Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (10 page)

And soon it was time and ready. She poked
holes in the cake to let the filling seep through. She took a
tester cupcake to experiment on; she would after all make notes for
the next time. And she needed to know about the lemon. Hmmm, a bit
lemony but he liked it that way. It would be a nice fluffy dessert
with the frosting. She bet she could get some of his friends from
the gym to try it.

She pulled everything together and looked at
the time. Just enough to stick it in the cake transport holder and
make it over to his house.

She texted Brad’s friend Joe—
Need 10 more
minutes
.

Return text—
OK
.

She splashed her face, took off her apron and
hung it up and looked at herself in the mirror. She was flushed and
happy. It would have to be enough because she didn’t have time to
get production ready. He would be so surprised. She giggled to
herself and headed over there.

She stepped into the apartment and there were
already about ten people there, including Kesha. Joe had assured
her that these were good ones, that he would be happy to see all of
them. She didn’t know these people from his other life outside the
office, but that was what it was about, after all. It was his party
so he should have the people who he wanted.

The only people he hung out with outside of
work were her and Kesha anyway.

And it looked great. Stealth, well, that was
possible and Joe would tell Brad that he needed to borrow something
at Brad’s apartment.

She made the rounds saying hello to everyone
and then ran into Kesha who ooed and ahhed at the cake.

“You baked,” she said and her eyes narrowed.
“And this is your special cake.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Cat said eyeing the
hummus and wanting to introduce herself to everyone.

“Baby—”

The ding on her phone sounded then. She
looked down. They were coming.

“Y’all everyone. They’re coming!” she
said.

Then turned the lights off and said, “We’ll
all yell surprise, OK?”

The guests nodded and got into position. She
was so excited. She lived for times like this. So awesome.

The door opened, the voices, “Brad, man, I’m
sorry but I needed you to help with these.”

“No problem, we’ll get them right now.”

And then everyone burst forward. “Surprise!”
they said in unison.

And he did look surprised. He turned back to
Joe who moved quickly out of the way and then to the rest of the
folks assembled. When everyone else rushed forward, she held back.
I mean, you could take a girl from home but you couldn’t disrupt
home training. And what she really noticed now that she was looking
for it were magical touches all over the apartment. From when she
bought the decorations and how carefully Joe had hung them up and
now seeing the cake on the table—she’d stuck candles in them but
hadn’t bothered to go do a big reveal with someone bringing it
forth—she saw that a haze of goodwill hung all over it.

Even Kesha must have sensed it and she wasn’t
even family in any way, shape or form.

Brad broke out of the group and came toward
her still smiling and gave her a big hug. She hugged him back.

Joe broke in, “She’s the one who was the
ringleader for all this. She’s the blame.”

“Hey, thanks, Girlie,” he said.

She smiled back. “Now let’s cut this cake,”
she said, a bit overwhelmed by it. She’d brought the serving
utensils, but they made do with paper plates. She knew that no one
was going to clean up after all this and she wanted to make it as
nice as possible.

Between that and the alcohol, she was sure
that someone was going to break out the karaoke. Food, friends and
song. That is what made an event.

Cat kept trying to catch his eye, but his
eyes kept going to a cute strawberry blonde in the corner with the
perfect makeup and standard cute top and jean uniform of the
going-out crowd.

Whenever he looked up from talking with
someone, his eyes went to her. Cat served the cake, brought out
sodas and kept everything going. By the time she came back to the
main room they were singing a duet, the cake eaten on the side.

In her mind came the voice again, that damned
voice of reason. “They look like they would make a good
couple.”

And they did. Auntie had said that she had
the touch, that she could see the invisible bond forming between
people. But she always also said that Cat wouldn’t be able to tell
who would bond her heart.

And the cake that she had wished happiness
and love into, it had given him the courage to go after the one he
had really wanted.

And it wasn’t her. At all.

Joe stepped to her as he followed her eyes,
“They look good together, don’t they?”

