The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman Read online

  “I’d really like you to be my partner,” Ashley said to Richard.

  Richard spilled cocoa on himself. “Uh,” he said. He looked at me for help.

  “I think Mother was expecting Rich to take Fleur,” I said.

  “Fleur is flying home before New Year’s Eve,” Ashley announced grandly.

  I looked at Fleur. “I decided to go to the wedding after all.”

  “Good,” Richard and I said together.

  “I thought you asked Kirk,” I said to Ashley.

  “He can’t go,” Ashley said quickly. “Will you go with me?” she asked Richard again, keeping her voice light.

  I don’t know why, but Richard looked at me again. “Are you going?” he asked.

  “She’s going with Helmut Weiss, so they can discuss transformational grammar.” Satisfaction on her smug face.

  I sighed. “Helmut is good company, Ashley.” Which was more than I could say for her.

  “You will go, won’t you?” Ashley fluttered the eyelashes. Gag, gag, and throw up.

  “Well.” Richard recovered himself. “Sure,” he said to Ashley. “That’ll be fun.”

  “Oh good,” she said. “Have some more cocoa.” She poured some from the thermos into his cup. “Do you want more, Kate?”

  Pushing my glasses back on my nose, I shook my head. I’d had enough poison for one day.

  Praise for

  The Unlikely Romance

  of Kate Bjorkman

  “Charismatic, lighthearted, and irresistible, Kate Bjorkman narrates her tale of teen romance in the language and conventions of The Romance Writer’s Handbook.… Witty, keen writing, likable characters, and an interesting format form a fast-paced, refreshing book with lots of appeal.… Kate is a uniquely strong female protagonist whose reflections on life, love, and people shine through.”

  —School Library Journal, Starred

  “Plummer has crackerjack timing … funny and fast-paced, crammed with witty dialogue.… A breathlessly good-natured story.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, Pointer

  “Readers looking for a funny, light, tongue-in-cheek romance will snap this one up.”

  —Voice of Youth Advocates

  “The holiday cheer, the appealing protagonist, and the happy ending are sure to evoke the simple pleasures of popcorn and cocoa on a cold winter’s day.”

  —The Horn Book Magazine

  A School Library Journal

  Best Book of the Year

  Published by

  Dell Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of

  Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  Copyright © 1995 by Louise Plummer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.

  Dell and Laurel are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80931-5

  RL: 5.8

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

  v3.1

  To Kelli Jaggi, who wanted a romance.

  This is it, sort of.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  This is one of those romance novels. You know, that disgusting kind with kisses that last three paragraphs and make you want to put your finger down your throat to induce projectile vomiting. It is one of those books where the hero has a masculine-sounding name that ends in an unvoiced velar plosive, like CHUCK (although that is not my hero’s name), and he has sinewy muscles and makes guttural groanings whenever his beloved is near. In romance novels, the heroine has a feminine-sounding name made up of liquid consonants, like FLEUR, and has full, sensuous lips—yearning lips. I think the word “yearning” will appear at least a thousand times in this book. The heroine also has long, silky legs and is a virgin.

  The reason I know about romance novels at all is because my best friend, Ashley, was addicted to them last year, our junior year, and insisted I read them too. The trouble with romance novels, I soon discovered, is that they make you feel bad about your life, especially if there is no CHUCK in it, and especially if you don’t have long, silky legs and your name ends in an unvoiced dental plosive as mine does (Kate) and very especially if you think you’re going to be a virgin for the rest of your life. Mostly, though, romance novels are sappy in the extreme. They read like junior-high-school daydreams. I’ve never read one that I could really believe. None of them sounds like real life. And I want real life. Even in novels, I want real life.

  So what do you do if you have lived a real romance, and it happened at Christmas, and the guy has a masculine-sounding name, Richard, and it ends up that he loves you as much as you love him? I know what I want to do. I want to write a romance novel about it. I want it to end with “they lived happily ever after.” And we really have.

  Sort of. This all happened last December and it is now the middle of February, so we have lived happily ever after for six weeks. But how many people do you know who are exhilaratingly happy for six weeks? I know it’s a record for me.

  I want to gloat and bask in this lovely feeling of being in love. And if I do not have long, silky legs and long, blond locks, I do have sensuous, full lips, and if I have not written three-paragraph kisses, I have kissed them.

  I’m giving this my best shot. I’ve got The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book right next to the word processor in case I’m at a loss for words, as they say. If you are jaded about romance or have PMS or are on the downside of manic depression and can’t stand to read about other people’s happiness, then get real. This book is not for you.

  Chapter One of a romance novel is the chapter where the heroine is described and where she first meets the hero. This is no different. It happened a few days before Christmas. My mother asked me to walk down to Sims Market after dinner and get some cinnamon sticks. She has this hot drink she makes around Christmas called Russian tea—it’s filled with cinnamon and cloves and sugar and orange and lemon and stuff—and we guzzle it all through the holidays. It’s part of our family tradition, this drink. Anyway, she was almost out of cinnamon sticks. Would I go to Sims?

