HOW YOU LOOK AT IT

Ivy scanned the buffet with disgust. Fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes swimming in butter and scabbed with bacon bits. Just the kind of food you might expect to find in a barn.

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Ivy’s mother asked, eyeing the two bread rolls Ivy had tonged onto her plate beside the carrot sticks.

“Apparently,” Ivy retorted, “country weddings aren’t designed for vegetarians.”

“Well, at least you’ll like the wedding cake, sweetheart.” Ivy’s mother used her free hand to brush her daughter’s bangs out of her eyes. Ivy scowled and shook her curtain of hair back into place. She strode to their table, a laminated wood plank atop antique wagon wheels. Garlands of sunflowers entwined with twinkling lights marked it as the head table. Ivy hated having to sit there. She felt gawked at.

As she picked at her rolls, she thought: Why would anyone want to have their wedding at a barn?

She glanced over at the newlyweds at the other end of the table, who clearly were quite blissful about being married in a barn. They gushed and giggled and fed one another bites of fried food.

Ivy picked at her rolls. The only reason she was in this barn was because the groom’s best man was her mother’s …. Oh, she hated using the word boyfriend. Her friends at middle school had boyfriends. Ivy’s mother was supposed to have Ivy’s father. But she didn’t. For as long as Ivy could remember, she and her mom had just had each other. But now her mom had Andy. Ivy worked hard to pretend not to notice that they were holding hands across the table.

Andy cleared his throat as he turned to Ivy. “So, it turned out to be a nice wedding, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” she said while finishing the sentence in her mind: … for a wedding at a barn.

She had to admit it wasn’t what she had imagined when her mother told her about it. No dusty stalls or rancid piles of hay. Probably there used to be, but the building had been cleaned out and stood empty for many years, before new owners started renting it out for public events. The ceremony had taken place in the grassy field sloping beside the barn, with not a single cow patty in sight.

With checkered tablecloths and wildflowers arranged in old tin lanterns, Ivy conceded that the reception in the ramshackle barn looked festive—if irredeemably hokey.

“Weddings are such special occasions,” Ivy’s mother said, looking at Andy.

Ivy‘s stomach clenched, and her chair scraped back suddenly from the table. “I really need to go somewhere and get this hay out of my boot,” she declared. “It’s been driving me crazy.”

“Just be back in time to hear Andy’s toast, okay?” her mother sounded anxious. “He worked hard at it.”

“You just might like what I have to say,” Andy grinned at her.

Ivy spun off, boot heels clacking on the wooden floor.

She wasn’t lying about the hay in her boot. It happened while she sat fidgeting on her hay bale seat during the wedding, while her mother made moony eyes at Andy standing up front in his tuxedo. She had felt like she was sitting on a scarecrow. The intruding bits of hay had grown increasingly irritating.

Back home in New York, Ivy had asked her mother if she could wear boots to the wedding—after all, it was at a barn. Then that afternoon, Ivy had stepped off the motel elevator in her wedding outfit: a yellow blouse, short jeans skirt, and knee-length red leather boots, borrowed from her best friend Ree.

Ivy’s mother had started fussing at Ivy to change, but Andy had said softly, “Choose your battles, remember?”

Then, more loudly, he had said with a wink at Ivy, “Since my brother’s making me wear this monkey suit, I figure someone might as well get to wear what they want. Why not Ivy?”

Ivy’s mother cleared her throat. “Speaking of things that people want …” she started, but Ivy cut her off.

“Don’t we need to leave for the wedding, like right now? The barn is waiting!”

Now Ivy looked around for a sheltered place to remove her boot. The bathroom was small and old-fashioned, with only one stall and no place else to sit.

Then beside the bathroom she saw another door, slightly ajar. It led to a narrow staircase, dark and irresistible. At the top she stepped out onto a wide ledge that overlooked the barn floor. While the reception area had been renovated, up here the barn felt its age and showed its roots. The sloping wallboards were cracked and splintery, dust spun in the air and cobwebs graced every corner.

Floorboards creaked as Ivy crept up to the edge and peered down on the crowded reception spread out below. From this perspective she noted the geometry of the tables, with guests threading the narrow walkways between them. She leaned farther over the ledge so she could see the head table. There were her mother and Andy, deep in conversation, their heads nearly touching.

Ivy scowled and turned away, and spied an antique stool near the back wall. She sat down and had just begun the long process of unlacing her boot, when a voice startled her.

“Bonjour!”

She looked around but didn’t see anyone. The only other piece of furniture was a large, tottery storage cabinet.

“Hola, konnichiwa, guten tag …” Ivy kept looking for the source of the friendly, nasally voice. Suddenly a hand stuck out from the other side of the cabinet and waved. “Hello!”

“Hello?” Ivy tentatively waved back.

“Welcome to the best hiding spot of any wedding I’ve ever been to.”

“You hide out at a lot of weddings?” Now Ivy was amused as well as curious.

“I’m just a good hider. The wedding part is optional. What are you doing up here?”

Ivy pointed to her foot, though she wasn’t sure whoever-it-was could see her from the other side of the cabinet. “I’m getting the hay out of my boot.”

