“Got it.” Genevieve poured off Carly’s shake, topped it with whipped cream, and slid it down the counter.
“Hey, Genevieve,” said Carly, slipping onto a stool and poking her pink straw through the mound of whipped cream, “did you hear the rumor about Mr. Garcia?” Her eyes sparkled with a secret.
Genevieve frowned. “You mean... how he broke his arm?”
Mr. Garcia, who’d taught Government, Economics, and various other business classes at Pinewood High since the beginning of time, had been mysteriously absent when school started a few weeks ago. No one was exactly distraught at this turn of events, seeing as how his replacement was Miss Love, who they all knew and remembered fondly from her intermittent substituting two years prior. Mr. Garcia, on the other hand, had grown increasingly short-fused and temperamental in his old age.
They’d inquired, more out of politeness than any real concern, and only been told that Mr. Garcia had suffered an injury over the summer and would not be returning anytime soon. Someone had spread the rumor that he’d fallen off a ladder painting the trim on his house and broken his arm. Genevieve couldn’t remember where she’d even heard that. She felt bad for the guy, but couldn’t honestly say she was sad he was gone.
Carly leaned forward, her small hands wrapped around her frosted fountain glass. “That’s just it! There was no injury.”
Samanta smirked as she handed Genevieve a crisp ten-dollar bill. “Probably it was Principal Mattison who spread that lie. Trying to protect his precious school’s image.” She used air quotes on the last word.
Genevieve stuck a spoon in Samanta’s dish and handed it over with the girl’s change. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Of course, you wouldn’t know,” Carly said thoughtfully. “We only found out today at lunch.”
Genevieve shoved her metal scoop in a dish of water and stamped her foot. “If you two don’t tell me what you’re talking about, I’m dumping this jug of strawberry syrup over both your heads.”
“Okay, okay.” Samanta giggled and held up her perfectly manicured hands in a gesture of surrender. “The real reason Garcia is MIA, is because…”—she paused for dramatic effect, and Genevieve lifted the syrup threateningly—“…he was fired for assaulting a student in summer school.”
“What?” Genevieve set the jug down on the counter, shocked. Carly, who was still sucking whipped cream through her straw, nodded.
“It was a huge scandal,” she declared. “The boy’s parents threatened to sue, but eventually they accepted a written apology and Mr. Garcia’s resignation.”
Genevieve considered this. “So he wasn’t actually fired.”
Samanta waved her hand dismissively. “Semantics. You know teachers work on a year-by-year contractual basis. His resignation was forced; the district didn’t renew his contract. Fired.”
“Anyway,” Carly continued with a hint of impatience, “this was in July, in the second semester, and they needed a replacement right away.”
“And Miss Love had been having a hard time getting full-time sub work in Mountain Ridge, so she relocated to Pinewood over the summer for cheaper rent. It all worked out perfectly,” Samanta said happily.
Genevieve, over her initial shock, had to smile too. She picked up a washrag and stepped out from behind the counter to wipe the tables. And then something occurred to her, and she stopped cold. “Wait. If Mr. Garcia isn’t out temporarily after all...”
Both girls were nodding eagerly.
“… then Miss Love is here to stay!”
All of them adored their new teacher, with her vivacious personality, spunky pink hair, and smashing sense of style. Miss Love treated them like equals, peers, unlike Mr. Garcia, who had always been patronizing even on his better days. Genevieve had often wondered why he’d become a teacher in the first place, since he seemed to derive no joy from teaching. It almost seemed as if he didn’t like kids at all. Yet her father, who’d grown up in Pinewood, said he hadn’t always been that way. Despite everything, she felt a tug in her heart for how his long career had ended. I do hope he’s okay, she thought. Maybe I should take him some ice cream.
While the girls continued to talk about school, Genevieve crossed the shop, armed with glass cleaner and a handful of paper towels, and began cleaning the front door. As she sprayed and vigorously polished the glass, she peered across the street at the quaint dark-red brick bookstore that wrapped around 5th Street and Main.
From where she stood, Genevieve could see straight through the book display in the window to the proprietor’s desk, where a soft-framed boy wearing thick glasses sat, his bulky legs leisurely propped up on the wooden desk.
As usual, he was reading.
Genevieve rolled her eyes. How could he stand being so idle all the time? She rapped on the glass door, knowing full well he couldn’t hear her, but at that exact moment he happened to look up anyway, and both of their faces split into wide grins.
Brandon Summers had been Genevieve’s best friend since third grade, when they’d been paired up on a book report project. Genevieve, who loved to talk, had given the oral presentation, and Brandon had drawn the poster.
They were polar opposites. Brandon preferred to burrow in the cave of his basement room, building ships from Minecraft tutorials, coding his own games, or simply burying his nose in a book. He was quiet around most people, but he wasn’t shy.
