Chapter 1 Noah

Oh. God. Please. No.

"I'm callin' ‘em Jiggle-Wiggles!" sings my mother. "All your newspaper coworker friends are gonna love ‘em!"

It's a box full of bite-sized gelatin blobs in a bunch of colors. Little faces are drawn on the tops of them somehow. Every time the box moves, the faces wiggle and distort. I think they're trying to smile, but they all look slightly off, just enough to be horrifying.

"Aren't they just too cute to eat?" she goes on. "And yet you just wanna eat them up anyway? I'm eatin' them up with my eyes right now! No, no, it's okay," she says before I can even open my mouth, "you can take this whole box with you, I insist! Today is a special day, and I'm just sure you'll win points with your boss."

My face flushes red at the thought of bringing this box to work. What everyone will say. The looks I'll get, twice as scary as the ones on these jiggling monstrosities.

"B-But Mom," I start, "today's the spring crafts festival, not the baking festival, and—"

"Jiggle-Wiggles are a craft, sweetie! An edible craft!"

I stare down at the gelatinous little nightmares.

It's an understatement to say I'm shy. I tried to be a people person once. It was a few years ago back in high school, I decided to audition for the spring play. I saw it as a final (and desperate) effort to change my life and overcome all my fears. It did not go as planned. The look of abject secondhand humiliation on Ms. Joy's face while I stood on that big stage to audition is still burned onto the backs of my eyelids to this day. I couldn't even form words like a regular human being. I just stood there like a department store mannequin making these bizarre, elongated squeaking sounds for far too long before finally dismissing myself, bolting off the stage like my pants caught fire, and donating all of my lunch right back to the school via a nearby bathroom toilet.

The Spruce High theatre department never saw me again.

And now my mom wants me to bring a box of Jiggle-Wiggles to work. On a day that will already be stressful enough—the day of the Annual Spruce Spring Crafts Festival.

Does she want me to actually die?

"Trust your mama!" she sings, smiling so big, her eyes vanish.

While it may seem like I'm trying to somehow shrink inside my own body like a turtle, I still know my manners, so I give my kind and well-meaning mother a smile and thank her.

It's the thought that counts, right?

A few minutes later, there I am, Noah Reed, Spruce's oddest and most awkward anomaly, unexplainable, inexcusable, hair as messy as a hurricane, glasses at the end of my nose, sleepy-eyed, pale-faced, and stumbling down the sidewalk in the old part of town with a box of Jiggle-Wiggles in my arms. It's one of those pastry boxes with a clear window on top, so the warped little nightmares are perfectly visible as they dance mockingly at me every step of the way. The small, narrow Spruce Press building is well within walking distance to my house, so I'm distressingly close already. I wonder if I can sneak in and drop this box off somewhere no one will see. They might assume it's just a delivery from a sweet and thoughtful person around town. As I approach the front steps of the building, I recite to myself: "Please let me get in unnoticed, please let me get in unnoticed, please let—"

But before I make it even halfway up the steps, the doors fly open, and my tall, lanky supervisor appears, standing over me like a tower—a very cocky, weary-eyed tower. "Mornin', Noah. Listen, I got a job for ya. You're gonna hate it, but I'm all outta options. My dad's on my ass. Probably up it, too. Please stop lookin' at me like that, I have had such a long week. What in the heck are those?"

I stare up at him, eyes wide and blinking. My supervisor has a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten glazed donut in the other. His tired eyes peek out from a curtain of dark brown bangs. Stubble dusts his tanned and weathered face, aging his otherwise youthful appearance. His name's Burton, and ever since his dad hired him to help out here at the Spruce Press, he's become a coffee-and-donut-devouring monster. This job isn't his passion in life. I don't blame him. No one in the galaxy grows up saying, "You know what I'd love to do with my life? Document everyone else's!" My dad once said you have to be a total weirdo to love this line of work. He should know; my grandpa used to run the Spruce Press.

I guess I'm one of those weirdoes.

Also, I didn't realize I was looking at him any particular way. I make an adjustment to my facial expression. "Is the job to, um … go out and take photos of the festival?"

Burton frowns. "Why are you scowling like that? You look like you're tryin' to fart."

I relax my mouth. "Sorry."

"Now you look mad again."

I relax my eyes. "Better?"

"Now you look like a Martian. That what these are?" He leans over the box, squinting inside. "Little, uh … jello aliens …?"

My cheeks burn. I decide to go along with it. "Y-Yeah, aliens. They're aliens. My, uh—I got them at the store. For everyone."

Burton takes a big bite of his donut, squints at me. "Why?"

I stare blankly back, frozen.

Why didn't I say my mom made them?

"Don't matter," Burton says before I can reply. "No one's here to eat ‘em anyway." He slips back into the building.

Confused, I reluctantly follow him inside. Indeed, the three desks are empty. Even the editor's office is dark. I absently look for a place to set down the box, but every surface is full of junk to the edge, even the coffeemaker table. "Is everyone already at—?"