She smiled because what could you do? You
never let them see that your heart is breaking, and he was a guy,
so hopefully he wouldn’t see it anyway, “Yes,” she said, “they do.”
She shook her head. “I think the kids are gonna be all right.”

“How about you?”

She pulled back at the question. She didn’t
know what he meant by that. “I’m good,” she said, not meeting his
eyes which were a little too dark and saw her a little too clearly.
“I think that we’re out of napkins.”

“I’ll get them,” he said. “You’ve done enough
here.”

But she didn’t want to stay there and watch
everything that was going on. She wanted to hide, to feel useful as
it became more and more apparent that these people were his true
friends. Yeah they’d gone out a couple of times as friends, but if
he were putting this party together the other ones belonged here,
not her.

At the end of the night Brad snapped up
Strawberry Shortcake to take her home.

She looked at the cake. Only a quarter of it
was left. The damned thing had done its job. She shook her head.
Auntie told her that her calling would sneak up on her like that,
just like her future husband. It will knock out the blue, she said.
And she’d been right. A matchmaker. Of all the nonsensical
things.

Joe was there, he’d helped her take down the
streamers and everything else.

“Great party,” he said.

“Yep. All the work paid off.”

When she took the cake to put it in the
carrying cake holder he covered her hand with his. “Hey,” he said
laughing, “Uh, where are you goin’ with that cake?”

“Home. I thought everyone took what they
wanted.”

“Not me.” He looked at her closely. “Did you
do something to your hair?”

“Maybe flour,” she laughed. “I had to whip
that thing up in no time flat. I’m not sure that I look equally
presentable.”

“You just look different.”

“No, no. Same me.” She couldn’t take his gaze
so concentrated on the cake again. “You really want it? You seem
pretty in shape to want this.”

“You made it from scratch, right?”

“Yes, even the filling and the frosting. No
box cake this one.”

“Then, yes, I want it. My grandmother always
said that a homemade cake is like a love offering.”

“Your grandmother said that?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Well, you can have it then. I think I’d like
your grandmother.”

He smiled, “I’ll clean the plate and bring it
over to you.”

“Just tell Brad and he can drop it off at
work.”

“But I have to repay you for doing all this
for my buddy. Maybe lunch sometime?”

She blinked. Lunch? He seemed like a nice
guy. No. He probably was a nice guy. Took direction well and was
helpful. This was the guy who was the real possibility, the one who
was right in front of her instead of the one who would never
be.

The “no” was right on her lips. Her tongue
right at the bottom of her front teeth.

She looked down at her empty cake carrier.
She had gone in full and now left empty. But she didn’t have
to.

And there were more ways to take chances than
going to Vegas.

“Joe,” she said, “lunch sounds really
good.”

The smile that he gave her was worth the
answer. She turned and there was Kesha sucking her teeth and
arching her eyebrow. Cat gave her a wink as she held the cake
carrier in her hand to carry out to her car. It suddenly occurred
to her that Kesha had been single for way too long. And she liked
red velvet cake.

Maybe this matchmaking thing was gonna turn
out to be all right.

Introduction to “A Taste
of
Joie De Vivre
”

Kellen Knolan’s job as a teacher introduced
him to Young Adult fiction. “The one thing I noticed,” he writes,
“was how constantly dour many of the characters seemed to be. Why
weren’t there more stories about the kids I knew? Alternately fun,
serious, worried, goofy—and yes, dour. I moved [the kids] to Nexus,
Louisiana, where everything is fantastic fiction, save for the
internal lives of the kids themselves.”

“
A Taste of
Joie de Vivre
” marks
Kellen’s first appearance in print, but certainly not his
last.

A Taste of
Joie De
Vivre

Kellen Knolan

A sweat ball crawled slowly down Ashley
Foret’s back.

Starting as a tiny droplet at the base of her
neck, it had built mass but not momentum and was now firmly planted
at the base of her spine. Lacking the inertia to move over the
bulge of her butt, its tortured tickle grew as other sweat balls
gravitated towards it. Considering reason No. 36 it sucked to be
overweight, Ashley still found a small smile forming on her face:
three dozen reasons was nothing compared to how many reasons it
sucked to be the Nexus High School mascot.

