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 o...
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