Davidson, Mary Janice - Dying For Ice Cream

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2024-12-18 0 0 171.53KB 75 页 5.9玖币
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Austin Opitz never meant to fall for Yvonne Robinson. The
girl was rich and spoiled, a lethal combination. But when he
saw her sobbing in the hospital cafeteria with a plate of ice
cream melting in front of her, he couldn't walk away.
So begins a strange friendship between two opposites:
Yvonne, a recently diagnosed diabetic bitter about the
mandatory change in her lifestyle; and jokester Austin Opitz,
who covers up his own recent tragedy by playing class clown.
This is a story about teenagers getting a taste of life's ups and
downs, and how they cope, despite tremendous odds.
Dying for Ice Creamis a work of fiction. Names, characters
and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 1-58124-203-4
Young Adult Romance
Copyright 1999
by MaryJanice Davidson
Cover by April More
Electronic version
published 1999
DYING FOR ICE CREAM
By MaryJanice Davidson
Chapter One
Austin knew he shouldn't have set his alarm the night before.
If he hadn't set the alarm, it wouldn't have gone off. If it hadn't
gone off, he wouldn't have gone to school. If he hadn't gone
to school, he wouldn't have flunked his grammar test. If he
hadn't flunked his test, he wouldn't have stayed after school to
sign up for tutoring. If he hadn't signed up for tutoring, he
wouldn't have gotten stuck with Robert Langenfeld. If he
hadn't gotten stuck with Robert Langenfeld, he wouldn't have
had to take the grammar geek to the hospital.
And, finally, he wouldn't be standing in front of the nurse's
desk in the ER, waiting to find out how Geekboy was doing,
wondering if he was going to make it home before midnight,
and more than a little nervous about all the people around him
who were bleeding, crying, or, for a chance of pace, bleeding
and crying.
So he shifted from one foot to another and glanced over his
shoulder more than once and cleared his throat for the second
time to get the nurse's attention. Like every adult who had a
kid standing in front of her, she took her sweet time noticing
him. Finally, she quit pretending to study the chart in front of
her and looked up.
"Yes?"
"Is my tutor all right?" he asked.
She frowned. Her name badge read, "Chris Anderson." On
the opposite shoulder she was wearing a button that read,
"Want to save a life? Ask me how!" He couldn't begin to
imagine what the button was pitching, and wasn't about to
ask.
Since she still hadn't answered him, he repeated his question,
slightly louder. "My tutor? I brought him in a couple hours
ago?"
"I'm sorry, it's been a crazy—what's he look like? Your
teacher?"
Teacher! Ha, that was a good one. But Austin answered her
readily. "Short. Up to my chin, maybe. Couple years younger
than me. Glasses. Big ears. One blue eye, one brown.
Freckles." Austin paused, thinking. "He was carrying a big
calculator when I brought him in—he wouldn't let you guys
take it."
The nurse's eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh, yeah! For
someone with a concussion, he sure held onto that thing. I
thought we were going to have to put him in restraints."
The thought of poor little Robert Langenfeld clapped in
restraints, helpless to prevent various medical personnel from
relieving him of his beloved Texas Instruments Calculator
3000, made Austin cringe.
"You're going to have to fill out some forms," the nurse
continued. "What happened to him?"
Austin sighed. "During our tutoring session, he tripped over
his shoelace and fell down two flights of stairs."
The nurse's eyebrows—the exact thickness and length of
brown caterpillars—arched. "He was tutoring you in a
stairwell?"
"He was trying. I was trying to get away from him. Hey, I
don't learn on my own time, okay?" At the nurse's frown, he
added, "And don't look at me like that, I feel bad enough."
"Sorry," she replied, sounding anything but. "Your tutor's
going to be here for a while, they're running some tests. You'll
have to wait. Might as well fill out these forms while you're
waiting." She handed him a truly intimidating stack of papers.
He tucked them under his arm and swallowed a sigh. There
were few things he hated more than waiting. One of them was
filling out forms. On the other hand, he sort of had this
coming. "Where's the cafeteria?"
The nurse gave him directions, and Austin went to find some
chocolate milk. He took his time. After the cafeteria, he
would have to find a phone and call his father. While his dad
was a reasonable man, he'd insist on hearing the whole story,
and Austin wanted to keep the news of his impending F in
English to himself as long as possible.