“That’s perfect—this used to be the hay loft!” He laughed. “Probably the first hay that’s been up here in about a hundred years.”

Ivy finally loosened the boot enough to slip out her foot. She turned the boot upside down and tapped it, shaking loose several golden fragments. “There, now it’s a hay loft again.” She searched with her hand inside the boot. “So, why are you hiding?”

There was a pause, then a curly head popped out as the boy scrambled to his feet and came around the cabinet, one hand holding his place in a book, the other hand outstretched. “Hi. I’m William.”

Ivy looked up from her boot, and gasped.

The boy’s pink cheeks were enormous. Like a cartoon squirrel hoarding nuts. They were so swollen that his nose was scrunched up and his ears stuck out. She couldn’t imagine how he was able to eat or even talk normally with those massive cheeks. Ivy forced herself to look away.

Instead, she looked at his hand, which she shook. “I’m Ivy.”

It was hard to tell his age from his distorted appearance, but judging from his height he was a year or two younger than her. Ivy’s gaze strayed back to his face. “You have nice eyes,” she said.

“I know! They’re my best feature.” He peered up into her face. “I can’t really see your eyes. Are they nice too?”

Ivy swiped her bangs away from her face.

“Yes, they are!” William crowed. Ivy couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“So, why are you hiding up here?” William asked.

“I told you,” she said, holding up her boot by the heel.

“No, you could have done that outside. You’re hiding.”

She considered a moment, then beckoned him to the edge of the loft, and pointed. “That’s my mom. And that’s Andy. I have this terrible feeling he’s going to ask my mom to marry him.”

“And that’s a bad thing? Is he a horrible person?”

Ivy had to stop and think about that. She tried to summon a defense of his horribleness, but what popped into her mind was Andy standing up for her to her mother before the wedding.

“No, actually I guess he’s a decent guy,” she admitted begrudgingly.

“Does he make your mom happy?”

“See for yourself. She’s all googly when he’s around. It’s gross.”

“If you say so. It looks kind of sweet to me.”

Ivy found herself growing annoyed. “But—my mom’s name is Andie. Short for Andrea. They can’t get married and be Andie and Andy. Who marries someone with the same name?”

William laughed. With his bulging cheeks it came out as a nasally snort. “That would be so funny!”

“No, that would be—I just don’t want her to get married, okay?”

“If you say so,” the boy repeated with a shrug.

As Ivy picked up her boot again, he said cheerfully, “Do you want me to answer your question now?”

“I haven’t asked you anything.”

“But you thought it. I don’t mind. You’re wondering, Why does he look like a puffer fish?”

“I was thinking more like a squirrel, but ... Do you want to tell me?”

“Lymphoma,” he said simply. “Google it.”

“Okay,” said Ivy, tucking the word away. She slowly started to put her boot back on, thinking of how to change the subject. “So, now I bet you have a question. You’re probably wondering: Why doesn’t she want her mom getting married to a decent guy?”

“Nope, I already guessed the answer to that one,” William announced. “You don’t like change.”

“You’ve known me for what, five minutes, and already you have me figured out?”

“No one likes change.” He held up the book he was reading. His hand was covering the spine and Ivy couldn’t make out the title. “That’s in just about every book. Life is happening, and then something changes. Usually the characters hate it at first, but they have to deal with it. Sometimes they even learn to like it. And life goes on.”

Ivy began lacing up her boot, tugging fiercely at the strings. She was picturing Andy on every page of her life story from now on. She didn’t want to deal with it. And she certainly didn’t want to learn to like it.

“Look!” William was pointing to the small square window near the peak of the loft. Mellow rays of early evening sun had just crossed the threshold of the windowpane in a golden haze. Every mote of dust in their path lit up like fireflies.

William began dancing in the shaft of sunlight, waving his arms as if trying to catch every beam. Ivy grinned. Before she knew it she had joined him, spinning and snatching at the glowing motes. Finally William flopped breathlessly onto the floor, and Ivy returned, a bit sheepishly, to her antique stool. There was a companionable silence.

“I get it, change is hard.” William suddenly sat up. “But life goes on, and it could turn out great. You could have this decent guy around who makes your mom happy, and I bet when she’s happy, she’s nicer to you. Right?”

Ivy nodded slowly.

“It’s all in how you look at it,” William said, his eyes on the purpling square of sky through the loft window.

“What about for you …?” Ivy said hesitantly. “Will—will life go on?”

William turned his head toward her and said nothing. He just looked at her with those frank, kind, dark eyes.

Just then the clink of a fork on glass rang out clearly. It became very quiet down below. Funny, Ivy thought, she hadn’t noticed the white noise of conversation until it ceased. She thought she could hear Andy clearing his throat.

“I have to go!” she whispered to William. “They’re about to start the toasts. I should be there.”

William gave her his scrunched up smile. “Ivy, remember … Once you get past the hard part, it might turn out better than you imagine!”

Ivy paused at the doorway. “You too, William,” she said. “Ciao.” Then her red boots clattered down the stairs.