This Is What Happy Looks Like(23)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“I’m getting a little nervous,” Graham joked as they made their way across the parking lot. “What if they don’t have them?”

“I doubt they will,” she said. “I keep telling you, they’re not a thing.”

“They are,” he said. “They’re the official state treat.”

“So you keep saying.”

Graham paused just outside the door. “Should we put some money on it?” he asked, but her expression changed, the smile slipping away, and he realized he’d said the wrong thing. “Or not money,” he said quickly. “But let’s make a bet.”

Her face relaxed again, much to Graham’s relief. He was reminded of an e-mail she’d sent him months ago, not long after they’d first started talking, about how she’d gotten into some kind of summer poetry course and wanted desperately to go.

So why don’t you? he’d written, but as soon as he’d hit send, he realized what the answer would be, and his face burned as he sat at his desk in the sprawling house, wishing he could take it back.

It wasn’t long before her response reached him.

I can’t afford it, she’d written. Isn’t that the worst reason you’ve ever heard? I’ve got to figure out a way to make it work, because I’d hate myself for missing it because of something as stupid as money.

She’d assumed he would understand, he realized, because he was seventeen, and what seventeen-year-old doesn’t have money problems? He could no longer remember exactly how he’d responded, and he wondered what had happened, if she’d figured out a way to pay for it. He hoped so.

It was a strange thing, attaching those floating conversations to the girl in front of him now, pinning so many collected details to the person like buttons on a shirt.

Ellie was still watching him with raised eyebrows. “What kind of bet?” she asked, and Graham thought for a moment.

“If they have whoopie pies in there, you have to have dinner with me tonight.”

“That’s not much of a consequence,” she said. “I was kind of thinking of making you do that anyway.”

Graham couldn’t help grinning. He found himself doing a mental tally of all the girls he’d dated over the past few years, the ones who sat by their phones waiting for him, the ones who pouted when he didn’t call. Even the girls who seemed normal when he first met them at the gym or the grocery store always ended up wearing too much makeup or impossibly high heels when they finally went out; they agreed with everything he said and laughed when he wasn’t being funny, and not one of them—not a single one—would have ever made so confident a declaration as Ellie just had.

For the first time in a while, he felt like himself again.

“Okay,” he said, giving her a stern look. “Then we should probably just pick the restaurant now, since there’s no way they won’t have whoopie pies in there. Unless, of course, we’re no longer in Maine. I wouldn’t be surprised if you just made me walk all the way to Canada…”

“We’re only one town away,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And you haven’t won yet.” They were standing just outside the entrance now, the sweet smell of chocolate drifting through the screen door. “If they don’t have whoopie pies in there…”

“Which they will,” he chimed in.

She shook her head as she paused to think; her mouth was twisted in concentration.

“If they don’t,” she said eventually, “then you have to make me one of your drawings.”

He couldn’t hide the look of surprise on his face. For a moment, it felt as if she’d seen right through him. Graham was always careful about discussing things like this in public, and though his drawings were hardly anything at all—they were just doodles, really, sketches of skylines—it still was a piece of himself that he kept close.

He’d forgotten that he told her about them: a late-night e-mail sent after some premiere party, when he’d sat alone in his room in the big, empty house and written to this girl across the country about how his pencil moved as if on its own. He’d told her that it was an escape, this type of art, the best kind of travel. He’d told her it made him happy.

How could he have forgotten that the person he was writing to all those months was the same one standing before him now?

It took him another moment to find his voice. “Deal,” he said finally, and her face broke into a smile.

“Great,” she said, pushing open the door. “Hope you brought a pencil.”

Inside, the place was at least twice the size of the shop back in Henley, lined with colorful bins of candy and giant lollipops. There were buckets of saltwater taffy, bins full of jelly beans, and a glass case with more than a dozen different kinds of fudge. Graham was eyeing a display of vintage candy when he realized Ellie was watching him. When he caught her eye, she jerked her head toward the cashier, and he wandered over obediently.

He’d forgotten his baseball cap—the thinnest of disguises, but still a kind of shield against recognition—and when he stepped up to the counter, the woman reacted as if she were following a script: a bored glance up, a look away, and then a sudden realization. It was all there: the double take, the widened eyes, the open mouth. At this point, it usually went one of two ways: there were those who cried out, who jumped around and screamed and pointed, and there were those who tamped down all of their instincts to make a scene and simply went about their usual business with shaky voices and trembling hands, waiting until after he’d left to pick up their phone and call everyone they know.

To Graham’s relief, this woman fell into the second category. She gaped for only a moment before lowering her eyes, as if afraid to look at him.

“I was just wondering,” he began as she worked to compose herself, to keep her face carefully neutral, “whether you might have whoopie pies here?”

“Whoopie pies?” she asked, already looking apologetic. “I don’t think we do.”

She began to glance desperately around the shop, as if they might suddenly materialize on one of the shelves, and Graham could almost feel how badly she wanted to come through for him. He was about to wave it away and buy something else when Ellie stepped up beside him.

“Can I ask you one more question?” she said. “Just for research purposes?”

The woman nodded, chewing her lip.

“Have you ever even heard of a whoopie pie?”