by Cameron Lund
“Hey, Terst.” Ryder ignores Andrew and turns toward Simon, holding his taco up to Simon’s nose. “Bet you’ve never been this close to a taco. How’s it smell?”
“Fuck you.” Simon swats Ryder’s hand away. “My life is an all-you-can-eat taco buffet.”
Ryder starts laughing at this, and not in the nice way. Simon is small and twitchy and is almost blind without his wire-rimmed glasses. Danielle started referring to him as the Rabbit back in sixth grade, and the nickname kinda stuck.
“Sure, man,” Chase says. “You’re drowning in tacos.”
Simon’s face is red and blotchy. It occurs to me he’s probably a virgin too. This awkward label is something we share. I bite into my taco and chew, trying to distract myself.
“I’m a one taco kind of guy,” Edwin says. He and Molly Moye have been inseparable ever since my birthday. “Molly or nothing.”
“Seriously?” Ryder asks. He raises his hand up to imitate cracking a whip, making sounds with his tongue pressed against his front teeth. “Someone’s whipped.”
“Not whipped,” Edwin says. “Smart. I’ll never do better than Molly. She’s amazing.”
“When you have a girlfriend you can get it whenever you want,” Chase says. “One girl who knows what she’s doing.”
“How about ten girls who know what they’re doing?” Ryder breaks into a wide smile. He turns to Andrew. “Right, Reed?”
Andrew rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. I mean, not at once, but variety is nice.”
Andrew talking about girls as if we’re some sampler platter he’d like to try is so gross that I pick up a handful of shredded cheese and throw it at him. The shreds flutter down into his lap and he brushes them off, unbothered. “Whatever, Drewchebag,” I say. “You don’t even like variety. You like blonds.”
He stops brushing the cheese out of his lap and looks up at me. “What?”
“You seriously need me to point this out? Cecilia and Sophie and Susie Palmer all look pretty much the same. You definitely have a type.”
“I’ve never noticed,” he says. “It’s not on purpose.” The tips of his ears are bright pink.
“Susie Palm-job,” Ryder says. “Worst handy of my life.”
“Worst handy,” Chase says. “Kinda redundant. I mean, any hand job is pointless, isn’t it? Like, I’ve been touching my junk for eighteen years. I know what I’m doing. Any chick that tries is set up for failure.”
Sometimes hearing the guys talk like this makes my anxiety spike. It’s like they think a girl is expected to be a pro the first time she ever sees a penis. I hate that I’m not brave enough to tell them they’re being idiots.
“But this was worse,” Ryder says. “Like she was squeezing out a washcloth. She has sandpaper hands.”
“A sand job,” Edwin adds.
“Aren’t we past the age of hand jobs anyway?” Chase says. “Hand jobs were cool in middle school. Like, in eighth grade, I was super stoked if a girl went anywhere near there. But at this point, I’m over it. I’d rather just do it myself.”
“Mouth or nothing,” Simon says, like he has any right to decide.
“I’d use my own mouth if I could reach,” Chase says. “DIY.”
“All right, David Blowie,” Andrew says. “Keep the details to yourself.”
“Would you rather,” Edwin says, “get a sand job or blow yourself?”
“Depends who the sand job is from.” Chase grins. “I’d take a sand job from Danielle.”
“Agreed,” Andrew says, and I look at him, surprised. I didn’t know he saw Danielle that way.
“I’d cut off an arm for a sand job from Danielle,” Ryder says.
“Forget that,” Simon counters. “I’d cut off an arm to see Ava’s tits.”
“Seen ’em,” Ryder says. “Worth it.”
“Can you guys stop?” I interrupt. “You’re talking about my friends. You don’t think I’ll tell them all of this?”
“So?” Ryder shrugs. “We’re complimenting them.”
I’m about to throw the giant tub of guacamole at Ryder’s face, but luckily for him, there’s a knock at the door. Everyone stops talking.
“Who else is coming?” I get up to answer it, like it’s my house. It basically is.
