The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon Read Free Book Online

the money.
    They’d always lived pretty close to the bone, making ends meet by selling vegetables and eggs at the farmers’ market. Her mom sold hand-knit socks and hats there, too, and at craft shops and shows around the state. Her mother was big into bartering. They never bought anything new, and when something broke, they fixed it rather than replacing it. Ruthie had learned at a young age not to beg for stuff they couldn’t afford. Asking for a certain kind of sneaker or jacket just because all the other kids in her class had it earned her serious looks of disapproval and disappointment from her parents, who would remind her that she had perfectly nice things (even if they had come from the thrift store and had some other kid’s name written inside).
    Ruthie’s mom decided it would be best if Ruthie stayed in West Hall and went to community college for a year; she even offered to pay Ruthie to help with the egg business. It was now her job to keep the books, feed the hens each day, gather the eggs, keep the coop clean.
    “You want to study business, isn’t this a much more practical way to learn?” her mother had asked.
    “Selling a few dozen eggs at the farmers’ market isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
    “Well, it’s a start. And with your father gone, I could use the extra help,” her mother had said. “Next year,” her mother promised, “you can reapply anywhere you’d like. I’ll help pay.”
    Ruthie argued, said there were student loans, grants, and scholarships she might qualify for, but her mother wouldn’t fill out the paperwork, because it was just another way Big Brother was watching. The feds were not to be trusted, even when they were loaning money to college students. They’d get you caught up in the system, the very system her mother and father had worked so hard to stay free from.
    “Things would be different if your father were still here,” her mother said. And Ruthie knew it was true, though she found it unsettling that whenever her mother spoke of him she made it sound as if he’d gone off on a trip, up and left them on purpose, not dropped dead from a heart attack two years ago. If her father were still alive, she’d be off at college. Her father understood her as no oneelse had, knew how much she’d wanted to get away. He would have found a way to make it happen.
    “Is it so bad?” her mother had asked, smoothing Ruthie’s unruly dark hair. “Staying home one more year?”
    Yes
, Ruthie had wanted to say.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
    But then she thought of Buzz, who hadn’t even applied to college and was working for his uncle at the scrap-metal yard. It was shit work, but Buzz always had money and found lots of cool pieces for his sculptures—these amazing monsters, aliens, and robots made from welded-together car parts and broken farm machinery. His uncle’s front lot was full of Buzz’s creations. He’d even made a little money selling a couple to tourists.
    She and Buzz had met senior year at a keg party over at Cranberry Meadow. It was early October, and going to the party had been Emily’s idea—she had a huge crush on a boy named Adam who’d graduated the year before, and Emily had heard he’d be there. It turned out Adam had come to the party with his cousin Buzz, and, somehow or other, the four of them ended up drifting away from the bonfire by the pond and going up to the cemetery. Adam and Emily were making out under a granite cross while Ruthie made awkward small talk with Buzz, annoyed at Emily for getting her into this. Buzz said his dad and uncle lived in West Hall, but he was living with his mom in Barre and going to school there. He was enrolled in the Barre Technical Center, in the automotive program.
    “Cars are okay,” he’d told her with a shrug while they sipped cheap beer out of plastic cups. “I guess I’m pretty good at fixing stuff. I’m on the pit crew for my cousin Adam—he races out at Thunder Road. You ever go out to Thunder