April Dawson was about seventeen, and unfortunately, the number one discussion in debating class was if she was a goody-two shoes or the perfect example of a geek. In the mirror, at home, she was pretty. Not the perfect, airbrushed beauty women envy and men would kill to own for a single night, but pretty. But her glasses hid her soul-filled brown eyes, her long brown-red hair was always in a messy half-ponytail and she didn't ever look any further than her books and music. She wore hand-made clothing because it was cheaper and because she liked it.
The city she lived in was small enough to boast a yearly graduation class of about fifty students a year. It meant that there were only a handful of exceptional students, be they smart and talented or just plain weird. The rest were wallpaper kids who did their best to blend into the background and not be noticed. April was just on this side of being one of them. The fact that she scored straight A's in everything kept her from blending in, but none of the small cliques wanted her as a friend. She was a loner.
In light of what would happen later, this may or may not have been a good thing.
Well, she did hang out with different people. Mainly so that people wouldn't worry about her, but there were three or four people she genuinely liked being around. If she had taken the plunge for fashion's sake, she could have had the whole school wrapped around her fingers...but she wasn't like that.
Truth be told...she preferred to avoid people.
Today she was looking for something new. It didn't matter what it was. There were a few shops here in town that sold interesting things...hand blown glass figurines, weird bugs inside paper weights, candies and snacks from around the world. April collected odd things, things from other countries and far away places. Some were perishable, and she would buy as many of them as she could to share with people who normally thought "unusual" was what they had written under April's definition in Webster's encyclopedia.
She saw her favorite dealer setting up shop outside his store today. It made sense...school was out for summer, kids with early-morning habits would wake up ready for school...but with nowhere to go. The pool was open for business, the snow cone stand three blocks down had been churning out cones for a month already and had ordered three cases of ice to keep up with demand. Most of the small stores had sidewalk sales all summer for the kids, those that lived here and those that came home for a visit.
"Hey, April!" Darren Case called, propping one foot up on a carton while he drank from the bottle in the other. A quick glance could identify it as soda. "You searching the neighborhood again?"
She nodded. Even at seventeen, she didn't talk often.
"Well, babe-doll, I got something new for you. Come here and take a look."
She walked over and glanced into the open ice chest. All she saw were bags of ice, only about a half-pound each.
"Where is it?" She asked.
"You're looking at 'em." Darren said, then rolled his eyes as he realized the problem. "It's ice, girl. Glacial ice. A friend of mine put the chops to it a few days ago and had it air-lifted down to me. You're looking at twenty-thousand year old ice-cubes, and you won't find anything purer." He lifted a bag, opened it, and popped a few into a glass. He opened a warming soda can and poured in a foamy ocean of root beer around the glacial ice. "Put your ear to it."
She pulled her hair away from her ears before she leaned over. "It hisses!" She said, looking up with a laughing smile.
"You bet it hisses. There's air in them thar cubes." He joked.
"Just like the gold in those hills?" April shot back with a giggle.
"Exactly." He frowned. "You want a bag?"
"They'd melt on the way home." She said. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't waste your ice."
He laughed. "I'll probably be getting more over the next few months. And Donna, the woman who owns the Cone Shack? She's getting a few bricks of it to overcharge for those snowballs of hers. Can you imagine putting that nasty syrup of hers on twenty-thousand year old ice?"
April ignored the fact that he had just poured warm, cheap root beer all over said items.
He chuckled. "Alright, girl. But I'll see if I can't bring you a bag of ice later tonight. And you take this drink with you. No sense wasting this ice here."
"Yes, sir." She took the glass with a smile and swallowed a great gulp of sweet, bubbling soda before she juggled her books to make them easier to carry with a drink. "See you later." She said.
"See you, April." He said, chuckling. He honestly did like the girl.
She walked down the block, pausing at the edge of the street and feeling the sunlight on her face...