Hot Dog Girl

by Jennifer Dugan

  “I can tell.” She waggles her eyebrows. “All right, hot dog girl, let’s go find some food.” She links her pinkie with mine the way she has since we were little, and I follow her down the path with a smile.

  * * *

  • • •

  Having a big catered meal together the first day back is kind of a Magic Castle tradition.

  You’d think Mr. P would cheap out and get a bunch of burgers and hot dogs, but he doesn’t. We have exactly one nice restaurant in this town, Bellini’s, and he always orders from it. It’s all Italian dishes: eggplant rollatini, lasagna, chicken parm, and these super awesome little cannoli that the pastry chef makes fresh every morning. They’re my absolute favorite treat in the entire universe, but there are only two times a year I get them: opening day and my birthday. And it’s not my birthday for a couple months, so . . .

  I can’t help but feel a little choked up again as I walk into the breakroom, the worn gray lockers that dot the canary yellow walls making me feel oddly sentimental. I used to dream of working here, and just when I finally have a place in this stupid breakroom, he takes it all away.

  I sigh and shovel some of the eggplant rollatini onto my tray, grateful at least that Mr. P accommodates the noncarnivores among his staff, and then slide farther down, scooping up some spaghetti and letting it ooze across my plate. I reach the end, ready to grab some cannoli and be on my way . . . but there’s a bowl of candy where my cannoli are supposed to be.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  “Where are the friggin’ cannoli?”

  This is Just. Too. Much. Maybe I could have come around on the whole “closing up shop” thing with a valid reason, but I definitely 100 percent cannot deal with not even getting some farewell cannoli out of it.

  “Seriously?” I shout, turning back to look for Seeley. “He didn’t even get us the cannoli?” Only it’s not Seeley behind me, it’s Mr. P, whose eyebrows about hit the ceiling. “Um, hi, Mr. P. Thanks for lunch, it’s a really nice spread.”

  “Everything okay, Ms. Parker?” he asks, and the formality sounds so foreign. I mean, the man practically lives at my house during tax season.

  “Yeah, everything’s perfect. I was just saying how great the food is and not flipping out at all that you’re closing us down and I don’t even get cannoli.” I gulp. “I’m gonna stop talking now.”

  He blinks hard, his lips a straight line, and if he’s waiting for me to say something else, he’s going to be waiting a long time.

  “Always nice to see you.” He steps around me and grabs some candy. “Tell your father I said hello.”

  “Will do.” And man, I wish I could disappear right into the puddle of spaghetti on my plate. I scurry to sit at the nearest empty table and drop my head onto my arms. Worst first day ever.

  The chair beside me scrapes back and I groan, glad that Seeley is finally finished getting her food. “I am literally the biggest asshole on the planet.”

  “Um,” someone who is definitely not Seeley says.

  I lift my head up, frowning at the sight of Nick in front of me. “What?” I snap. I meant What is even happening right now? but to him it probably sounded more like What the hell do you want?

  “Sorry.” He tightens the grip on his tray. “Do you want to be alone? I can go.”

  “Uh, no, sit.” I hang my head and take a deep breath. “I just thought you were Seeley.”

  “It’s okay.” He crinkles his forehead. “I can sit outside, really.”

  “No, seriously, stay.” I probably sound a little too eager, but I don’t even care. “I made a huge fool of myself in front of Mr. P a minute ago—please don’t also make me add ‘was an ass to Nick’ to the list.”

  He chuckles and shakes his head. “Wow, Elouise, great first day, huh?”

  I stab my fork into the spaghetti and twirl it around. “Something like that.”

  “I can’t believe this is our last summer here.”

  I sigh. “Don’t remind me.”

  Nick leans back in his chair and looks around. “I’m even gonna miss this crappy breakroom. We all gotta hang more while we still have this place. Who knows where we’ll end up next year.”

