Making Faces (20 page)

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.