"Yes," Burton cuts me off with a sigh, then leans against the side of a nearby desk—my desk. That draws my attention at once, as his elbow happens to nudge a neatly-stacked tower of folders I just spent yesterday afternoon organizing. I stare with concern at the now-threatening-to-topple pile as he goes on carelessly. "They went straight there. Didn't you get the group message?"

I blink, then fumble to get my phone out of my pocket, box still awkwardly balanced in my other hand. "Uh … message …?"

"Maybe I forgot to include you in that one. Anyway." Burton shifts his weight. The stack is nudged even further. "I need you out there with them."

"O-Okay," I say to the leaning Tower of Pisa on my desk as I slowly re-pocket my phone. "I'll grab my camera and—"

"I need you to do more than just snap photos today," he adds. "You gotta dig for dirt, Noah. Find a story—a real story."

I look at him. "Wait, what?"

"The crafts festival is always so boring every year. Who cares about what woodwork so-and-so's cousin did? I'm already fallin' asleep. We need something good, Noah. Step it up and actually talk to people. Make friends. Get a story. Capture some big moment."

Talk to people? Make friends? … Did Burton forget who I am? "Aren't … Aren't Patrick and Tamika so much better at all the interviewing and people stuff?"

"Tamika is already there. And Patrick called in. Ate some bad Biggie's or somethin'. Don't tell anyone I said that, I'll have the Tuckers and the Strongs on my ass for that comment."

My brain is already buzzing out of control. "When you say … ‘talk to people' … do you mean—"

"What's the problem, Noah? Do you need more focus? More direction? Dad warned me ‘bout this," he mumbles to himself as he shifts on the desk and causes my stack to tilt even more. I hold my breath. "Look at it this way: You're on a mission. Special mission."

"Special mission?"

"Go down to the festival, approach anything and anyone that catches your eye—and talk. Use that mouth you got. Be brave. You gotta conquer your fears, Noah, ain't no one gonna do it for you."

I stare at him, box of wiggly jello aliens still gazing up at me.

"And you still gotta take photos, so make sure to get a shot of Mayor Strong," he goes on. "She'll be there. Oh, and the reverend, too—Trey or his dad, don't make a difference. I sing at the church, so they'll love bein' in the paper, and that makes me look good. Hey, that's your mission!" he decides at once with a snap. "Make me look good, Noah! My dad has been a dick for over a week now, and somethin' has to go right around here for me."

I slowly reach for the stack, hoping to stop it from tipping.

"That's the spirit!" he exclaims, taking hold of my outreached hand and mistaking the gesture for a handshake. I suffer having my skull jostled by the power in his mighty hand and arm. I nearly drop the box, forced to hug it against my chest. He lets go of my hand abruptly. "Oh, and, uh, work on that smile before you head out. Part of the job is not scarin' away the people you're tryin' to get a story from, y'know. Even if you're not that kinda guy, fake it ‘til you are … or however the saying goes." He pushes away from my desk—and I watch the stack of folders at last meet their doom, falling over onto my keyboard and scattering to the floor. Burton obliviously saunters back to his office, whistling to himself.

The box, I'm sad to report, also got crushed when I squeezed it to my chest. The tiny monstrosities, formerly smiling, now appear misshapen and angry, one of them having fallen over onto its side.

I just realized that's me. A squished, unidentifiable thing on its side, with a face that scares people.

I'm a Jiggle-Wiggle.

"Oh my goodness, Noah, sweetheart, you're not a jello monster," laughs Tamika an hour later when I find her at the festival. She is the bubbly intern I work with, a recent grad from Spruce High who now takes courses nearby at Fairview Community, as sweet as they come, sharp and quick-witted, with vibrant, attentive eyes, golden-brown skin, and cascading curls that hug her petite face. "I see you as more of a … hmm … cute marshmallow."

I hug my camera to my chest, wincing as we push through the crowds on Main Street. I really, really hate crowds. "A cute what?"

"I mean, if we're talking edible stuff. Otherwise you're more of a skittish cat. Hey, don't let Burton get to you, okay? He's like the tough bit of meat everyone cuts around to get to the good stuff. He lacks … seasoning. Needs to be marinated longer. Should I keep it up with this food theme we've started? Oh, look! It's the Tucker-Strongs! Mayor Strong is standing next to them! Take a shot!"

I can't manage a shot of anything in this crowd. "Tamika, I … I think maybe this isn't the right career path for me anymore."

"Why? C'mon. Just because Boorish Burton tossed you into a pressure cooker?—Yikes, now that you've started me on the food stuff, I can't stop."

"I'm great behind the lens and behind the computer … I guess I'm great when I'm behind things. But not people. Talking, digging up dirt … I'm not a town gossip."

"But that's literally what the newspaper is," she says. "It's the world's first iteration of written gossip. The world's original form of social media. That's a little pearl I just heard my professor say in class last week. Hey, just leave the talking to me." She gives me an encouraging pat. "I'm great with people. It's totally my thing."