“Oh, it’s probably Cecilia.” Andrew gets up too.
I stop walking. “Cecilia?”
“Yeah,” he says, like it’s normal for her to be showing up here.
“No girls at taco night!” Ryder calls out to us, and I whirl around to face him.
“What the hell do you think I am?”
“You don’t count.” He crunches into his taco and smiles, his teeth full of beans. I think again that this is why—this is why—I’m still a virgin. Why would I ever be attracted to any of them when I’ve heard these conversations? This is why James Dean matters so much; he’s a chance at a fresh start.
Andrew beats me to the door and opens it, and there she is: Cecilia Brooks. She’s as lovely as ever, wisps of blond hair curling around her face, apple cheeks pink and glowing. When she takes off her coat, she’s wearing a V-neck sweater, soft baby pink and tight around her chest, low-cut so that both our pairs of eyes—mine and Andrew’s—are drawn there, trying not to stare.
“Hi, Drew.” She gives him a quick hug, then turns to me and waves, keeping one arm securely on his shoulder as if he might float away if she lets him go. “Hey, Keely.”
“Hey,” I say, walking back into the kitchen. They follow behind me, and when I turn to glance back, her hand has slid down from his shoulder and is now wrapped around his waist.
The kitchen looks cleaner when we come back. The guys have wiped up the spilled taco fillings that were strewn about the counter and have thrown away their old napkins. They’re all sitting a little bit straighter.
“Hi, everyone!” Cecilia says.
“You want a taco?” Chase asks, getting up from his stool.
“I can make you one.” Andrew peels away from her and opens one of the kitchen cabinets to grab a plate.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not hungry.” He puts the plate back.
“Here,” Edwin says, getting up from his stool. “You can take my seat. I was getting tired of sitting anyway.”
“Oh, thanks, Edwin,” she says, touching his shoulder lightly as she sits down.
There’s silence as we all look at one another, unsure of what to say. She’s like a disturbance in the airwaves, a ripple in the water. The room smells different—fresh and flowery. She must be wearing perfume strong enough to overpower the smell of beans.
“You look nice,” Andrew says. “I like your sweater.”
She looks down at it and then back up at all of us, a bright smile on her perfectly symmetrical face. “Thanks. It was on sale.”
“Nice,” Andrew says. “You look good in pink.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Chase bringing his hand up to cover a yawn, which makes me yawn in response. And there’s a small part of me—a part I’m not particularly proud of—that’s suddenly relieved I get to see what’s behind the curtain. Not just because I see the truth that Cecilia doesn’t, but because I get them without all the bullshit. I get the real Andrew—the one who is funny and lively and sometimes makes me snort milk out of my nose, but who at other times makes me so frustrated I want to shake him. The truth is a little scary. How can I ever trust a guy around his friends when I know so well how guys act around their friends?
But as I watch Andrew tap his fingers quietly on the surface of the counter, the ticking of the clock loud in the now silent room, I realize maybe a tiny bit of me is glad I don’t count.
NINE
IT SNOWS THROUGH the rest of March, and then finally it’s April, and everything melts under a warming sun. The store gets slightly busier as people come out of hibernation,
and I settle easily into the work. Mr. Roth is hardly ever there, and so I spend most of my days with either Dean or this older guy Tim, who can spend an entire shift analyzing a single episode of Star Trek. Obviously I’ve tried to tell him Star Wars is better, but he won’t listen.
It’s Thursday evening and the store has been empty for nearly an hour. I’m up front organizing the rows of sticky pastries into a precarious pyramid formation I’ve been mentally referring to as “Sugar Mountain,” when Dean pops his head out from behind a row of DVD cases at the back of the store.
“So you said you like Hitchcock, right?”
“Yeah, why?” I call back to him, placing a croissant neatly on top of Sugar Mountain, a pile of flaky crumbs raining down onto the counter.
