Ambrose was still imposing, tall and straight, and his wide shoulders and long arms were still corded with muscles. But he was leaner, even leaner than he'd been during wrestling season, when the boys were so lean their cheeks were hollow and their eyes sunken in their faces. He'd been running the night Fern had first seen him. She wondered briefly if he was trying to get back in shape, and if so . . . why? Fern didn't love exercise, so it was hard to imagine him running for the joy of it, although she was sure that was a possibility. Her idea of exercise was to turn on the radio and dance around her room, shaking her little body until she worked up a good sweat. It had served her well enough. She definitely wasn't fat.
Fern wished she dared approach him, dared talk to him. But she didn't know how. Didn't know if he would want her to, so she stayed hidden for several moments more before she made her way to the exit and headed for home.
A small whiteboard was mounted just outside the bakery door in the hallway that led to Mr. Morgan's office and the employee break-room. It had been there forever, and it had never had anything written on it, as far as Fern could tell. Maybe Elliott Young had thought it would make a good place to write schedules or reminders, but he’d never gotten around to it. Fern decided it would be perfect. She wouldn't be able to put anything too suggestive there . . . but suggestive wasn't really her style, after all. If she wrote on the board at about eight o'clock, after the bakery was officially closed for the night and before Ambrose arrived to start his preparations in the kitchen, he would be the only one to see what was written on the board. And he could erase it if he didn't want anyone else to see it.
The key was to write something that would make him smile–something that he would know was meant for him–without cluing anyone else in and without making herself feel like an idiot. She struggled with the words for two days. Everything from “Hi. Glad you're back!” to “I couldn’t care less if your face isn't perfect, I still want to have your babies.” Neither seemed quite right. And then she knew what she would do.
In big black letters she wrote KITES OR BALLOONS across the whiteboard, and she taped a red balloon, his favorite color, to the side. He would know it was Fern. Once upon a time, they had asked each other a million questions just like this. In fact, Ambrose had been the first to ask this particular question. Kites or Balloons? Fern had said kites because if she were a kite she could fly, but someone would always be holding onto her. Ambrose had said balloons: “I like the idea of flying away and letting the wind take me. I don't think I want anyone holding onto me.” Fern wondered if his response would be the same now as it had been then.
When Ambrose had discovered she was writing the letters instead of Rita, and the correspondence had come to a screeching halt, Fern had missed questions like these the very most. In his responses, sometimes with only a word or a funny one-liner, she had started to know Ambrose and had begun to reveal herself as well. And she had revealed Fern, not Rita.
Fern watched the white board for two days, but the words stayed there, unacknowledged, unanswered. So she erased them and tried again. SHAKESPEARE OR EMINEM, she wrote. He had to remember that one. Back then, she thought for sure he would share her secret fascination with the rhyming ability of the white rapper. Ambrose's response had been, surprisingly, Shakespeare. Ambrose had then sent her some of Shakespeare's sonnets, and told her Shakespeare would have been an incredible rapper. She had also discovered that Ambrose was much more than a pretty face. He was a jock with a poet's soul, and the heroes in Fern's novels had nothing on him. Nothing.
The following day the whiteboard also had nothing on it. Nothing. Strike two. Time to get a little more blunt. She erased SHAKESPEARE OR EMINEM and wrote HIDE OR SEEK? He'd been the one to ask that one the first time around. And she had circled seek . . . because wasn't that what she had been doing? Seeking him out, discovering him?
Fern wondered if she should pick a different either/or, since he was so obviously hiding. But maybe it would provoke a response. When she arrived at three the next afternoon she glanced at the board as she walked by, not hoping for much, and came to a screeching halt. Ambrose had erased her question and written one of his own.
DEAF OR BLIND?
This was a question she had asked him before. At the time, he had chosen deaf. She had agreed, but had listed all her favorite songs in response, indicating what she would have to give up in exchange for her eyesight. Her list of songs had prompted questions about country or classical, rock or pop, show tunes or a bullet to the brain. Ambrose had claimed he would rather take the bullet, which inspired a slew of either/or questions about ways to die. Fern didn't think she would be using any of those questions in the present situation.
She circled DEAF, just as she had back then. The next day when she checked the board Ambrose had circled both words. Both deaf and blind. She had wondered about his right eye, now she knew. Was he deaf in his right ear as well as blind in his right eye? She knew he wasn't deaf in both ears because of their brief conversation the night she almost hit him on her bike. Below the circled words there was a new question. He'd written, LEFT OR RIGHT?
This wasn't one they had asked before, and Fern had a sneaking suspicion Ambrose was referring to his face. Left side or right? She responded by circling both left and right, just as he had done with deaf or blind.
The next day everything was erased.
