I knew it was a snow day before my dad or Gabe even came in to tell me. It was only six forty-five, and I heard my cell phone buzzing on my night table. Kate had texted me snow day with a million exclamation points. That was so Kate. Everything she said sounded like it had an exclamation point after it. Since Kate was the youngest of four girls, she had to be loud and dramatic to get any attention. That's what my mom said about her, anyway.
I wrote back yay and then turned over onto my stomach. I didn't feel like getting up yet. I didn't even feel like looking out the window.
If PBJ had made me a homemade valentine, like I'd been wishing for, I'd never get to see it. It's not as though he was gonna bring it in for me next week. By then Valentine's Day would be old news. And boys never remembered anything for longer than a day anyway.
I imagined him waking up and looking out his window, seeing all the snow, and asking his dad if he could help shovel the front steps. PBJ lived in a brownstone near Prospect Park, about a mile from my apartment building in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. His family owned it, so it was their responsibility to keep the steps and sidewalk in front of their house clear. I wondered if PBJ would end up sledding in the park with some friends from school. Maybe they'd have a snowball fight. And what if he was hanging out with some other girl from school and had such a good time with her that he gave her a valentine instead of me? Someone like Ella Redding—her hair always looked perfect.
Living in Brooklyn, it was easy to get around even in a blizzard, but a mile was a long way to go in the snow, and I knew for a fact Georgia and Kate wouldn't want to trek over there. I wondered what we'd do all day, cooped up in our apartment building.
In a way I felt lucky because my two best friends were right here and I didn't need to worry about being alone. I imagined kids in the suburbs, stuck inside. Their parents wouldn't drive them anywhere because it would be too dangerous on the road. They'd just have to stay home and watch TV, arguing with their siblings about which show they were going to watch.
Finally, when I couldn't stand my depressing thoughts anymore, I got up. My dad was lounging on the couch in his plaid pajama pants, the computer resting on his lap. "Subway and bus service is suspended. And Mom's flight was canceled," he said, scratching his head. "I'm trying to see if I can get her on another one."
"Oh." Right then I wished my mom was home. She'd make me her famous banana-walnut pancakes, and we'd sit at the kitchen table long after we'd finished eating, and drinking coffee. Well, she'd be drinking coffee. I'd be drinking milk with a little bit of coffee mixed in. That was my favorite. "I'm gonna go see what Georgia and Kate are up to," I told him. "Be right back."
Another nice thing about living in an apartment building with your best friends was that you could go hang out with them still in your pajamas. I threw on my favorite gray hoodie and my fuzzy blue slippers and walked out into the hallway. I could smell bacon wafting from Natasha Robinson's apartment across the hall. She was in her late twenties, one of those serious business types who woke up at five AM to exercise before work. I bet she felt grateful for this snow day. I imagined her reading the New York Times at the table, her long braids pulled back loosely in an elastic band.
Georgia lived just down the hall from me, next door to Natasha. Sometimes we'd spy on Natasha, just for fun. Well, it was fun for me, at least. Natasha seemed to have a really exciting life.
"Hey, Oli," Georgia mumbled, letting me in. Georgia and Kate were the only ones who called me Oli. I liked it; it made me feel cute and little. I wasn't sure if I was either of those things. I was just average: average weight, average height, average brown hair, and average brown eyes.
Georgia looked as though she'd just woken up. She was wearing her glasses with the red plastic frames. Those were her at-home glasses; she wore her brown square-shaped ones outside the house.
I walked inside and Kate was already there, sprawled out on Georgia's couch, braiding Georgia's little sister's hair.
I reminded myself that Kate did text me this morning, telling me about the snow day, but that didn't help me from feeling left out. Kate was here before me. Whenever I complained about these kinds of things to my mom, she reminded me that three is an awkward number. Someone would always feel left out.
And I hated to feel left out. More than anything.
"Olivia!" Georgia's sister Kimberly squealed. At least she seemed happy to see me. "Mommy said we could go sledding later, but we need to wait for the snow to stop and for it to warm up. It's too icy now, and you can't even see in front of you. Wanna come? Wanna come?"
Kimberly was in third grade, and she was missing her two front teeth. I couldn't help but smile whenever I saw her. "Sure. Sounds fun."