Genevieve never read books unless forced to for school, and she much preferred being outdoors when she wasn’t in her brightly lit, cheerful ice cream shop. She woke every morning at dawn to run two miles, surrounded by mountains and the rising sun; Genevieve needed fresh air and sunshine the way Brandon needed books and dark, quiet places.
Still, despite their many differences, she and Brandon always found something to do together and they were firmly bonded to each other’s families. Brandon’s parents, who owned the bookstore, were like Genevieve’s own, and she would move mountains for his seven-year-old sister, Charlotte.
Therefore, despite its dark and solemn atmosphere, Hidden Treasures Bookstore was like Genevieve’s second home. Well, she thought as she waved goodbye to Brandon and looked affectionately around at Sweet Dreams—more like her third.
“I’ve hired someone to help out with closing shifts.” Genevieve’s dad lowered his newspaper and peered at her gravely as she walked into the breakfast nook the next morning. His dark expression brooked no argument.
“What?” she cried, dropping her school bag to the floor with a thud. “Why? We don’t need another closer!”
“I’ll decide that, young lady,” he said sternly, and then he snapped the paper up again and disappeared behind it. “He’s a good kid, new to town. Needs a job.”
Genevieve sank into the dining room chair across from him, deflated at the sudden thought of the incomprehensible. “Did I do something wrong?”
She thought she saw his shoulders sag momentarily, but then he slapped the paper down on the table, barked, “Of course not!” and rose to get more coffee. Or so he pretended. Genevieve suspected his walking away was just another way of avoiding her hurt gaze.
They’d agreed that when she turned sixteen she could take over closings, which she now did five days a week, as long as she kept up with her homework and maintained at least a 3.5 grade point average. On her days off, their part-time worker, Chase Dillworth, closed the shop.
Genevieve had thrived on the additional responsibility, especially balancing the cash drawer and taking over inventory. She took pride in the fact that her increased work hours had allowed her dad to focus more on his job with the Pinewood Chamber of Commerce, and she dreaded to think she’d lost his trust somehow. But after quickly skimming her memory for any recent oversights, she was reassured that she’d been doing a perfect job.
Genevieve stood and positioned herself at her father’s chair, where he’d returned with a steaming mug of coffee. “If I haven’t done anything to make you think I can’t handle it, and I haven’t,” she said firmly, “then why are you hiring someone we don’t need and can’t afford?”
Her father’s whiskered cheeks turned red. “Because it’s becoming too dangerous, that’s why!”
“What are you talking about?”
He picked up the newspaper again and shook it in her direction. “Do you even look at the paper? Maybe you should take a page from Brandon’s book and start reading. There have been seven robberies—seven!—over in Mountain Ridge since June. All at little mom-and-pop shops with limited cash in the register; places like antique stores and donut shops. Places not likely to have advanced surveillance monitoring. And the last one? Someone got hurt, Genevieve. Some skinny masked punk broke a cashier’s finger slamming it in the cash drawer. All of this violence practically in our own backyard. You think that can’t happen here?”
Genevieve didn’t know what to say. She was in shock over her father’s horrid suggestion that she start reading like Brandon.
Then the truth hit home, and she felt a gut punch of dismay and, within seconds, a broiling anger. “You’re trying to push me out,” she accused. She gestured to the newspaper. “This is just a lame excuse for making me spend less time at Sweet Dreams because you want me to go away to college. You—you’re trying to replace me.” Her eyes swam with angry tears, blurring the infuriating expression of surprise on her father’s face as she stormed out of the kitchen and fled out the door.
The argument had been brewing all summer long. Genevieve’s father wanted her to apply to every university in the state, and choose at least three more out-of-state, to keep her options open. “You don’t want to stay in this little town scooping ice cream forever,” he’d insisted. “This is your time to explore what’s out there, to meet new people, to figure out what you want.”
But Genevieve knew what she wanted. She always had. Her aspirations hadn’t changed since she was seven years old, swiveling on the bar stools at Sweet Dreams and watching her father and Aunt Mellie whip up sweet confections for the people of her adopted hometown. Genevieve loved Pinewood—the way the snowy peaks greeted her each morning, striking majestically over the horizon, the way the fresh mountain air felt cool in her lungs with every new breath.
She loved Sweet Dreams—its bright candy colors and irresistible smell of waffle cones. She saw her future wrapped up in the ice cream parlour the same way it held tightly onto her childhood. Genevieve had every intention of going to college and earning her business degree, but she was happy commuting two days a week to Mountain Ridge University and taking the rest of her degree in distance courses so she could continue to run the store in the evenings. She would stay here, in Pinewood, where her home was, and take ownership of Sweet Dreams, and maybe even expand to open a second shop in Mountain Ridge.
Why couldn’t her father see that everything she needed, everything she wanted, was right here?
CHAPTER TWO
THE SPITEFUL SUBSTITUTE