  “Oh, you mean like we did last summer?” And yeah, it was ballsy to say that, but I’m not gonna not call him out on his bullshit.

  “Hey, I wanted to hang! You were the one—”

  Seeley drops into the seat next to me. “What’s up, loser?” I’m embarrassed for a split second, until I realize she’s talking to Nick. And then I die a little inside because I’ll never get to hear the rest of that sentence. I was the one that what? Didn’t want to hang? WHAT WAS HE GOING TO SAY? I look over at him, but he’s gone back to eating like nothing ever happened.

  “Eh, not much. Just waiting to hear if I have to drive your ass to judo tonight or if you’re skipping again.”

  I roll my eyes. Nick started taking the same judo class as Seeley when he moved here, and I’ve pretty much been seething with jealousy ever since. Lately, they’ve even been carpooling. If it wasn’t so expensive, and they weren’t both in the advanced class, believe me, I’d be right there karate chopping next to them—or whatever it is they do there. But there’s no way I can even ask my dad for that.

  “Remind me again when you leave for college?” Seeley laughs and flicks a chunk of her roll at him, which bounces off his tray and ricochets onto mine. Awesome.

  Nick snorts, pushing his hair back and stretching. I notice he has barely any pit hair. I wonder if he trims it. Probably does. I can’t decide if I like that. I can’t decide if that’s okay. I can’t decide if this is an appropriate amount of time to stare at a boy’s armpit in general. Probably not.

  “You guys are lucky you have one more year,” Nick says, attacking his food again. There’s a little bit of sauce stuck on the corner of his lip, and my brain kinda short circuits when he flicks his tongue out to swipe it. “I feel like I just got here and now I have to leave, you know?”

  “Um.” I stare at him, because what are words even when you’re looking at Nick Mulholland’s tongue, but Seeley nudges me with her foot to snap me out of it. “Yeah, but you’re only like two hours away. That’s not bad. You can still come home all the time.”

  Please, please, please, let him come home all the time.

  “Yeah,” he says, “but Jessa’s going to be about four hours away in the other direction.”

  I shove another forkful of food into my mouth and try to look thoughtful. I want to ask why he’s worrying about that when she’ll most likely just make them break up again, but it’s probably best if I keep chewing instead.

  “Where is Jessa, anyway?” Seeley asks.

  “She was by the castle when I was on the gondola,” I say. “I think she and Ari were just finishing up.”

  Nick hunches down over his plate and shovels more food into his mouth. “So.” He lets out a small sigh. “What are you guys planning for this summer?”

  And there it is, the tiniest hint of a lisp. It doesn’t pop up often, usually only when he’s all excited or worked up about something, but man, when it does, I just melt. It’s like my favorite thing. I don’t know if anyone else notices it. I don’t even think he does.

  “Working here and figuring out how to master sequential art so I can get into a good school next year,” Seeley says.

  “Sequential art?” he asks, and yes, please, keep talking while I melt into a puddle of goo beside you.

  Seeley rolls her eyes. “Yeah, like comics and stuff.”

  Nick crinkles his eyebrows. “You can go to college for comics?” His phone buzzes before she gets a chance to answer, and he slides his chair back with a squeak. “Sorry, I gotta run.” He picks up his tray. “I’ll catch up with you later?”

  “Sounds good.” I smile, and okay, sure, the lisp disappeared again but it was there
for a second, so . . .

  Seeley at least waits for him to leave to shake her head at me. “Pull it together, Lou.” She giggles, but the sound dies in her throat when she looks behind me.

  I whip my head around, following her line of sight. “What?” But then I see it, or her, actually. It’s Sara, walking into the breakroom and getting in line.

  “Ignore her,” I say.

  Seeley huffs, angling her mouth so her breath makes her hair fly around. “That’d be like me telling you to ignore Nick. You can’t help it. It defies rational thought.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not worth it.”

  Seeley lowers her head and jabs at her chicken with a fork. “She is. Or was. I don’t know, I think ‘is’ still applies.”

