Being Sloane Jacobs Read online

  “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 part
icularly 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.

  Lots of pastels, gauzy materials, and even a few sequins. And unlike my bag, which smells like Irish Spring and athletic tape, this bag smells like it’s been hanging out with whatever mythical creature wears the clothes inside it: fruity and floral and generally girly. I promptly break into a sneezing fit.

  I throw the cover back over the suitcase to close it, then check the tag. It’s got my name on it.

  “Dammit, Jeffrey!” I mutter. The idiot must have switched the bag tags. The screechy girl from the lobby must have my bags. Great, and I was hoping to never have to see her again.

  I go to grab the phone to call downstairs and again forget my knee, which wastes no time in reminding me that I landed on it wrong just half an hour ago.

  I flop backward onto the bed. I close my eyes and take slow, deep breaths until the pain subsides. And then it dawns on me: you can’t spend the summer playing hockey when you can’t walk across your hotel room. For the first time all day, I feel comforted. Can’t play hockey … because my knee is injured. Huh, maybe things finally are looking up. Maybe they’ll even send me home. It’s not too late to apply at the Freeze.

  And at least Pretty Princess girl has to sleep with my stinky skate bag in her room. I twist up the plastic bag inside the ice bucket and tie it in a knot so I won’t wake up in a puddle. I wince as I place the bag on my throbbing knee. Getting it back can wait. I snag one of the seven extra pillows from the other side of the bed, wedge it under my knee for some elevation, then promptly fall into the first peaceful sleep I’ve had in forever.

  CHAPTER 5

  SLOANE EMILY

  “Ma’am, I’m lost. What do you mean you don’t play hockey?”

  Deep breaths. Don’t be rude. Kindness goes a long way. The desk attendant, whose shiny brass name tag reads “Monique,” stares at me blankly from underneath a sweep of blond bangs. It’s the first time she’s actually looked at me. For the duration of this conversation, she’s kept her eyes glued to the computer embedded in the desk. It’s time to try a new tack.

  “I know this isn’t your fault. I’m just trying to explain what’s going on, in an effort to get my own luggage back,” I say. I smile and arrange my face in a categorically-not-angry-with-you expression.

  “So you’re saying you have Sloane Jacobs’s luggage in your room?” The desk attendant narrows her eyes and wrinkles her nose as if I’ve just asked her to solve some kind of crazy logarithm.

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “And you actually need Sloane Jacobs’s luggage instead?”

  “Yes,” I say. I try to push my hair back from falling over my face. I wish I had a hair tie to secure it, but those are all in my actual luggage. “Look, maybe the bellhop swapped the tags. Or duplicated them. Or maybe there are two of us!”

  “Two Sloane Jacobses?” She laughs at my bad joke. “I sincerely doubt that. Two Jane Smiths? Yes. Two Sloane Jacobses? No.”

  “Well, then you need to find the girl who checked in at the same time as me this afternoon, because she has my bags, which includes a very expensive pair of custom figure skates. She’s about my height,” I say, “and she has long dark hair and dark eyes.”

  “So she looks like you,” she says.

  “No. I mean, barely,” I say.

  “So you have my bags, then,” a voice says behind me. I whip around and see the girl from earlier today, still wearing the black and orange hoodie with the weird logo on the front and what I assume are the same pair of baggy, holey jeans.

  “And you are?” The desk attendant leans over the counter. This is probably the most excitement she’s had all day.

  “I’m Sloane Jacobs,” she says, and if I were drinking anything, I’d do a spit take.

  “You’re Sloane Jacobs?”

  “Yeah, and who are you?”

  “I’m Sloane Jacobs,” I say. I expect the girl to look surprised, maybe even pass out from shock, but she just frowns.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” she asks.

  “Does it seem funny to you?” I s
nap. Then I take a deep breath. “Look, can we figure this out? I’d really like to get my bags back so I can change out of these airplane clothes.”

  “Your name is really Sloane Jacobs?” She gives me an up-and-down assessment.

  “She does look like you,” the desk attendant says, still listening in.

  “She looks nothing like me,” the nasty girl says, and from the way she’s eyeing me, I think it’s an insult.

  “Whatever, can I please have my bags?” I say. I’m already tired of this conversation. I was looking forward to tonight being a stay-in-and-veg-in-my-awesome-hotel-room before-I-get-thrown-to-the-wolves-tomorrow. This insanity is seriously cutting into my junk-food-and-movie time.

  “Ladies, I see you’ve come down for your dinner.” The squeaky, clipped voice of François cuts between us.

  “We didn’t—” I start to protest, just as Sloane says, “That isn’t—”

  But François ignores us. He glides behind the counter and leans toward Monique, who whispers in French. François nods almost imperceptibly, then steps back out from behind the counter. With some kind of smooth French Canadian magic, he takes us both by our elbows and leads us into the dining room.

  He breezes past the hostess stand and guides us to a large table covered in a crisp white tablecloth in the corner of the room. A white light fixture hangs down over our heads, and I want to grab it, point it at this girl’s face, and start interrogating her about the location of my bags.

  “Please enjoy anything you’d like, compliments of the hotel,” François says, and when I open my mouth to ask about my bags, he holds up a thin hand to shush me with all the experience of a man whose job is to cater to people’s every whim. “Please accept my sincerest apologies for your luggage mix-up. While you are dining, I will have one of our bellhops switch your luggage. I do apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Excuse me, but we’re not together,” the other Sloane says.