Two days went by and Fern decided on a new tactic. She wrote in careful letters:
“Love is not love
Which alters when alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”
Shakespeare. Ambrose would know why she wrote it. It was one of the sonnets he had said was his favorite. Let him make of it what he would. He might groan and roll his eyes, worried that she would follow him around with her tongue hanging out, but maybe he would understand what she was trying to say. The people who cared about him still cared about him, and their love or affection wouldn't change just because his appearance had. It might just bring him comfort to know that some things stayed the same.
Fern left her shift that night without seeing him, closing the store without a glimpse. When she arrived the next day the board had been wiped clean. Embarrassment rose in her chest but she tamped it down. This wasn't about her. At least Ambrose knew somebody cared. So she tried again, continuing with Sonnet 116, which had also been her favorite since Lady Jezabel had included it in a letter to Caption Jack Cavendish in one of Fern's first novels, Lady and the Pirate. She used a red marker this time, writing the words in her best cursive.
Love's not Time's fool,
Though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
“THEY DO NOT LOVE THAT DO NOT SHOW THEIR LOVE” - Hamlet was scrolled across the whiteboard in block letters the following afternoon.
Fern pondered that one all day. Obviously, Ambrose hadn't felt welcomed home with outstretched arms. She wondered why. People had wanted to throw him a parade, hadn't they? And Coach Sheen and Bailey had gone to see him and been turned away. Maybe people wanted to see him . . . but maybe they were afraid. Or maybe it hurt too much. The town had been rocked. Ambrose hadn't seen the devastation after the news had hit Hannah Lake. A writhing tornado had whipped its way up and down the streets, leaving families and friends leveled. Maybe no one had been with him in his darkest hours because they were stumbling around in their own.
Fern spent her half-hour dinner break finding a suitable response. Was he talking about her? Surely he hadn't wanted to see her. The possibility that he might be referring to her gave her the courage to be bold in her reply. He could doubt the town, but he wouldn't be able to claim that she didn't care. It was a little over the top, but it was Shakespeare.
“Doubt thou
the stars are fire,
Doubt the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love.”
And his response?
“DO YOU THINK I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A PIPE?”
“Shakespeare didn't say that.” Fern scowled, talking to herself and staring at the flippant response. But when she typed the quote into the search engine, she found he had. The quote was from Hamlet again. Big surprise. This wasn't quite what she’d had in mind when she'd started writing messages. Not at all. Squaring her shoulders she tried again. And she hoped he would understand.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
She watched for him that night, wondering if he would respond right away. She checked the board before she left for the night. He'd responded all right.
NAIVE OR STUPID?
Fern felt the tears flood her eyes and spill out onto her cheeks. With a straight back and chin held high she walked to her register, picked up her purse from beneath the counter and walked out of the store. He might be hiding but she was through seeking Ambrose Young.
Ambrose watched Fern go, and he felt like an asshole. He'd made her cry. Awesome. She was trying to be nice. He knew that. But he didn't want nice. He didn't want to be encouraged and he sure as hell didn't want to keep finding Shakespeare quotes to write on that damn whiteboard. Better that he run her off right away. Period.
He scratched at his cheek. The shrapnel still buried in his skin drove him crazy. It itched, and he could feel the pieces working their way out. The doctors told him some of the shrapnel, the pieces buried deep in his right arm and shoulder and some of the pieces in his skull would probably never work themselves out. He wouldn't be going through any metal detectors without setting them clanging. That was fine, but the shrapnel in his face, the pieces that he could feel, they bothered him, and he had a hard time not touching them.
His thoughts flew back to Fern. He worried that if he let her get too close he might have a hard time not touching her, too. And he was pretty sure she didn't want that. He had started back at the bakery full-time a month ago. He'd been working a few hours in the early morning with his dad for longer than that, but it had only been a month since he had completely taken over the night shift, the most important shift for the bakery. He made pies, cakes, cookies, donuts, rolls, and bread. His dad had taught him well over the years, and it was work he knew how to do. The work was comforting and quiet–safe. His dad would do the cake decorating and the specialty orders when he came in at four and they would work together for an hour or two before the bakery opened. Ambrose would slip out when it was still dark and head home without being seen, just the way he liked it.
For a long time, no one had known he was working at the bakery again. But Fern closed the store five nights a week, and for an hour or two after he came into work most nights, Ambrose and Fern were alone in the store. There was the random customer coming for a last-minute gallon of milk or a late-night grocery run, but from about nine to eleven it was quiet and slow. Before long, Fern had seen him in the kitchen, though he had tried to stay out of sight.
He'd been watching her long before she'd realized he was there. She was a quiet girl; her hair was the loudest thing about her, a fiery, riotous crown on an otherwise demure face. She had let it grow since he'd seen her last and it hung in long curls halfway down her back. And she no longer wore glasses. The long hair and the missing glasses had thrown him that night, the night he'd made her crash her bike. And of course he'd been trying not to look directly at her so she wouldn't look directly at him.
