The Girl On Cinnamon Street

Chapter 2

After the yard sale, I decided to order pizza. This is a no-brainer seeing as I practically live on pizza. Palomeeno's Pizza is very dependable. They would deliver pizza if there was a tornado ripping through South Pottsboro with roofs flapping around and houses flying off their foundations like in The Wizard of Oz. For some dumb reason, I'm thinking about my mom's sky blue shoes when I place the order.

My dad liked those shoes. They were the kind of shoes you had to follow across the rug because of that color. I can't remember anything else. Zippo. Squat. I'm glad that kid bought those shoes because now I don't have to see that color by mistake when I open a closet door. Lake blue. Pond blue. Dark sky blue. 

When the doorbell rings, my grandma is there before I am. She's always hoping to nose around get chatty with some boring dork. My grandpa is right behind her, looking for a chance to barge in on whatever she's doing. With a lineup like this, theres no way I'll even see the pizza for awhile. I lean against the refrigerator, ho-humming to myself. My gran throws the door open, and under normal  conditions, an hour later, after we've heard the guys entire life story, she'll hand me the pizza. But not this time. No, this is different. The door is standing open and my gran sort of freezes when she sees the delivery boy. Then she crumples against grandpa and backs away.

"Okay, thank you son." my grandpa says too loudly. I hate when he calls random strangers son. He takes the pizza and hands it to me saying, "Thank you. Thank you. Do you have the correct change, pal?" He leads my grandma to the couch with his arm around her. I can hear them now murmuring and whispering together in the living room.

I give the kid the money from the pizza money jar. He seems to be about 14 years old. I think a junior from South drives the delivery car and he must do all the running around. To me he doesn't look like a serial killer. He looks all happy in a pizza delivery boy type of way because he found the place easily, and isn't having trouble getting paid. The pizza smells promising. Its the perfect thing to order during a snowstorm after you just sold the most important thing in your life. Ha ha. 

I look again at the kid in the red delivery jacket with the pizza name tag on the pocket. I look at his face and suddenly out of nowhere I feel like I'm falling or sliding. Kenna saw this film taken on Mount Everest and this woman climber forgot to hitch back on her rope and she went flying off the mountain a million miles a minuet, grabbing at the snow. They filmed her falling. The thing is, after that, they had to keep climbing, trying to reach the summit.

I take the pizza box. It feels so warm. It smells so hopeful. By the time I get to the living room and flop down on the couch and open the pizza box my gran and grandpa are fully recovered from whatever happened back there. My grandpa, as usual, is being a couch hog. But still, my gran looks over at me and says, "You okay? Everything alright? The pizza looks delicious!" Which is weird, because my gran hates pizza. 

Grandpa reaches for a slice, and  my gran frowns. "What? They're comfy!" he says, looking down at his slippers. "Men. Im not talking about the slippers." she says, taking the slice out of his hand and putting it back in the box. "You're having wild salmon for dinner." She says, matter-of-factly. "Grrr. Watch out for me, Im a party animal!" He tightens his grip around my gran and nuzzles against her. She's wearing her green organic shirt that says IM ECO MEAN AND GLOBAL GREEN. And she's got grandpa squeezed into one way to tight for him. It has a hood, which he is wearing right now. It makes him look like a pizza stealing elf.

"By the way pal, theres a note for you under the door mat." He put his arm around too and then he says, "two beautiful dolls and I'm in the middle. I call that luck." "Grandpa you're sitting on my skirt I can't get up." I say, pushing him away.

Out in the hall, I look down at the wool doormat. It has a picture of a sheep on it and below it says WELCOME HOME. I see the white paper poking out from one of the corners. I know the routine. How many of theses letters and notes have I gotten from Hanna Smith? To many to count. Every time I turned around, I would find another one. And what did they say? Oh, cute little things like quit the volleyball team or your toast (it should be you're, but Hanna Smith can't spell). Last month I felt something in my boot, something scratching at my ankle. I reached down and pulled out another freaking note from Hanna Freaking Smith. It said something really encouraging about me finding another after school sport. 

I do see the note, but I don't want to pick it up. On the other hand, I don't want my grandpa to read it. Since he's been retired, he has nothing better to do than snoop in other peoples business. My business. So I reach down for the folded paper. I look down and read, I am your biggest fan. Did I read that right? 

I am your biggest fan.

What? I mean, seriously, what? My grandpa come to the open the door and so does gran. They look like Mr and Mrs. Mouse wight their curious eyes peering out at me. Im not your baby mouse grandpa. I don't eat corn like you do and I want to go back to Cinnamon street and live there. Alone.

"Quinn?" Says gran. "Im not Quinn anymore, I changed my name" I say, and push by them and go in my room and slam the door. 

Outside my window the snowstorm is whirling and raging like white anger and when I push my face against the glass, I can millions and millions of tiny snow flakes dancing and diving past the glass. Kenna says snowflakes are little universes unto themselves. Each snowflake a little world different from all the others. And then she tells me to stick my head out into a snowstorm and look straight up, to understand everything. This is how she talks, its kind of fascinating. I think about the pizza delivery guy again. In my mind I think of his little red name tag. It said Jayden Moore. Did Jayden Moore like me? Did he leave me the note? Or has there been some kind of cosmic mistake, a big mistake like forgetting to hitch back on your rope half way up Mount Everest in the middle of winter.

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