day of School–September, 2001
The school gymnasium was so loud that Fern had to lean down next to Bailey's ear and shout to be heard. Bailey was more than capable of maneuvering his wheelchair through the teeming student body, but Fern pushed him so they could more easily stay together.
“Do you see Rita?” she yelled, eyes roving. Rita knew they had to sit on the bottom bleacher in order for Bailey to sit near them. Bailey pointed, and Fern followed his finger to where Rita was waving frantically, making her breasts bounce and her fluffy blonde hair swing wildly around her shoulders. They made their way to her, and Fern let Bailey take over control of his chair as she scrambled up to the second row, sitting just behind Rita so Bailey could position his chair at the end of the bench.
Fern hated pep rallies. She was small and tended to get bumped and squished no matter where she sat, and she had little interest in cheering and stomping her feet. She sighed, settling in for the half hour of screaming, loud music, and football players working themselves up into a frenzy.
“Please rise for the National Anthem,” a voice boomed, and the mic shrieked in protest, causing people to wince and cover their ears, but effectively quieting the gymnasium.
“We have a special treat today, girls and boys.” Connor O'Toole, also known as Beans, was holding the mic with a wicked grin on his face. Beans was always up to something, and he instantly had everyone's attention. He was part Irish, part Hispanic, and his up-turned nose, sparkling hazel eyes, and devilish grin were at odds with his smoky coloring. And he was a talker; it was obvious that he relished his time at the microphone.
“Your friend and mine, Ambrose Young, has lost a bet. He said if we won our first game, he would sing the National Anthem at this pep assembly. “ Gasps were heard, and the volume in the bleachers rose immediately.
“But we didn't just win our first game, we won our second game too!” The audience roared and stomped their feet. “So, being a man of his word, here is Ambrose Young, singing the National Anthem,” Beans said and waved the mic toward his friend.
Beans was small. Though he was a senior, he was one of the smaller players on the team and was more suited to wrestling than football. Ambrose was also a senior. But he wasn't small. He towered above Beans--one of his biceps was almost as big around as Beans's head--and he looked like one of those guys on the cover of a romance novel. Even his name sounded like a character from a steamy read. And Fern would know. She'd read thousands of them. Alpha males, tight abs, smoldering looks, happily-ever-afters. But no one had ever really compared to Ambrose Young. Not in fiction or in real life.
To Fern, Ambrose Young was absolutely beautiful, a Greek God among mortals, the stuff of fairy tales and movie screens. Unlike the other boys, he wore his dark hair in waves that brushed his shoulders, occasionally sweeping it back so it wouldn't fall into his heavily-lashed brown eyes. The squared-off edge of his sculpted jaw kept him from being too pretty, that and the fact he was six foot three in his socks, weighed a strapping 215 pounds by the age of eighteen, and had a body corded with muscle from his shoulders to his well-shaped calves.
Rumor was that Ambrose's mother, Lily Grafton, had tangled with an Italian underwear model in New York City during her quest to find fame. She became quickly untangled when he discovered she was carrying his child. Jilted and pregnant, she limped home and was swept up in the comforting arms of her old friend, Elliott Young, who gladly married her and welcomed her baby boy six months later. The town paid special attention to the handsome baby boy as he grew, especially when diminutive, blond, Elliott Young ended up having a brawny son with dark hair and eyes and a build worthy of, well, an underwear model. Fourteen years later, when Lily left Elliott Young and moved to New York, no one wa
s surprised that Lily was going back to find Ambrose's real father. The surprise came when fourteen-year-old Ambrose remained in Hannah Lake with Elliott.
By that time, Ambrose was already a fixture in the small town, and people speculated that was the reason he stayed. He could throw a javelin like a mythical warrior and barrel through opponents on the football field like they were made of paper. He pitched his little league team to a district championship and could slam dunk a basketball by the time he was fifteen. All of these things were notable, but in Hannah Lake, Pennsylvania, where the town closed their businesses for local duels and followed the state rankings like winning lottery numbers, where wrestling was an obsession that rivaled football in Texas, it was Ambrose Young's ability on the mat that made him a celebrity.