He emerges from behind the stacks and comes to join me at the front of the store, a DVD case clutched in his hands. “So what’s your take on horror, then? Are you just into old-school, suspenseful stuff? Or have you explored the genre a bit?” His eyes are sparkling in excitement, little crinkles at the corners. “How about monsters and zombies?” He raises his brows. “Gore?”
Dean places the movie down in front of me. It’s called Mayhem in the Monastery and features a terrified nun in the grasp of a giant bloody hand. The scream on her face is almost funny.
“This is horror?” I ask skeptically. “Not comedy?”
He grins for a second, then goes stone-faced. “This is terrifying. C’mon.” He snatches the case off the counter and, without waiting for me to follow, turns and heads to the back of the store.
“C’mon where?” I glance at the front door. Through the clear glass I can see that the parking lot is empty, Dean’s motorcycle the only vehicle in sight. Yes, Dean drives a motorcycle, because of course he does. The chalkboard out front reads:
DAD, WHAT’S A VIDEO?
I sigh and put down the pastry I’m holding, abandoning Sugar Mountain to follow him into the break room. There’s an old couch against one wall that probably has things growing in it, and across from that, a small TV. The walls are covered in more old movie posters, which I kind of love, and in the corner there’s a life-sized cutout of Legolas from The Lord of the Rings, which has probably been there for years. I guess somebody put a Santa hat on his head around Christmas and it’s still there.
Dean is inserting Mayhem in the Monastery into the DVD player.
“We can’t watch now.” I pause halfway through the door. “What if we have customers?”
“We never have customers,” he says dryly. The menu pops up and scary, dramatic violin music fills the room.
“We do have customers,” I protest weakly. “That woman came in earlier for a coffee. And what about that vampire guy?”
The truth is, I don’t want to sit next to Dean on the small couch almost as badly as I do want to sit next to him. Sitting next to him means not knowing where to put my hands and having to keep my body rigid, because if I relax, what if I lean toward him and our shoulders touch? He probably wouldn’t want our shoulders to touch because he’s used to his shoulder touching prettier, older girls—sophisticated college girls who study film and smoke clove cigarettes and talk about how art makes them feel.
“There’s a bell over the door,” he says. “Remember? If anyone comes in we can go back up front.” I know he’s right. In the three weeks I’ve been here, we’ve had more time alone than we’ve had with customers—it’s just we usually don’t spend it actually hanging out. This is the first time he’s paid this much attention to me, and I am practically glowing. He presses PLAY on the remote. “It’ll be fine. I promise.” There he goes again with the promises.
“Mean it?” I ask.
“Every time.”
He flops down on the couch and I sit hesitantly next to him. The screen goes dark, then opens on a scene of a mountain, swirling fog licking the top of the peak. A woman’s scream fills the room and the title card flips into view: Mayhem in the Monastery.
Dean’s leg is relaxed, his knee leaning toward mine. He shifts and the edge of his knee makes contact. I can’t tell if it’s on purpose. The touch is so light he may not have even noticed, though to me, the spot is burning, spreading heat up my leg and through my body, warming my chest and cheeks.
I can’t focus on what’s happening on the screen. His presence is too distracting. Why did he pull me back here? Why is he suddenly paying me this attention? Is it just because he wants to watch a stupid movie? Is it because he’s bored? Or did he want to sit here next to me, want to let his knee touch mine? I can hear my breath, distractingly loud in my ears, so I close my mouth and try to breathe from my nose, but that only makes me dizzy.
“What do you think?” He turns to me, shifting so his knee loses contact. I feel a rush of relief and suddenly I can breathe again.
“I can’t tell if you actually like this movie or if it’s a joke.”
“But you look scared,” he says. “You’re so tense you’re practically running from the room.”
“I’m not scared!”
“It’s okay if you’re scared. The nuns are very scary.” And then he reaches over and takes my hand, squeezing it gently in his.
I’ve held hands before, but not like this. His hands are rough and slightly calloused, but I don’t mind. His fingers are dancing in mine, a light feathery touch. I let them trace the center of my palm, then move up my wrist. They flutter on the sensitive skin there, then move back down as he takes a light hold onto each of my fingers, playing with them one by one.