Also, it was very important to get the heck away from that
waiting room. The noise was bad enough, but he felt like a
bugturd because Langenfeld was hurt. Maybe he should have
tried harder to catch the kid, rather than concentrating on
getting the hell out of the way of the falling body.
It's not like he couldn't have caught him. Langenfeld was
clumsy and tripped over something on a daily basis—usually
more than once—but Austin had the reflexes of a cat. Not
just an ordinary house cat, either.
"Hey, kid, watch out for my cart!"
He felt a double-thud and then a dull pain in his left foot. He
looked down, surprised to see a meds cart, pushed by a
candy striper, had just rolled over his foot.
"Sorry."
Now where was he? Right, right, reflexes like a cat. One of
those big jungle cats, like the kind they showed on the
Discovery Channel. And he didn't just have good reflexes, he
had a knack of knowing something was going to happen—
Dull pain in his nose; he stepped back, observing the elevator
door closing faster than he had anticipated. Beside him, a
robed patient about to step in the elevator looked at him with
concern.
"That looked like it hurt. You okay?"
"Fine, I'm fine," he replied absently, and he was, because he
had the knack of knowing something was going to happen
seconds before it actually did.
So, basically, he had no excuse for not leaping nimbly down
the stairwell and saving Langenfeld. There's he'd been,
practically sprinting down the stairs to get away from the kid,
ignoring Langenfeld's shrieked, "You flunked the quiz because
you didn't know what a preposition was! I can help you!"
Then, just as Austin was clawing for the doorknob: "Gerunds
can be your frien—aaiiiggghh!" Then a series of thuds.
Austin shivered, banishing the memory. Langenfeld had
seemed okay, if a little dazed, but there was blood all over the
place from where the kid had banged his head, and Austin
had driven him to the ER, just to be safe. He'd have to do
something extra nice for the kid to make up for it, too. Take
him to a basketball game. Polish his calculator. Pass a
grammar test. Something.
These dark thoughts brought him to the cafeteria. It was
close to empty this time of day, which was why he noticed the
girl right away. She was about his age, maybe a little younger,
and really pretty. Gorgeous, in fact. Long red hair and skin
the color of a vanilla milkshake. He couldn't see her eyes from
here, but was sure they'd be green. She was the prettiest girl
he'd seen out-side of the movies. One look at her, and poor
Robert Langenfeld vanished from his thoughts.
She was sitting at one of the tables, looking at a big bowl of
ice cream and crying. And she wasn't eating the ice cream,
just staring at it and sobbing like someone had knifed her
puppy.
Austin moved past her, toward the dairy case. He could still
hear her crying softly. He looked around but there were only
two other people in the cafeteria, and neither of them was
paying attention. One of them, in fact, was asleep. If anyone
was going to say anything to her, it would have to be him.
"Never mind, dude," he muttered under his breath. "None of
your business."
Excellent advice. He'd gotten into enough trouble today,
thanks very much. The girl—whoever she was—looked old
enough to take care of herself. For all he knew, she was
boo-hooing over a Friends re-run. Whatever the problem, it
was none of his business.
Nope. None.
He gave up looking for chocolate milk and decided to just
find a water fountain. Anything to get away from that soft,
steady crying.
"Okayyyyy. . . we're just gonna walk out of here. Right past
the girl and out the door. Let's go. And while we're at it,
we're going to stop talking to ourselves."
While he was muttering to himself he was moving past the
girl's table. He glanced back only once—but like Lot's wife,
one look back was his undoing. She just looked so. . . pretty
and pitiful. It broke his heart a little. It wasn't much fun to see
someone in obvious pain. Especially since he'd had more than
his fair share of pain this past year.
But he wasn't going to think about that.
When he got closer, he saw he'd been wrong about her eyes.
They weren't green. They were an amazing shade of blue, like
the sky on a cloudless day.
What was wrong with him? 'Like the sky on a cloudless
day'? You'd think he'd been the one to take a blow to the
head, not Langenfeld. Disgusted, he tried to notice something
besides her fine looks, and noted the ice cream in front of her
was chocolate.
"Um. . . hi. Are you—this is going to sound stupid, but are
you all right?"
"Fine."
