11
If you’re ever thinking about starting your own business, you should really check out Starting Your Own Business for Dummies. It was definitely the most useful book Josh gave me. He was the one who helped me at the library that day, not his mom. She’d been too busy trying to keep Zoe from ripping out some little girl’s pigtails. I hadn’t been there when the fight broke out, but Josh told me later that it started when this girl said all fairies were made up except for the Tooth Fairy, who was obviously real because she had a job and money.
The truth is, I hadn’t wanted to tell Josh about the doughnut business. So what if he loved Winnie’s doughnuts? Wouldn’t he think I was a weirdo for trying to build a business around something I’d never even tasted? Or maybe he’d think what Charlie and his dad did, that kids can’t start businesses at all, and that I was stupid to even try? But I needed those books, and I was sure he’d know how to find them. Besides, he’d find out eventually.
“Can I help?” he said the second I finished telling him about my project. “Not just with the research but with the actual business?”
I couldn’t believe it. Josh wanted in on the doughnut stand. I guess that’s what happens when you live someplace with so little entertainment. You’re willing to try anything. Since he wasn’t family, I said yes.
By the time my parents showed up at the library to take us home that day, Josh had found me a stack of books and flagged the ones he thought would be most useful. Starting Your Own Business for Dummies was on top.
“That doesn’t mean I think you’re stupid or anything, you know,” Josh said as he handed me the books.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, though I liked that he was the kind of person who’d check to make sure.
• • •
A few days later, I woke up and my window was frosted over with ice crystals. Outside, the grass was frozen stiff and crackled when you walked on it. Since it was only November, I figured it would warm up again, at least a little, but it never did. And before I knew it, the pond was frozen. Josh said we’d gotten “lucky” winter had come early because it meant a longer skating season. I told him that now when I biked to town, the cold made my nose run and then froze the snot to my face. I didn’t feel “lucky” that winter had come early, but I promised to give pond skating a try anyway.
I can now tell you from personal experience, Dad was wrong. Pond skating is almost as boring as regular skating. I say “almost” because the possibility that you might fall through the ice at any second does add a certain something. It didn’t matter that my parents had it tested. First of all, the guy who tested it wasn’t actually a professional ice tester. He was Jim the Kidnapper, also known as Jim, the carpenter my parents hired to work on the roof since Dad wasn’t allowed up there anymore. Second, there was no magic test. He just drilled a hole in the ice, stuck a stick down into it, pulled it out, and said, “Should be fine. But get off if you hear any cracking.”
I never would have risked my life just to skate around in circles, but it turns out skating is actually not at all boring if you can whack something across the ice with a stick at the same time.
When Josh first came over with his hockey stuff, I was the worst anyone has ever been at anything. I spent the whole day crawling around the ice, using my body to block the puck. But after only a week, I could skate and flick the puck with my stick at the same time, at least when I didn’t accidently skate right past it. It took me so long to stop and change direction, by the time I got back to where it had been, Josh had already whisked it off to the other side of the pond.
Josh was amazing, better than I was at basketball, better than anyone my age was at any sport, at least that I’d seen in real life. It was as if he’d been born on ice skates. He could run and spin and glide. He could dance, bits of ice spraying out from his blades with each new move. He zoomed backward and forward, dodging and weaving between invisible players charging at him for the puck.
Josh said I might be able to make the rec team if I could get my hockey stop and backward skating down. I was pretty sure rec was just a nice way of saying the worst, but I didn’t care as long as I’d get to play.
Zoe wanted to learn to skate, but she was too scared. Every time Josh and I went down to the pond, she’d put on her water wings, snowsuit, and skates and just sit in a pile of leaves at the edge of the pond throwing rocks onto the ice. It was Josh who finally got her to get on.
That day, he and I were doing this drill he’d taught me where you go back and forth across the pond skating as fast as you can, hockey stopping on each end, until you’re so tired you can’t move. I couldn’t go fast or stop fast, so it took me forever to get from one side to the other. It also took a lot of concentration since I was so bad I had to tell my legs and feet exactly what to do every second: push, push, straighten, turn, bend. I was so focused I