Being a theatre, yearbook, and newspaper girl herself in high school, Tamika is no stranger to social endeavors. She was in the auditorium at Spruce High when I had that humiliating audition experience, too. She was a freshman. She knows what happens when I open my mouth in front of people.

What she doesn't know are the words I overheard before I left the office. I was crouched by my desk gathering my spilled folders off the floor—the ones Burton unknowingly knocked over—when I overheard his voice: "Nah, nah, already sent him to the festival." I lifted my head slightly and peeked around the corner of my desk. Burton stood by the coffeemaker, phone pressed to his ear, back turned. "Yeah, I know, me too," he carried on. "I said the same thing. Nah, he's an okay photographer, it isn't that. The guy just doesn't understand people. Really, I'm serious, he almost pissed his pants when I told him to go to the festival and—What? Yes, that's what I'm sayin'! How can you work at the Spruce Press and be afraid of people? Nah, dunno why he's still here. I think his granddad used to run the paper or somethin'. Probably a favor."

I pulled myself back behind the desk, afraid to be seen. On the drawer next to my head was a sticky note Tamika gave me last October when I was having a bad day. I kept it.

In pink letters, the note said: You got this! Keep smiling!

"You bet your ass this is his last chance," said Burton. "Yep, my dad's eyeballin' a couple of recent grads to replace him. What's that? Yeah, I can grab a bite. Whatever you want. Pizza. Will Cindy be there? Just wondering. She's … nah, it's not like that. I just … I dunno. She has a way of calmin' me down, alright? Hey, whatever, keep makin' fun of me. Thanks for lettin' me vent, you punk. See ya." Then I listened while Burton closed up his office and took off.

I sat in my desk chair, folders in my hand, and stared ahead at nothing. In the reflective screen of my computer monitor, I saw a dull and lifeless face I hardly recognized: my own.

I decided to practice a smile at myself. It was short-lived.

Even if you're not that kinda guy, fake it ‘til you are. Interesting advice Burton had given me. I wonder if it's the same advice he gives himself every day since being hired on by his dad.

Maybe he's under pressure, too.

"Hey, Noah," says Tamika, pulling me out of my thoughts. "If you stand over there by Ms. Huntington's picture frames where there are less people, I think you might get a better shot of the mayor and her son. I'll stay on this side of the street and try to get you a clear view, alright?"

She always has my back. I'm so thankful to have at least one friend in this town. I head across the street to find a spot. As usual, she's right. I stand by the curb where it's less crowded and easier to manage my camera, then lift it to my face and take a look.

At first, people are blocking the way. The shot is messy. I keep looking and focusing, waiting for the timing to be right, waiting for the mayor to make just the perfect expression I can capture, something that tells a story, something I can write about.

But the longer I stand here waiting, the more Burton's words creep into my mind. This is his last chance. I adjust the focus on the camera. I can feel my hands growing sweaty, unsteady, trembling. My dad's already eyeballin' a couple of recent grads to replace him. I frown as I squint through the lens, now and then losing sight of the mayor and having to readjust.

Somewhere else in my brain, wiggly jello faces mock me.

Somewhere else, my mother's sweet voice: They'll just love it!

Somewhere else, I'm making squeaking noises on a big stage, except now I'm naked. Everyone is laughing, talking to each other, wondering what the hell is going on with this weirdo Noah dude.

Through the lens, I see Tamika. She's shouting at me: "Take the shot!"

But I don't see the mayor anymore. Where did she go? Where is her son Tanner? Her son-in-law Billy? The longer I look through the camera, the less I see. I find myself paralyzed with self-doubt and crippling uncertainty. I see so many people in front of me—happy faces, laughing ones, holding hands, strolling merrily along. None of them seem scared. None of them tremble, wring their hands, or worry over every word that comes out of their mouths.

How does everyone else make it look so easy?

From Tamika's mouth: Take! The! Shot!

And what about my stance at the newspaper? Am I going to have to find a new job soon? Selling my photography alone isn't enough to support myself or contribute to my family. I can't keep relying on my parents, either. I want to own a house someday. I want to have a sense of autonomy. Security. Safety. But nothing is safe or secure. Not even a box of wiggly jello or a stack of folders.

Noah!

Then, like clouds parting to reveal the sky, through the lens of my camera a guy's face leaps out from the crowd.

A face like no other.

Expressive. Dazzling. Amazed. Eyes shimmering like jewels in the sunlight.

Then I realize that face is looking right at me. Bursting with emotion, with staggering might, like solar flares around the bright and brilliant sun, his breathtaking face.

He's charging straight at me, shouting something.

I lower my camera, stunned.

Wait a sec. Is that Cole Harding …?

That's my last thought as Cole rams into me, knocking every ounce of air from my lungs and tackling me to the pavement—just as an enormous stack of something far heavier than folders comes tumbling down right where I stood. My world becomes chaos and shattering glass—and Cole Harding's face hovering over mine.