As we let our hands slide along each other, my breath catches in my throat. I want to speak, but I don’t know what to say or how to say it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to speak again. All I can focus on is the feel of his skin on mine and the roaring rush of blood in my ears as the world fades away to just soft, moving hands.
The little bell jingles at the front of the store and I jump, the bright light of the break room crashing back into focus. I blink at the screen as a woman in a nun’s habit runs screaming through a dark forest, the exaggerated image so out of place with my mood. Dean pulls back his hand and picks up the remote, pausing the movie.
“Duty calls.”
“Right.”
He stands up and walks toward the door. “I can get it if you want to keep watching. There’s a really good part coming up.”
“You don’t think it’s Mr. Roth?” I feel disoriented, like I’ve woken up from a nap.
“Nope, older lady. She’s seriously eyeing your tower of pastries.”
“Don’t let her eat my mountain!”
“I’m on it. Keep watching. There’s a scene coming up where a zombie gets his head cut off by a shovel. Sorry. Spoiler alert.”
“Sounds lovely.”
He moves to walk back into the store, but then pauses and turns back to me. “I’m glad you’re into this kind of stuff.” He motions toward the TV. “Sarah, who used to work here, only wanted to watch, like, really basic movies. I could never get her to watch anything weird. You’re pretty cool.”
He grins and then leaves me alone in the break room. His words flow through me like warm light.
TEN
DANIELLE OLIVER SUCKS IN BED ;)
DANIELLE FOUND THE note taped to her locker Friday morning, right after first period. Now it’s laid out in front of us on her bedroom rug and we’re gathered around it, sprawled out on the floor. It’s early on a Saturday night and we’re planning on sleeping over, already in our sweats and surrounded by boxes of Chinese takeout (a risky order from Chinese Food Restaurant).
“It’s actually kind of pathetic,” Danielle says. “Like, if someone has a problem with me, they should say it to my face.” She picks up the note and rips it cleanly in two, throwing the severed pieces into the trash. “Whoever wrote this is a fucking coward.” She scoops up a piece of broccoli with her chopsticks.
“Well, mayb
e they’re jealous,” Ava says. She pulls a box of nail polish out from under Danielle’s bed and begins rummaging through it. “Maybe it’s someone who loves Chase and she’s mad you got there first. Now that you’ve slept with him, nobody else is going to measure up.”
It’s just the kind of compliment Danielle needs, and I wonder if Ava is just trying to be a good friend or if it’s something she truly believes.
“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Danielle says. “Everyone loves Chase.”
I can tell she’s a little proud when she says it.
“Maybe Chase wrote it,” Ava says, and it’s like her compliment has been revoked. Sometimes I think it must be hard for Ava to have a best friend who will always be slightly meaner, braver, and better at getting in the last word. I understand the temptation to poke the bear, but I never would. Maybe my survival instincts are stronger. Or maybe I’m just scared.
“The winky face is the worst part,” I say, trying to deflect. “It’s kinda . . . sinister.”
Ava cracks open a bottle of nail polish and Danielle wrinkles her nose. “Are you seriously painting your nails right now? We’re eating.”
“I’m done.” Ava shrugs, beginning to paint her thumb green, the same color as her faded Saint Patrick’s Day hair.
“Your hands are covered in chicken, and that nail polish smell makes me want to gag.” Danielle closes the box of broccoli and sets it aside a little too forcefully, letting her anger out on the takeout instead of Ava. But we all know Ava’s getting off easy—Danielle can bite much harder than this.
Just then, my phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out. There’s a text from an unknown number.
Hey work buddy
I feel my face flush, hope flooding through my chest. I never gave Dean my number, but maybe he got it from my paperwork.
Who is this?
I type back slowly, then set my phone down on the rug in front of me so I can see the screen, my heart thudding so loud I’m surprised the other girls can’t hear it. I put aside the carton of orange chicken I’ve been picking through, my hunger gone. An answer comes back almost immediately.