Clad neck to toe in a furry tiger suit,
Ashley was every component of miserable. The summer heat of
Louisiana’s Cajun Country in full force, it was 89 degrees with
humidity to match. While it was vacation for most everyone else,
all the fall sports were back at practice. Even the cheerleading
squad was there, despite their coach being on leave.

Walking to school along the edge of the city
of Nexus’s commercial district, Ashley once again laughingly
lamented out loud the lack of streetlamps in this part of town:
“Where’s a good back-scratcher when you need one?”

That Ashley could have a sense of humor about
anything was testament to both her demeanor and the culture in
which she was raised: Pure blood Cajun with roots going back to the
Acadians settlement in the swamps two-and-half centuries ago.
Joie De Vivre
, her grandmother always said, “The Joy of
Life,” as a cure for everything.

When Ashley lamented being overweight, it was
her Maw Maw who’d say “Who dat want be skinny mullet anyway?” in
her heavily accented Cajun. Annoying at times, incomprehensible at
others—fat or skinny, hair or fish, Ashley still had no idea what
the expression had to do with wanting to be thinner—Ashley
nonetheless listened. It was Maw Maw who’d gotten the family
through when Ashley’s mother, Maw Maw’s only child, died in a car
accident driving back to Nexus from New Orleans on I-10.

Not that Ashley always listened right away.
At fourteen years old and about to be a freshman in high school, it
was her job to be a pain in the butt—and Maw Maw’s job to set her
straight, as when Ashley said she was going to decline the offer to
be the school mascot after failing at tryouts: “I wanted to be a
cheerleader!”

“Don’t you make a
bahbin
!” Maw Maw
shot back.

As often the case, Ashley was momentarily
lost with her grandmother’s words. It wasn’t the accent; she’d
lived in Cajun Country long enough to understand all but the
thickest accents. It was what a
bahbin
was, and stopping for
a moment to once again consider the mishmash of French, English,
Native American and African tongues, it took her a second to
remember just what the expression meant: “I am not pouting! I just
wanted to be a cheerleader, not the mascot!”

“
Co faire?
” Maw Maw asked. “Everyone
see you the same.”

“Why?! That is why! Who wants to be seen as
the fat girl in the fur!” Ashley cried. “Who wants…? Oh, God, I am
so sorry Maw Maw…”

Like many of the older people in Nexus,
Louisiana, Maw Maw was hairy, strangely so. Just one of the litany
of birth defects that had afflicted the residents of the town for
generations, all the older people in town seemed to be afflicted
with something: Webbed feet and hands, translucent skin that seemed
to almost glow from underneath, hairy faces and hands—even on the
women. In many places it would have been a curse—but not in Nexus,
or, as it was called many years ago: Recontere.

Because in Recontere, Louisiana they simply
went with it, celebrating their differences instead of being afraid
of them.
Laissez les bons temps rouler
, they called it: “Let
the good times roll,” and through decades of poverty, storms and
deprivation, the people of Acadiana Cajun Country had, and no more
so than the afflicted generations of Recontere.

For years Recontere had been a refuge for all
kinds of people who might be shunned anywhere else. Whether born
there, a refugee from the many traveling circuses that traveled the
backroads in the mid-20th century, or just someone who grew tired
of being a spectacle somewhere else, Recontere was where they
gathered to live their lives and if a few nickels could pass their
way, tell their stories. As it happened there were many nickels in
those days, and after a time these men and women came to be known
throughout Acadiana as “The Storied.”

By the dawn of the 21st century, however,
those days were long over. Inside town whatever had produced the
birth defects had stopped. Outside, circuses had stopped traveling,
and in their rush to get everywhere on the interstate, people had
long ago stopped descending into a small town along the swamp just
to listen to a story. Town leaders had even abandoned the name
Recontere, a semi-combination of the French words for Encounter and
Story, and changed the name of the town to Nexus.