  It was a dark and stormy night. This is the honest-to-god truth. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was snowing hard—large flakes the size of cotton balls—and it was thundering and flashing lightning off in the distance. If you don’t believe it can thunder and snow at the same time, then obviously you haven’t lived in Minnesota, the Weather State.

  I had covered my six-foot frame in thermal underwear, ski pants, a turtleneck sweater, a down parka with the hood up, mittens with reindeer heads knitted into the tops, and million-dollar snow boots, which my father calls the “fruit boots.” I’m not going to apologize for being too tall. I know heroines should be petite, but I’m not. I am six feet tall in my stocking feet. I do have very long legs and nice kneecaps, but I don’t know if my legs are particularly silky. In fact, sometimes in w
inter, when I’m totally covered in clothes all the time, I just skip shaving my legs and see how long the hairs can get. If I want silky legs, I can get them by rubbing Chanel body lotion all over them.

  Anyway, the minute I began walking down Folwell Street, I felt glad to be alive. Even before the hero entered, I was pretty happy with my life. I’m not the sulking type. My father, the linguistics professor, had been playing one of the Brandenburg Concertos when I left, and I felt as if the flute music were trapped inside me and that if I opened my mouth, it would trill out into the night air. I caught snowflakes on my tongue the way I used to do when I was ten. The night felt magical. There must have been some foreshadowing in the air.

  It’s only about six blocks to Sims Market, and pretty soon I was standing in front of the spices, but I couldn’t find the cinnamon sticks. I knew the spices were arranged in alphabetical order, but my eyes (which The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book would describe as “amethyst”) skipped from basil to fennel to thyme and back again. There were distractions: the canned music, for one thing. I stood directly under a speaker blaring an orchestral rendition of “Sleigh Ride” and found myself trying to fill in the words, “Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingling too …” Then something—weather—something, something—together—basil, fennel, thyme.

  The other distraction was Ashley, my best friend, who taught me all there was to know about the romance novel last year, and her boyfriend, Kirk, at the checkout counter making much ado about the dry mistletoe forlornly hung over each checkout aisle. They held the blue plastic shopping basket between them, but Kirk leaned over it, threatening to kiss Ashley in front of clerks and customers alike. Finally he bit her ear, and Ashley’s laughter pealed above the canned “Sleigh Ride.” When heads turned, Ashley muffled her mouth as if she had committed a grand faux pas. After they set the filled shopping basket on the counter, Kirk took her hand and put it in the pocket of his parka with his own.

  The truth is that Ashley is always trying to live her life as if she were the heroine of a romance novel. It never works, though. She rarely lives happily ever after, even for six weeks. But at Christmastime, she and Kirk were hot for each other.

  I tried to concentrate on the spices. Allspice, sweet basil, ground cinnamon—

  “Kate!” Ashley flounced down the aisle in front of Kirk, who carried the brown sack of groceries. “I didn’t know you were in the store!” Her voice is all dramatic and different when she’s with Kirk. I never want to sound different than myself around any guy.

  “Oh, hi, you guys.” I nodded at Kirk.

  “Kirk and I are going to make Christmas cookies together.” Ashley slipped her arm through Kirk’s.

  “You’re going to make them. I’m going to eat them.” Kirk wagged his tongue at her.

  Ashley leaned into him with her lips. “You’ll love cooking. It’s a sensuous activity.”

  I was pretty sure from the way Ashley said “sensuous” that the conversation was about more than just baking cookies. I felt as if they were performing for my benefit.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. “Save a cookie for me.”

  Ashley turned Kirk around with a grand sweep of her arm. She was a different person entirely around Kirk. A looney tune.

  “See you later,” Kirk said, looking back.

  He didn’t gaze longingly into my amethyst eyes, so he obviously is not the hero in this novel.

  At the end of the aisle Ashley shouted back, “Isn’t Christmas wonderful?”

  What she really meant to say was, Isn’t Christmas wonderful when you’re going with someone like Kirk?

  I forced a laugh for her and waved good-bye. “Have fun, Ash,” I called. Like I said, I was happy all the way to Sims Market, but now I felt let down a little. I actually sighed. I was jealous of Ashley and Kirk. A lot jealous, but I did not, as The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book says, “flounder in an agonizing maelstrom.” I’m too buoyant for that.

  There weren’t any cinnamon sticks on the shelf.

  “Mr. Sims.” I turned when I smelled the cigarette smoke. Mr. Sims is the last chain-smoker in Minnesota and completely ignores the Clean Air Act. “It’s my store,” he says when customers complain. He’s known around the neighborhood as “that bastard.”

  “Do you have any cinnamon sticks in the back? There’s none on the shelf.”

  “If they’re not on the shelf, I don’t have any,” he said, bending over a broken sack of sugar.