Her eyes were a deep, soft brown and a sprinkling of freckles speckled her small nose. Her mouth was slightly disproportionate to the rest of her face. In high school, when she wore braces, her top lip had looked almost comical, like a duck bill stretched over her protruding teeth. Now her mouth was almost sensual, her teeth straight and white, her smile wide and unpretentious. She was quietly lovely, unassumingly pretty, completely unaware that at some point between awkwardness and adulthood she had grown so appealing. And because she was unaware, she became more appealing still.
Ambrose had watched her, night after night, positioning himself where he could gaze at her unobtrusively. And he wondered more than once how he could have so easily dismissed her before. Moments like these made him long for the face that he used to see when he looked in the mirror, a face that he'd taken for granted. A face that had smoothed his way more than once with a pretty girl that caught his eye. It was a face that would surely attract her to him, the way she'd been attracted to him before. But it was a face he would never have again, and he found he was lost without it. So he just watched.
She always had a paperback tucked to the side of the cash register, and she would pull her long curls around her left shoulder, twining them around her fingers as she read, the lateness of the hour making shoppers few and far between, giving her long stretches where she manned her register with little to do but flip pages and twirl her red locks.
Now she was writing him notes using word games and Shakespeare, just like she'd done senior year, posing as Rita. He had been so angry when he'd found out. But then she'd been so sweet and so obviously sorry when she'd offered her apology. It hadn't been difficult to see she had a huge crush on him. It's hard to stay angry with someone who loves you. And now she was at it again. But he didn't think for a minute that she actually liked him. She still liked the old Ambrose. Had she even looked at him? Really looked at him? It had been dark the night she practically ran over him on her bike. She’d gasped when she saw his face. He’d heard her, loud and clear. So what was she up to now? Thinking about it just made him angry all over again. But before the night was out he was back to feeling like a jerk. So he walked to the white board and scribbled the words.
Asshole or Jerk?
He thought his dad might object to the word 'asshole' being written on the bakery whiteboard, but didn't think any other word would do. Shakespeare wasn't going to cut it this time around. Plus, he had no idea if Shakespeare's characters ever begged for forgiveness from pretty redheads with hearts that were too soft for their own good. He went home in a sour mood that soured his stomach and made the maple bars he'd eaten feel like rocks in his gut. When he arrived at work at ten o'clock the following night the board had been wiped clean and no new message had been added. Good. He was relieved. Kind of.
Ambrose sneaked little peeks through the opening that separated the bakery display cases and front counter from the working part of the kitchen, trying to catch a glimpse of Fern, wondering if she had finally decided he wasn't worth her time. She had already been gone by the time he arrived at work the last few nights. He had started coming in earlier and earlier so he could see her–even from behind the bakery window–before she left work for the night. He made excuses to Elliott about things that needed to be done at the bakery, but his dad never questioned it. He was probably glad to see Ambrose out of the house and out of his childhood room, although he would never say so. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.
His psychologist, the one the army made sure he had, told Ambrose that he needed to learn to adjust to his “new reality,” to “come to terms with what had happened to him,” to “find new pursuits and associations.” The job was a start. Ambrose hated to admit that it was actually helping, and he’d been running and lifting weights too. Exercise was the only thing that made him feel something besides despair. So he exercised a lot. Ambrose wondered suddenly if spying would qualify as a “new pursuit.”
He felt like a creep, spying on Fern, but he spied anyway. Tonight, Fern was sweeping the floor singing along with “The Wind Beneath my Wings,” using the broom handle as a microphone. He hated the song, but he found himself smiling as he watched her swaying back and forth, singing in a slightly off-key but not-unpleasant soprano. She moved her pile of dirt until she was directly in front of the bakery coun
ter. She saw him standing in full view and stopped, staring back at him as the last words rang through the empty store. She smiled tentatively, as if he hadn't made her cry just a few nights before, and Ambrose felt the newly acquired fight or flight reaction that flooded him anytime someone looked directly at him.
Fern had turned up the music that trickled out of the store's sound system until it felt more like a skating rink than a grocery store. The tunes were a benign mix of soft hits designed to put shoppers in a coma as they perused the aisles for items they could probably do without. Ambrose suddenly longed for a little Def Leppard, complete with full-throated wailing and high-powered choruses.
Suddenly, Fern dropped the broom and ran for the front doors. Ambrose stepped out from the kitchen, rounding the counter, slightly alarmed that something was wrong. Fern was unlocking the sliding doors and pushing one aside to allow Bailey Sheen to roll through in his wheelchair. Then she pulled it back and relocked it, chattering with Bailey as she did.
Ambrose tried not to smile. Really he did. But Bailey was wearing a headlamp on his head, a giant one, with thick elastic bands that wrapped around his head like one of those old-fashioned retainers. It was the kind of headlamp he imagined miners would wear as they tunneled into the earth. It was so bright Ambrose winced, covering his good eye and turning away.