The crowd went instantly quiet as Ambrose took the microphone, waiting for what was sure to be a highly entertaining massacre of the anthem. Ambrose was known for his strength, his good looks, and his athletic prowess, but nobody had ever heard him sing. The silence was saturated with giddy expectation. Ambrose pushed his hair back and then shoved his hand in his pocket as if he was uncomfortable. Then he fixed his eyes on the flag and began to sing.
“Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light . . .” Again, there was an audible gasp from the audience. Not because it was bad, but because it was wonderful. Ambrose Young had a voice fitting of the package it was encased in. It was smooth and deep and impossibly rich. If dark chocolate could sing it would sound like Ambrose Young. Fern shivered as his voice wrapped around her like an anchor, lodging deep in her belly, pulling her under. She found her eyes closing behind her thick glasses, and she let the sound wash over her. It was incredible.
“O'er the land of the free . . .” Ambrose's voice reached the summit, and Fern felt like she had climbed Everest, breathless and ebullient and triumphant. “And the home of the brave!” The crowd roared around her, but Fern was still hanging on that final note.
“Fern!” Rita's voice rang out. She shoved at Fern's leg. Fern ignored her. Fern was having a moment. A moment with, in her opinion, the most beautiful voice on the planet.
“Fern's having her first orgasm.” One of Rita's girlfriends snickered. Fern's eyes shot open to see Rita, Bailey, and Cindy Miller looking at her with big grins on their faces. Fortunately, the applause and the cheers prevented the people around them from hearing Cindy's humiliating assessment.
Small and pale, with bright red hair and forgettable features, Fern knew she was the kind of girl who was easily overlooked, easily ignored, and never dreamed about. She had floated through childhood without drama and with little fanfare, grounded in a perfect awareness of her own mediocrity.
Like Zacharias and Elizabeth, parents of the biblical John the Baptist, Fern's parents were far beyond their child-bearing years when they suddenly found themselves in a family way. Fifty-year-old Joshua Taylor, popular pastor in the small town of Hannah Lake, was struck dumb when his wife of fifteen years tearfully told him she was going to have a baby. His jaw hit the floor, his hands shook, and if it hadn't been for the serene joy stamped on his forty-five-year-old wife, Rachel's face, he might have thought she was pulling a prank for the first time in her life. Fern was born seven months later, an unexpected miracle, and the whole town celebrated with the well-loved couple. Fern found it ironic that she was once considered a miracle since her life had been anything but miraculous.
Fern pulled off her glasses and began shining them on the hem of her T-shirt, effectively blinding herself to the amused faces around her. Let them laugh. Because the truth of the matter was, she felt euphoric and dizzy all at once, the way she sometimes felt after a particularly satisfying love scene in a favorite novel. Fern Taylor loved Ambrose Young, had loved him since she was ten years old and had heard his young voice lifted in a very different kind of song, but in that moment he reached a whole new level of beauty, and Fern was left reeling and dazed that one boy could be gifted with so much.
August, 1994
Fern walked over to Bailey’s house, bored, having finished every single book she'd checked out from the library the week before. She found Bailey sitting like a statue on the cement steps that led to his front door, eyes trained on something on the sidewalk in front of him. He was pulled from his reverie only when Fern's foot narrowly missed the object of his fascination. He yelped and Fern squealed when she saw the enormous brown spider just inches from her feet.
The spider continued on its way, slowly traversing the long stretch of concrete. Bailey said he had been tracking it for half an hour, never getting too close, because after all, it was a spider, and it was gross. It was the biggest spider Fern had ever seen. Its body was the size of a nickel, but with its gangly legs it was easily as big as a fifty-cent piece, and Bailey seemed awestruck by it. After all, he was a boy, and it was gross.
Fern sat beside him, watching the spider take his time crossing Bailey's front walk. The spider meandered like an old man on a stroll, unhurried, unafraid, with no apparent goal in mind, a seasoned citizen with long, spindly limbs, carefully unfolding each leg every time he took a step. They watched him, entranced by his terrifying beauty. The thought took Fern by surprise. He was beautiful even though he frightened her.
“He's cool,” she marveled.