  I tried not to stare at his thick mustache when he looked up. It always had gunk in it.

  “Won’t have any until next week.” Ashes fell from his cigarette into the open sugar bag.

  “But that’s after Christmas.”

  “So?” Mr. Sims lifted the broken sugar bag and blew smoke into my face.

  I waved the smoke away. He was so rude. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Sims,” I said anyway.

  He said something I couldn’t hear. Probably “bah humbug.” I didn’t care. I knew Mr. Sims would become a minor, flat character in my novel.

  Outside, it was still a dark and stormy night: it snowed steadily, but the thunder had stopped. I pulled the hood of my parka up and tied it securely under my chin. Most of the stores in “the Park,” which is what the one commercial street in this old suburb of St. Paul is called, were still open. Pine bows, red ribbons, and tiny lights decorated the storefronts. That Christmas stuff made me feel festive, and I considered stopping at Bridgeman’s for hot chocolate with synthetic whipped cream on top, but then I saw Ashley and Kirk near there.

  I crossed with the light and headed home. I can only stand so much hormonal happiness in one evening, especially someone else’s. I wondered if Mr. Sims had ever been in love at Christmas. Had he ever been someone’s hero? There had been a Mrs. Sims years ago. Who could stand to kiss those nicotine-stained lips?

  When I thought about it, climbing the long, sloping hill toward my house, I realized happiness at Christmas is hierarchical. People in love like Ashley and Kirk are the happiest Next come people like me, who have family and friends, and who, at least expect to be in love at some future Christmas. Last come people like Mr. Sims—the cantankerous ones—who are never happy, and no amount of external magic, even Christmas magic, can change that.

  At the top of the hill I turned the corner. I was on my street now. Through the lighted window I saw the Chamberlain twins dropping toys from their bunk beds in their second-story bedroom. I still think of that house as the Bradshaw house, even though the Bradshaws moved to California years ago. I always pass it with a kind of “upsurge of devouring yearning,” as the phrase book says. But I don’t think it’s necessary to explain why, yet. All you need to know is that on that night I passed the house with an excess of yearning. The holidays bring on those hokey feelings.

  Up the street I passed the Midgely house, where Midgely, who is younger than my father, was dying of pancreatic cancer. He had already lived two years longer than the doctors said he would. It had been weeks since I had seen his jaundiced, sunken face. There is nothing in The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book to help me describe that face. He used to be the tennis coach at the high school, and was also my junior-year English teacher, but had to quit this year because of the cancer. Whenever I think of Midgely now, I think of that Dylan Thomas poem “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” Midgely was a devoted Dylan Thomas fan. We spent weeks on Dylan Thomas. Was Midgely happy at Christmastime?

  Why this grim reflecting in a romance novel? Have I lost control of the writing? Or is it possible that all that yearning for the Bradshaws has turned my brain to Cheerios?

  Moving right along: my house had changed since I had been at Sims. More windows were lit, for one thing. Even my bedroom light was on upstairs. Not my doing either. I take after my father that way, economical and practical. My mother and Bjorn leave lights blazing all over the place, but Bjorn was in Palo Alto, two thousand miles away, with his new bride, Trish. Mother had been in the basement whe
n I left, wrapping pots of forced tulips in dark green shiny paper and red ribbon as Christmas gifts for neighbors. Weird. The house looked like a shimmering spaceship freshly landed from some exotic star. And I’m not quoting the phrase book either.

  On the porch, brushing the snow from my collar and stomping my boots, I noticed a green Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway. Company. Company changed a house.

  Light, warm air and my brother’s voice spilled through the widening crack in the front door when I opened it: “We couldn’t stand another snowless Christmas this year, and when you said there was already two feet of snow on the ground, we decided to come.”

  “Is that you, Bjorn Bjorkman?” I yelled, pushing the front door shut with my behind. We collided between the hall and the dining room.

  “Boo, it’s good to see you,” he said. We hugged. He still wore his parka.

  “You’re here!” was all I could say. I just couldn’t believe it. I pulled back to see his face. My glasses were partially fogged, as they always are when I come in from the cold. I pinched his arm. “It’s like magic to have you here,” I said.

  “It took three whole days to drive here; that’s not magic.” Trish appeared behind his shoulder, and I broke loose to hug my sister-in-law.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” I said.

  “Kate, you look wonderful. I like your new frames.”

  “Thanks.” I know I mentioned my height—six feet—but did I mention the glasses? It’s a rhetorical question. I didn’t mention them on purpose, because I wanted you to imagine me looking like Cindy Crawford. I have worn glasses since I was three years old, and even when I have cool Giorgio Armani frames, my eyes are magnified about three times their size with these plate-glass lenses. I can’t wear contact lenses because I have congenital cataracts. It’s a complex condition, but the bottom line is I have to wear glasses or be legally blind. I know this is a disappointment in someone who is supposed to be the romantic heroine of this book, but unless you’re one of those really shallow readers, you’ll continue.