When Kate was done braiding, Kimberly ran into her parents' room to watch Nickelodeon. They had a million throw pillows, and their bed always looked comfy.
"She doesn't even care that the whole Valentine's Day menu is ruined and all that planning was for nothing," Georgia said once her sister was out of the room. "No one's gonna come to Chen's in a blizzard."
"Oh, yeah!" I had totally forgotten about Chen's annual feast. Georgia's family owned a Chinese restaurant, Chen's Kitchen, on the ground floor of our building. It was one of the best Chinese restaurants in New York City, always being written up in New York magazine and the New York Times. Their trademark was that they made their own fortune cookies, but all of their food was delicious. And they went all out for Valentine's Day: a whole different menu, special tablecloths, heart-shaped candles, and live music. People made reservations as early as August.
I was so consumed with thinking about PBJ and the blizzard on Valentine's Day and Kate ripping up my notebook that I'd forgotten all about my plan. The plan I'd been working on for months now, since Georgia's parents started taking Valentine's Day dinner reservations.
I sat there staring at Georgia. I knew my cheeks were getting red, but I tried to stay calm. I didn't want Georgia to suspect anything. "Will they keep the restaurant open?" I asked after a few minutes. "Just, like, in case the snow stops or something."
"Maybe," Georgia said. "My parents are downstairs at the restaurant trying to figure out what to do."
"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm annoyed too," Kate said, examining her hair for split ends. "Kelly told me she was convinced Brendan was going to ask me out today. Convinced. And now it's totally ruined. He could like someone else by Monday."
Even though Georgia, Kate, and I all went to the same school, our grade was divided into clusters for the year. We never saw each other during the school day anymore. We even had different lunch periods.
"It's just so unfair. A snow day is the best thing ever. But this is the worst possible day for it," Georgia said. "Why do these things happen?" She was staring out the window. The snow was still falling pretty heavily, and the wind whipped it around in circles. The bench on the sidewalk in front of our building was totally covered in snow; you couldn't even see it anymore. There was a mound of snow at the tippy-top of the street lamp.
It was a little odd that Georgia was this worked up about the snow ruining the Valentine's Day celebration at Chen's. Georgia didn't usually get that involved in restaurant stuff. She helped out sometimes, and she wrote a lot of the fortunes for the fortune cookies. But that was pretty much it.
"Georgia?" we heard her mom call as she walked into the apartment.
She found us on the couch and gave us a look. "You three look miserable. What's wrong? It's a snow day! Snow days are fun."
We didn't respond.
"Well, if you're going to look miserable anyway, then I have work for the three of you. Come on. Get your shoes on and come downstairs to the restaurant." She tapped Georgia's knee. She didn't need to say anything else; Georgia's mom was the kind of lady that no one could say no to.
Georgia smiled, like she was almost excited about this, but when I caught her smiling, she looked away. Why was Georgia acting so weird? I had to figure it out.
"You're putting us to work, Li?" Kate asked, making a face like she tasted something sour. "For real?"
"For real." Li always mimicked us, the way we talked, especially Kate. I think she found it funny.
I actually didn't mind when Li asked us to help out in the restaurant. It kind of made me feel special, like I was part of their family. Going into Chen's Kitchen always felt like going backstage at a concert. I know Kate didn't really mind either, but she only got visibly excited for things that involved boys.
I went back to my apartment, grabbed my Observation Notebook and the mini-backpack it fit perfectly in, and threw on jeans and my Uggs. My mom absolutely hated wearing anything because of its brand name, and I usually agreed with her and tried not to be materialistic, but Ugg boots were the one thing that made winter tolerable, maybe even enjoyable. They were so comfortable, like a vacation for my feet. I almost felt sad when winter ended each year because it meant I wouldn't be wearing my Uggs for a few months. "Bye Dad, I'm going to help out at Chen's," I called. He was still in the den, in his pajamas, working on his speech.
Kate was waiting for me outside my apartment. I was surprised to see her there, but a good surprised. Knowing that someone waited for you, just for you, was the best feeling in the world—even if that person had ripped your notebook just the day before. If she wasn't going to mention it, I wouldn't bring it up—maybe we could just forget about it and go back to normal. Besides, I hated going places alone, even if it was just downstairs to Chen's.