“Duh! He's awesome,” Bailey said, his eyes never wavering. “I wish I had eight legs. I wonder why Spiderman didn't get eight legs when he got bit by that radioactive spider. It gave him great eyesight and strength and the ability to make webs. Why not extra legs? Hey! Maybe spider venom heals muscular dystrophy, and if I let that guy bite me I’ll get big and strong,” Bailey wondered, scratching his chin like he was actually considering it.
“Hmm. I wouldn't risk it.” Fern shuddered. They became entranced once more, and neither of them noticed the boy riding down the sidewalk on his bike.
The boy saw Bailey and Fern sitting so still, so silent, and his interest was immediately piqued. He stepped off his bike and laid it on the grass, following their gazes to where a huge brown spider crept along the walkway in front of the house. The boy's mother was petrified of spiders. She always made him kill them immediately. He'd killed so many he wasn't even afraid of them anymore. Maybe Bailey and Fern were afraid. Maybe they were scared to death, so scared they couldn't even move. He could help them. He ran up the sidewalk and smashed the spider beneath his big white sneaker. There.
Two pairs of horrified eyes shot to his.
“Ambrose!” Bailey shouted, horrified.
“You killed him!” Fern whispered, shocked.
“You killed him!” Bailey roared, pushing up to his feet and stumbling down the sidewalk. He looked at the brown mess that had occupied the last hour of his life.
“I needed his venom!” Bailey was still caught up in his own imaginings of spider cures and superheroes. Then Bailey surprised them all by bursting into tears.
Ambrose gaped at Bailey, and then watched as Bailey walked on unsteady legs up the steps and into his house, slamming the door behind him. Ambrose closed his mouth and shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts.
“I'm sorry,” he said to Fern. “I thought . . . I thought you were scared. You were both just sitting there staring at it. I'm not scared of spiders. I was just trying to help.”
“Should we bury him?” Fern asked, her eyes mournful behind her big glasses.
“Bury him?” Ambrose asked, stunned. “Was he a pet?”
“No. We just met,” Fern said seriously. “But maybe it will make Bailey feel better.”
“Why is he so sad?”
“Because the spider is dead.”
“So?” Ambrose wasn't trying to be a jerk. He just didn't understand. And the little red head with the crazy, curly hair was kind of freaking him out. He'd seen her before at school and knew her name. But he didn't know her. He wondered if she was special. His dad said he had to be nice to kids who were special, because they couldn't help the way they were.
“Bailey ha
s a disease. It makes his muscles weak. It might kill him. He doesn't like it when things die. It's hard for him,” Fern said simply, honestly. She actually sounded kinda smart. Suddenly, the events at the wrestling camp earlier that summer made sense to Ambrose. Bailey wasn't supposed to wrestle because he had a disease. Ambrose felt bad all over again.
Ambrose sat down beside Fern. “I'll help you bury him.”
Fern was up and running across the grass to her own house before the words had left his mouth. “I have a perfect little box! See if you can scrape him off the sidewalk,” she shouted over her shoulder.
Ambrose used a piece of bark from the Sheen's flowerbed to scoop up the spider's remains. Fern was back in thirty seconds. She held the white ring box open as Ambrose deposited the spider guts onto the pristine cotton. Fern put the lid on and gestured to him solemnly. He followed her to her back yard and together they scooped out handfuls of dirt from a corner of the garden.
“That should be big enough,” Ambrose said, taking the box out of Fern's hand and placing it the hole. They stared at the white box.
“Should we sing?” Fern asked.
“I only know one spider song.”
“Itsy Bitsy?”
“Yeah.”
“I know that one, too.” Together Fern and Ambrose sang the song about the spider getting washed down the waterspout and getting a second chance to climb when the sun came out again.
When the song was over, Fern put her hand in Ambrose's. “We should say a little prayer. My dad is a pastor. I know how, so I'll say it.”
Ambrose felt strange holding Fern's hand. It was moist and dirty from digging the grave and it was very small. But before he could protest, she was speaking, her eyes scrunched closed, her face screwed up in concentration.
“Father in Heaven, we're grateful for everything you have created. We loved watching this spider. He was cool and made us happy for a minute before Ambrose squished him. Thank you for making even ugly things beautiful. Amen.”