Being Sloane Jacobs (5 page)

“No thanks,” I reply, and grip the handle tighter. “I’ll keep this one with me.”

“I will personally make sure it arrives in your room,” the bellhop says, in a way that makes it clear he’s used to getting girls to hand over much more than their bags. He pulls on the handle, which slips off my shoulder, and the tote tumbles to the ground. A couple of books, my phone, and a collection of ChapSticks go skittering everywhere.

“I’m so sorry!” The bellhop’s face loses all the confidence. He immediately goes into panic mode. He drops to his knees and chases after a tube of cherry ChapStick.

I reach down and snatch my bag, standing up so fast I
have to take a quick step back. My foot lands on something other than the ground. It’s soft and lumpy and gives way underneath me. I feel my ankle wrench to one side, and I start to pitch backward.

My hand closes around a fistful of fabric, but it’s only a temporary save. I’m on the ground, lying on top of some kind of oversized duffel bag that smells like a foot, while a dark-haired girl next to me is on her butt on top of my suitcase, glaring. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie and loose jeans.

“What the hell?” She tosses her long black hair out of her face as she stands up, wincing.

“I’m sorry.” I pick myself up, rotating my ankles to test for pain. “I was falling and—”

She cuts me off. “You didn’t care who you took with you? Why don’t you watch it next time?”

“I’m so sorry, it was an accident,” I say. What is her problem?

“Whatever,” she snaps, then shoots me a look that contains so much venom I’m shocked I don’t fall over dead on the spot. Suddenly, with that look, all the exhaustion and anger of the day comes rushing into my chest. Even though every part of my brain is screaming at me to just turn around and let it go, the next words are out of my mouth before I can even stop them.

“Well, I wouldn’t have tripped if you hadn’t left your luggage on the ground. Seriously, who does that?” I say in my nastiest mean-girl competition voice. She doesn’t even
blink. Something tells me I’m not even close to the baddest person she’s ever encountered.

She takes a step closer. I may be in over my head here. “
Most
people watch where they’re going, princess.”

“Well,
most
people are more mindful of others … jerkface.”

“ ‘Jerkface’? What are you, twelve?” she sneers.

I’m halfway tempted to deck her. Not that I really know how. But maybe getting in a catfight on the street will be enough to get me deported back to the States.

“
Mesdemoiselles
, can I help you?” A tall, thin man with a very silly, totally not-ironic mustache appears before us.

“I was just checking in when that girl knocked me on my—” the dark-haired girl says, just as I start speaking over her.

“Well, she just abandoned her bag on the sidewalk, and I—” I start to say.

The mustachioed man holds up a slender hand.

“
Mesdemoiselles
, let me help. My name is François, and I am your concierge. Please forgive my staff for creating this little pileup. I will send your luggage upstairs, and will be happy to treat you to dinner in the restaurant this evening. Just give Jeffrey here your names”—he nods almost imperceptibly at one of the bellhops—“and he will ensure that your bags are waiting for you and that the hostess has your name for your meal.”

The bellman (luckily not the sleazy one) whose name is apparently Jeffrey steps up with a handful of luggage tags and looks expectantly at me.

“My bags are already tagged,” I say.

“Then you can go right to the desk to check in,” François says in a smooth voice. He gestures to the revolving door. I breeze past the other girl and push through the door without looking back.

CHAPTER 4

SLOANE DEVON

Dad drops me off at the bus station first thing in the morning. We haven’t spoken since our fight last night, and standing in front of the shiny silver bus, I’m feeling more than a little bit sorry for what I said. But I’m even sorrier about where I’m heading. The fact remains that I can’t play, and I have eight hours on a bus to think about it.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted for the summer, but it’ll be good for you,” Dad says, as if he’s reading my mind. Or maybe he’s reading it all over my face. I never was good at hiding my emotions. I know he’s thinking not just about my future, but also about Dylan. He’s never liked him, not since the first time Dylan came over to dinner and called my dad “Pops.” Dad’s referred to him as “the Fonz” ever since, and that’s when he’s being nice. It’s usually something closer to “hoodlum” or “greaseball,” and sometimes just “that boy.”

“Whatever,” I mutter.