The girl didn't stop crying. Her ice cream was melting, and as
if that had special meaning, the girl suddenly picked up her
spoon and shoved it into the gluey mass.
He tried again. "Do you want a napkin or something?"
"No. Go away."
She was gripping the spoon so hard her knuckles were
white. With a mental sigh, Austin pulled back a chair and sat
down.
"Most days I'd do that. Go away—I mean, we don't even
know each other, and I just had the day from hell and I'm
tired and my dad's probably worried about me and my foot
hurts from where the pill cart ran over it. You seem like you
need some help. Do you want me to call a doctor?"
Her gaze flew to his face, her blue eyes wide with alarm.
"No! God, no. The last thing I need is another doctor." She
sniffed pitifully. "Just go away and let me die in peace."
He grinned at her melodrama. "You look pretty healthy."
"Well, I'm not, okay?" she snapped. "I've got diabetes. And
I've got news for you, I'm not putting up with it. Forget it."
She brought up a big drippy spoonful of ice cream, opened
her mouth wide, then paused long enough to glare at him.
"Are you just going to sit there and stare at me?"
"I'm trying to remember my notes from health class," he said
mildly. "Is diabetes the one where you poop uncontrollably,
or when you can't have sugar?"
The girl stared at him for a long moment, then burst out
laughing. He breathed a silent sigh of relief.
"It's the one where you can't have sugar, you idiot."
Funny, how she made "idiot" sound almost like "darling".
"I always get those two mixed up," he admitted. "So if you
can't have sugar—"
"Ever."
"Right. If you can't have any, why are you sitting there with a
bowl of ice cream the size of your head?"
"It's none of your business, really."
He folded his arms across his chest and hummed at the
ceiling. His very pose told her he had nothing better to do
than wait for an answer. She made an exasperated sound and
said, "I told you. I'm not putting up with it. I'm not cutting out
sugar and watching my diet and going to the doctor every
other damn day and sticking needles into my thigh three times
a day, no way. No."
She brought a great, gloppy spoonful to her mouth.
"Wait!"
She waited.
"Um. . . I'm a little slow today, but. . . what's the alternative?
To taking care of yourself, I mean?"
She glared at him again. "Go away."
"Listen, if it's dangerous for you to have sugar, then don't eat
the stuff!" he said, exasperated.
"I told you," she ground out, "I'm not putting up with it."
He leaned across the table, spearing her with his gaze.
"Put—the spoon—down," he said. "And no one gets hurt.
Look, we can talk about this. What do you want? Money? A
getaway car? There's no need to take a hostage. Especially
when it's your own body."
She had started to smile at him, then looked outraged. "Don't
make fun of me!"
"I'm not," he assured her. "I'm trying like hell to lighten the
mood. I. . . don't!"
She brought the spoon to her mouth again. He knocked it out
of her hand, startling both of them. She obviously hadn't
expected that. And he hadn't been sure he was doing it until
his hand was in motion.
"Jeez, I'm really sorry," he said contritely, wondering if he
was going to burst into flames from the power of her glare. "I
don't know what came over me."
"Go away." Her teeth were gritted so tightly, he could barely
make out the words.
"I want to go away," he mourned. "I even tried. But I can't."
Defiantly, she grabbed the bowl and lifted it to her mouth.
Austin sprang into action. He couldn't save Langenfeld, the
poor geek. . . he would save her!
With that thought in mind, he jumped at her, knocking her to
the floor. The ice cream bowl crashed about four inches from
his head and splattered everywhere. The girl let out a shriek
and belted him with a small fist that felt like a rock. Pain
exploded above his left eyebrow.
"Ow!"
"Get off me!"
"Kill yourself on your own time, dammit! But don't do it in
front of me and then expect me to watch."
"I asked you to go!"
"Yeah, well, you didn't say the magic—owwwww!"
Another small fist flew, and there was another explosion in
his head. She was petite and delicate, but she had a left hook
like an undercover cop.
"Look, I don't want to hurt you," he groaned, clutching his
head where, he was sure, a large lump was rising.
She brought her knee up. Right where he wanted it least.
Pain exploded through his lower abdomen, and for one long
moment, he was afraid he was going to throw up on her
furious face.