  “It’s been three months,” I say, like that matters, like time means anything when your heart’s on the line. It doesn’t, I know, but what else can I say?

  Breakups suck, especially when you don’t see them coming, and Seeley definitely didn’t. Sara didn’t even have the decency to give her a reason. She just said, “I would rather date Chelsea now.” I mean, okay, I guess that’s kind of a reason, but I think if Sara was like, “Oh, we fight a lot” or “I hate your parents” or “You chew with your mouth open,” Seeley would have probably taken it a little bit better.

  Because as it stands now, it’s just like “You’re not good enough” or “You’re not Chelsea” or something. I’ve spent the last three months doing everything I can to convince Seeley that isn’t true. Well, the “not good enough” part anyway, I can’t help the “not Chelsea” part. But for real, Seeley is the best. She’s funny, smart, she can draw, and, bonus, she has the cutest cluster of freckles on her left shoulder that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. In no universe should someone as awesome as Seeley ever be single, except for by choice. Sara is a total fool.

  “Right, it’s only been three months.” Seeley sighs, glancing over to where Sara is sitting. I lean over and poke her in the side, right where she’s most ticklish. She jumps and scowls at me, but at least it gets her attention off the girl behind us.

  “None of that. We need to get you back out there.” I flash my eyes.

  “I don’t like the way your face looks right now.”

  “That’s very rude.” I laugh. “I happen to have a very nice face.”

  She starts to crack a smile but looks away, pursing her lips to stave it off. “You have your scheming face on, Lou. Whatever you’re thinking, no.”

  “What I’m thinking is: you’re going on a date.”

  Seeley looks at me, rolling her eyes again. “With who?”

  “Leave that part up to me.” I grin. “But the fact that you said ‘With who’ instead of ‘I’m not’ tells me that this is definitely a good idea.” I grab both of our plates and dump them in the trash, following her outside as the gears turn inside my head.

  “I don’t know, Lou.”

  “Trust me,” I say, and she should, too, because if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding people to fall in love with.

  * * *

  • • •

  Seeley’s barely out of sight before I start running through every option I can possibly think of . . . not that there’s a lot in this small town, or at least not a lot that are out anyway. But it’s not until later, when I’m walking back to my car, totally distracted while defining the parameters of the perfect-girl-for-Seeley rubric in my head, that it hits me. Or rather, I hit her.

  “Oh crap, Angie. Sorry!” I say, grabbing onto her to regain my balance.

  “Easy there, Jimmy Olsen.”

  I flash her a confused smile. “What?”

  “You know, from Superman? The little reporter guy who’s always lost in thought,” she says.

  “Right, totally.”

  Angie tilts her head. “You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”

  I shrug, guilty as charged. “Seeley’s really the one that’s into comics. I just let her draw them on all my stuff.”

  Angie laughs. “I don’t blame you. She’s really good.”

  And that is the exact moment that I realize that Angie’s really good too. Excellent, actually, in terms of being the most ideal girl for Seeley ever.

  “Well, I’m gonna go,” she says, drawing the last word out, and I realize that I’ve been staring at her for way too long without talking.

  “Oh yeah, totally,” I say, and I hope my smile doesn’t give away how over-the-top excited I am right now. Because this, this is definitely going to work.

  Angie gives me a strange look as she walks away, but honestly, I can’t worry about that right now. Now that I’ve solved the mystery of Seeley’s future soul mate, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

  CHAPTER 4

  I make it home in record time and drop my bag at my father’s feet. “Did you know Mr. P was closing Magic Castle?”

  Dad is hunched over, running numbers as usual, with piles of paper crowding around the nook that houses his computer. He closed the office recently, opting to work from home to save money. Dad promised he wouldn’t take over my space, not even when I leave for college next year, so he’s holed up at a nice desk in the corner of the living room.