The driver opens the storage compartments, and my fellow passengers start shoving their bags in. Dad takes my gear bag and places it underneath along with my duffel, leaving me my backpack for the ride. I give him a nod, then turn to climb onto the bus. He grabs my arm.

“Sloane, please,” he says. He looks exhausted. “Don’t leave mad. We’re all we’ve got.”

I feel a lightness in my chest and the start of a lump in my throat, and I shake my head to suppress it. “Bye, Dad,” I say.

“Wait. I have something for you,” he says. He pulls out a folded twenty-dollar bill and presses it into my palm. I open my hand to see it unfold into five twenties. One hundred dollars.

“Dad, I don’t need this,” I say, trying to give it back. He presses it back into my palm, then wraps his hands around mine.

“For emergencies, Sloane,” he says. “You’re going to be in a foreign country. You never know.”

Looking down at the folded bills makes me instantly sad. I know the cash is probably the last he’s got until payday next week. I wish I had restocked the freezer with pizzas before I stomped out in a huff this morning.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say, then give him an honest-to-goodness hug. I turn and climb the steps of the bus. I make my way halfway down the aisle to an empty row. I fling my backpack into the rack overhead and plop down in the
window seat. I see my dad standing there in the crowd, hands in his pockets, watching me. I know he’ll stay there until the bus finally pulls away.

By the time we get to Montreal, my legs feel like they’ve been infested with a thousand grasshoppers. The bus ride was
eight hours:
eight hours on a bus sitting next to a man who smelled like Robitussin and tuna fish. Eight hours listening to the girl in front of me yap her way through two cell phone batteries. Eight hours of pure, unadulterated transportation hell. Nine if you count the hour we spent at the border, where we all had to file off the bus and stand there while the border patrol made sure we weren’t trying to smuggle in six pounds of amphetamines in our luggage. I almost wished I’d forgotten my passport, which until now I’d used exactly once, to attend a hockey tournament in Toronto. It doesn’t even have any stamps.

The bus station is eleven blocks from my hotel for the night, but the thought of boarding another bus makes me stabby, so I opt to haul my gear bag, my duffel, and my backpack the rest of the way on foot. When I finally get to the hotel, I drag my bags through the maze of cars and limos, looking for the entrance along the vast stone façade. Already, I can tell this place is ten times nicer than anywhere I’ve ever stayed. My cousin Theresa is a concierge at the Westin in Philly, so she hooked me up with a room with the same company for almost nothing. All around me, bellhops in crisp uniforms dart from car to car, opening doors, smiling, taking bags off shoulders and depositing them on
carts, but not one throws a glance my way. Typical. They can probably sense that I don’t belong here.

My duffel starts to slip off my shoulder. By now, my shoulders are aching, so I drop my duffel, then start to ease off my backpack. I feel a hand tug on me. And before I know it, I’m going down. I land hard on my elbow and let out a grunt.

I look up to see a skinny, dark-haired girl in pristine clothes pulling herself up from the ground and brushing invisible dirt off her jeans.

“What the hell?” I toss my hair out of my face so I can get a good look at her.

“I’m sorry. I was falling and …” She trails off with a shrug. Like it was no big deal. She’s not even looking at me. I see her rotate a thin ankle and rub a spot on her shiny gold flats.

“You didn’t care who you took with you?” I say, finishing her thought. “Why don’t you watch it next time?”

“I’m so sorry,” she says. She finally looks at me, and I see a brief look of horror cross her face. I’m probably not looking so pristine after my eight-hour journey. “It was an accident.”

“Whatever,” I say.

“Well, I wouldn’t have tripped if you hadn’t left your luggage on the ground. Seriously, who does that?”

I can’t believe it. Now
I’m
rude? “
Most
people watch where they’re going, princess.”

“Well,
most
people are more mindful of others … 
jerkface.” She looks so proud of herself, I can’t help myself. I burst out laughing. What is this, the playground?

“ ‘Jerkface’? What are you, twelve?” I’m half laughing, half shouting at her. I see the girl ball her hands up, but I know she won’t do anything. She’d be too afraid to mess up her outfit. I could totally take her.

A stuffy bellhop—he must be the big cheese, because he’s wearing a crisp black suit—interrupts us and starts ordering us around, snapping his fingers to get tags on our bags and directing us to our rooms.