He slowly rolled over, wanting to huddle on the cafeteria
floor, and she leaned over him. "I'm sorry," she said in a low
voice, biting her lip. "I didn't mean to get you that hard. But
you had it coming," she added.
"Ggghhhhhhhh," he said.
Abruptly, she was yanked off him. He slowly sat up, fighting
the urge to clutch his privates, and saw a hospital security
guard standing over them.
"Thank God you're here!" he groaned. "Another few punches
and I'd have been down for the count."
"What's going on, kids?" The guard was tall, very tall,
extremely tall. Austin decided the guard wouldn't be so big
once he stood up...then he realized he was standing. Hunched
over, but standing. The guard's left hand was bigger than
Austin's whole head. Hell, the guard's middle finger was
probably bigger than Austin's whole head. And the guard did
not look happy. "Tell me quick, or you can tell the folks down
at Juvie Hall."
"I'll tell you what's going on," the girl snapped. "This thug
attacked me! I was minding my own business, having a little
snack—"
"The hell!" he wheezed. "She's diabetic. She's not supposed
to eat any sugar. I was stopping her from being stupid."
"You couldn't stop a. . . a. . . stupid person from being
stupid."
"That's telling me," he mumbled.
"I've heard enough," the guard rumbled. Austin half expected
the floors to shake.
"Me, too," he added. "I. . . hey!"
He felt himself seized by the back of his neck like a naughty
kitten, and hauled toward the exit. His only comfort was that
the girl who had gotten him into this trouble was receiving the
same brisk treatment.
"You aren't supposed to touch us unless we're a danger to
ourselves or others!" she shrieked. "I know my rights!"
The guard didn't trouble himself to answer. Just escorted—to
put it mildly—the two of them to the nearest exit. He didn't
throw them out, just gave them both a firm shake, then set
them down on the sidewalk, stepped back, and disappeared
back inside the hospital.
They stared at the slowly closing door, then at each other.
"Well, great."
"What is your name?"
"That's just great," she fretted. "I didn't even want to be
there, and I went anyway, and I was just minding my own
business, when I was brutally attacked."
"What is your name?" he said again.
"What difference does that make?"
He waited, staring at her.
"Yvonne Robinson, if you must know. And I don't want to
know your name. You got me kicked out of the hospital!"
"I thought you were sick of seeing doctors all the time."
Yvonne opened her mouth to reply. . . then closed it and
looked surprised. Slowly, she smiled.
"You're right. I wouldn't have dared left on my own, but
getting thrown out—I suppose I owe you for that, if nothing
else."
"Good," he wheezed. "Help me across the street. You can
buy me a sundae. I'll eat it and you can enjoy it vicariously."
She laughed, the sound startling him and pleasing him at the
same time. "I will, too. But only because I didn't mean to get
you so hard."
"'Get' me?" he groaned. "You racked me like you grew up
with five brothers."
"It was a lucky shot," she admitted cheerfully. "I'm an only
child."
"Great," he grumbled.
Chapter Two
Afterward, he couldn't get the girl—Yvonne—out of his
mind. He should have. He should have forgotten her as
quickly as he'd forgotten poor Langenfeld, stuck in the ER
observation room without his calculator.
In the short few minutes he'd talked to her, he'd pegged her
as vain, snobby, and self-absorbed. Listening to her bitch
while he ate ice cream didn't change his opinion. He hadn't
even wanted the damned ice cream—but she'd acted so nice
after racking him in the privates, and watched so wistfully
while he ate it—he couldn't say no. Now he wished he had.
The good news—the only good news—was that he'd beaten
his dad home. So Dad didn't know a) that Austin had been to
the Emergency Room, b) that he was flunking English, or c)
that a girl half his size and weight had him on the floor trying
not to throw up.
So that was all right. Trouble was, if everything was as okay
as it could be, these days, why couldn't he stop thinking about
that redhead? That nutty, spoiled, cute-as-a-button,
摘要：

AustinOpitznevermeanttofallforYvonneRobinson.Thegirlwasrichandspoiled,alethalcombination.Butwhenhesawhersobbinginthehospitalcafeteriawithaplateoficecreammeltinginfrontofher,hecouldn'twalkaway.Sobeginsastrangefriendshipbetweentwoopposites:Yvonne,arecentlydiagnoseddiabeticbitteraboutthemandatorychange...

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