  He shoves a pen behind his ear and leans back. “What’s that, hon?” There’s a smudge of ink on his cheek, like a pen exploded earlier and he’s been wiping at his face all day. I’m trying to stay mad at him, but he makes it so hard.

  “Did you know that Mr. P was closing Magic Castle?”

  “That’s not really something I can discuss with you. You know that,” he says, as if that’s an acceptable answer.

  “So, you knew, then?” I shake my head. “You knew and you didn’t even bother to warn me?”

  He looks at me, his brow furrowed beneath his shaggy hair. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” I say. “Can’t you talk to Mr. P? There has to be something you can do. I mean, you’re his accountant! You can fix this.”

  “Businesses close every day, hon.” My dad’s words sound a little blunt, a little patronizing, but his voice doesn’t at all. He sounds resigned—disappointed, even.

  “Did you at least try to talk him out of it?”

  “It’s not my place to try to talk him out of it.” A sad smile spreads across his face as he rubs at the scruff of his jaw, his lack of shaving a telltale sign it wasn’t a client day.

  “You mean you could have told him not to, but you didn’t. Awesome.” And here they come, those pointless, frustrating tears, welling up in my eyes like they do every time I get really mad.

  I hate them.

  My dad says I got this from my mother, that she was the exact same way. He said she used to tear up every time she yelled, like her heart was literally breaking from anger. I wish I was nothing like my mother. I wish I was stronger. I wish my anger was loud and wild, instead of wet and weepy. Stupid DNA.

  Dad rolls his chair closer, tilting forward to meet my eyes. “Hey, where’d you go?”

  I stare down at his toes, studying the dark brown hairs that tuft out over the tops of them. I hope I have a job that lets me work barefoot someday. Also, I hope I never get toe hair like that.

  “Sorry,” I say, “I was thinking about Mom.”

  His face falls, and I wish I’d swallowed those words. It’s been years since she left, and it’s still a sore spot for my father. “I see,” he says, because there really isn’t anything else.

  I bite my lip and study the drawings on my shoes until I feel like I can speak again. “Sorry, the park closing is kind of messing with my head.”

  “I know this isn’t easy, but sometimes you have to let things go.” He sets his hand on my arm. “Unfortunately, this is one of those times.”

  Of all the things my brilliant, loving, amazing father could have chosen to say in this moment, that is absolutely
the worst. The anger simmers in my belly and shoots right out of my mouth. “We’ve let enough things go, don’t you think?”

  “El—”

  “I’m talking to Mr. P and I’ll get him to change his mind, and that’s it.”

  My dad shakes his head. “Please don’t torture that old man. It was a hard enough decision for him as it was. Please, Lou, let it be.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? How?” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, huffing hard out through my nose. “It’s not just some stupid park to me, and it shouldn’t be for you either!”

  I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t get how he’s being so cool about this. That park is where he and my mom had their first date, and where he took me when she left. Not to mention every birthday I’ve ever had was spent there—except for the one time I went to one of those places where you make a stuffed animal, a choice I still regret, by the way—and I know it’s silly, but I pictured my graduation party there too. And now it’s going to be gone, just like everything else, and he doesn’t even seem to care.

  “I know it’s not, Elouise, I know. But there’s nothing you can do. You need to focus on the future, not on some falling-down park in a town you’re already too big for.” The pain in my dad’s voice nearly knocks me off my feet. Maybe he’s not as okay with this as he’s trying to seem.

  I shift from foot to foot and kind of half shrug. “I’m not too big for this town, Dad. I never will be.”

  He smiles. “Can I get that in writing?”

  “Oh my god. Do you want it notarized too?”

  “I happen to know a great notary, actually.” He adjusts the certificate on his desk, a smug look crossing his face.

  “You’re such a dork.” I sling my bag over my shoulder and dash up the stairs to my room. “I gotta go take a shower.”

  “Love you,” he calls up, going back to his work.

  “Love you too,” I say, slumping against my bedroom door.