"Something's weird with Georgia, right?" Kate said as soon as she saw me. Right away my happiness that she'd waited for me fizzled a little bit. This was what my mom meant about groups of three. Two out of the three were always talking about the other one. Even if it was nothing mean, just talking out of concern because you cared about the other person, there was still one person in the dark. I wondered if that counted as talking behind someone's back. I was pretty sure it did. It felt that way. Because if you wanted to say it to someone else, why couldn't you just say it to the person's face?
"Yeah, she seems really down," I said, and immediately felt guilty. If I thought she seemed down, why didn't I just ask her if she was okay? "What do you think is wrong?"
"No idea. She just seems, like, really anxious and nervous." Kate pushed the elevator button and looked around. She probably wanted to make sure no one was in a position to overhear us.
I hated to admit it, but I was glad that Kate wasn't saying that I seemed anxious and nervous—though I definitely felt that way sometimes.
When we got to Chen's, Georgia was putting some of their famous General Tso's chicken into smaller containers. "Can you guys help?" she asked. "We have, like, a million huge containers of this, and my mom wants to separate it to give to some of the local soup kitchens. Since no one's coming to eat it."
I pushed up my sleeves, and Kate and I started to work on the second batch. As I was scooping it out, I'd get a little of the sauce on my fingers, and it took all my restraint not to lick it off. The sauce was delicious, sweet and not too spicy.
"Okay, girls, I have a surprise for you," Georgia's mom said after a few minutes. "You're not really down here to help with the extra chicken, though that's nice. But Chef Park's coming and bringing some people to do that."
Chef Park was the head chef at Chen's. He was one of Georgia's dad's oldest friends. They met at culinary school and studied in China together for a year. His son, Kevin, went to school with us, but he was one of those too-cool-for-everyone types. He never said hi to us, even when we were the only other people in the restaurant.
"What?" Georgia gasped and then quickly covered her mouth.
Kate and I looked at her, and then at each other.
Georgia's mom didn't respond; she just moved the containers off to the side. "Go wash your hands," she said. "And meet me by the ovens."
"Do you know what's going on?" I whispered to Georgia. She shook her head.
I had to find a way to sneak away and get in touch with Robin Marshall. She probably assumed that the Valentine's Day festivities weren't happening. And I doubted she'd trek out in the blizzard anyway. But I still needed to get in touch with her just in case. She was a busy lady; she wrote the Person of the Week column for Time Out New York. It was my dad's favorite, and he'd read it to me when I was little. It quickly became my favorite too because the people Robin featured weren't famous. They weren't politicians or athletes or actors. They were just average people in the city who she discovered.
The way I saw it, she was the quintessential observer. And so she became my hero. She'd write about run-of-the-mill people: what made them happy and what irked them, if they chewed on the ends of their pens and their straws, if they rode a bike or took the subway. She'd write about their best friends, and their jobs, and their favorite beverage, and what kind of flower they would be.
I had written to Robin months back, begging her to come on Valentine's Day, so she could see Chen's on one of their biggest days of the year and see Georgia helping out by writing the fortunes.
Chen's had never been written up in Time Out New York before, and Robin had never written her column about a kid before. It would have been perfect.
"My dear Olivia and Kate," Georgia's mom said when we had finished washing our hands. "You're going to learn something very special today."
I looked around at the others, wanting to get an idea of what Georgia's mom was talking about. But Georgia didn't seem to have a clue either. She was half-listening while she put her hair up in a bun, held together perfectly by two pens. It always amazed me that Georgia's hair could stay perfect that way, held up by pens of all things.
"When there's the biggest storm New York City has seen in ten years, and it falls on Valentine's Day," Georgia's mom began; it sounded like she was telling a story, an old fairy tale. "Well, that's hard-core. And we need to do something big."
We laughed when she said hard-core; she was making fun of us and the way we talked. But lovingly, of course.
"So I'm teaching you girls how to make Chen's Kitchen's famous fortune cookies." Georgia's mom clapped her hands, her signal that it was time to start. "Now, listen carefully. The whole process takes only a few minutes. And you have to be fast."