When Miss Priss has finally made her exit, I slowly start to calm down. Jeffrey, a skinny, freckled, trembling bellhop who I could probably bench, shuffles closer to me.

“Your name, miss?”

“Sloane,” I reply. “Sloane Jacobs.”

“Okay, Miss Jacobs, I’ll put these tags on your bags and have them sent up to your room,” he says. “You can head through the doors to check in.”

I wait a few beats just to make sure Miss Priss has had time to clear out and head up to her room—I have no desire to see her again. Then I head into the hotel and across the vast lobby floor. But with each step I feel a pain in my knee, just below the kneecap, zapping up the inside of my leg. By the time I’m at the door I’m practically limping. I know that pain. I’ve felt it after long workouts and particularly rough games, and even sometimes when it rains. It’s left over from a nasty hit I took last season. Great. I’ll have to take my delicious nap wearing my massive knee brace.

While the woman behind the counter types away in her computer to check me in, I shift my weight to my good leg and look around. An enormous crystal chandelier hangs over my head, and water rushes down the black stone wall behind the desk in some kind of silent water feature. Looks like I’m in for one night of peace and happiness before moving into the dorm at hockey camp and subsequently getting exposed for the big athletic fraud that I am, then slinking back to Philly for a future as a waitress with an anger management problem.

I know Coach Butler would be pissed if he knew that within an hour of being on Canadian soil, I nearly got into a fistfight with some pretty princess. There would be no hockey camp in my future then. Probably just jail. But maybe that would be better?

My room is on the fifth floor, and it is tiny. Like,
tiny
. It’s actually about the size of my room back home, only my bedroom doesn’t have a bathroom
inside it
. One whole wall is a window looking out onto the city, while the opposite wall makes up the sliding-glass door of a blue-tiled shower. The bedside table is glowing white and oddly shaped, and when I get closer I realize that the cover slides off to reveal the sink.

Despite the fact that it’s the size and shape of a studio apartment in a tenement slum, the place still looks pretty amazing. Everything is white and blue, and the light shining from hidden fixtures makes it all look like I’m in a spa on a spaceship. The bed takes up most of the space, and just like I expected, it’s crisp, white, and fluffy.

“Nap!” I cry out loud, then dive into bed, forgetting my knee until even the soft landing of my heaven-sent bed sends a shooting pain up my leg. “Ugh,” I grumble into the comforter. “Find brace,
then
nap.”

I roll over onto my back and pull my jeans up over my knee, which is unfortunately swelling like a water balloon and sporting the beginnings of an ugly purple bruise. Forget the knee brace, I need to wrap and ice this thing before it swells too big to get my pants on.

I gingerly climb out of bed, then hop over to the dresser, where I grab the blue Lucite ice bucket, then limp into the hall. I look left, then right, but I don’t see anything providing any direction toward an ice machine. I choose left, away from the elevators, and hobble down the plush carpet.

I spot an alcove at the end of the hall and double my pace so I can return to my room, but in my frenzy for ice I don’t notice a door open to my right. A modelesque woman in a little black dress, a good six inches taller than my five-foot-four-inch frame, strides out into the hall, barely looking in either direction. I have to hop out of the way to avoid yet another collision. Do none of these people watch where they’re going?

“Excuse me,” she says, giving the first word about four extra syllables. She says it in a way that implies there’s clearly
no
excuse for me. I’m suddenly aware of the smell of musty bus air and stale Doritos that seems to be all over me. Before I can say anything, the model is gone.

I manage to get my ice without further incident. Returning
to my room, I see my suitcase has at last been delivered. I unzip it and hold my breath, expecting the funk of my gear bag to come wafting out. But all the air rushes out at once when I see not my ratty old black and white hockey skates, but a pair of bright white figure skates. And from the smell of the leather and the shine of the blades, they’re brand-new, or at least
really
well cared for.

“What the hell?” I say. Now I see that the duffel bag only looks superficially like mine. It’s much newer and much nicer. I reach for the rolling suitcase, black like mine but without the peeling duct tape on the corner. It’s also much newer and has about ten more pockets than mine has. I heave it onto the bed and unzip it to find not my favorite jeans or my stack of practice jerseys, but a collection of neatly folded and rolled garments made of a fabric that looks like it should be worn by pixies or woodland fairies.