90 Days of Different

by Eric Walters

“I feel bad,” my father said. “I’m supposed to be fixing meals for you.”

  “Really, it’s more about you two taking care of yourselves, not you taking care of me.”

  He looked guilty. And really, he should have been feeling at least a little guilty. In some ways he wasn’t really keeping his commitment to provide for the two of them. Canned stew wasn’t cooking. It was hardly food.

  “The salad is good, though, right?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” I said. “Could you pass me the bag?”

  Serving food from cans and bags just didn’t seem right, but I couldn’t say anything more without making my father feel worse.

  Oliver handed me the bag of salad. “You can have my share of the salad if you want.”

  “It’s good salad,” I said. “It’s well-prepared, washed, precut salad.”

  I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince. I was grateful my father had picked it up at the grocery store. So far over the past few days, I hadn’t seen many greens in their diets. I was starting to be afraid that when I went away the two of them would die of scurvy.

  We had divided our groceries. I told them it was more realistic for them to prepare to just feed the two of them since I’d be gone, but my father still insisted on trying to feed me some of the time. My food was in the fridge downstairs. That fridge held the remains of an incredible strawberry and pecan salad I’d made the day before. It wasn’t even the same species of food as this bagged salad. I’d have some of my salad later on.

  It had quickly become apparent that my father hadn’t magically acquired the ability to cook. When he’d said he could cook, he meant he could reheat things that came from a can or the freezer. Everything else they’d eaten had been takeout, ordered in or from behind the deli counter at the supermarket.

  I really wanted to talk to him about their choices, but I couldn’t. That’s what mothers said to children, not what daughters said to their fathers. I had to just sit back and wait and hope that their diet improved. There was a learning curve, and he would get better at cooking as he did it more often. It wasn’t realistic to expect him to be perfect. Perfection was pretty hard to achieve. I knew that from years of trying.

  “So does Ella have something planned for you for later today?” my father asked.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes she just springs it on me.”

  “The roller coaster wasn’t too bad,” he said.

  “Only my sister would find it bad to do what everybody else in the world pays money and waits in long lines to do,” said Oliver.

  “Maybe you should think of it like the stew,” I said. “If there were more people like me who hated roller coasters, the lines would be shorter and you could ride more often.”

  “That makes sense,” Oliver said. “I love that picture of you and Ella.”

  He meant the one taken by an automatic camera at the ride. Ella had convinced me, against my will, to put it on Twitter and Instagram.

  “Until I saw that picture I would have sworn I’d never seen a bad picture of you,” my father said.

  “I don’t think those sorts of pictures are ever flattering.”

  “Ella looks okay,” Oliver said.

  “You just think that because of your future marital plans,” I joked.

  “Shut up, Sophie.”

  Ella always kidded Oliver that he was her back-up plan if she didn’t find somebody to marry. He told her she was his back-up plan if there was no other life on the planet. He protested, but I knew he really did like Ella and was secretly flattered by the attention.

  “It’s going to be so wonderful to have her as my sister-in-law,” I said, trying to agitate him a little bit more.

  “Again, shut up, Sophie.” He paused. “But she really does look a lot better than you do in that picture.”

  “He’s right,” my father said, and I was a little surprised.

  “I just love the way your face is all squishy and your eyes are all bugged out and you look sort of like this.” Oliver distorted his face and opened his eyes as wide as he could.

  “I get the idea. The important thing is that it’s done and over,” I said.

  “The ride may be over, but the picture is forever,” Oliver said.

  “I can always delete it.”

  “Even if you take it down, it’s still on Ella’s Facebook page as her profile picture.”

  “What?”

  “It’s her profile picture. Didn’t you know that?” Oliver asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You should look.”

  “I will…I guess.”

  I finished my salad while Oliver practically licked his plate clean. Maybe I’d been wasting my time cooking for him when all he wanted was canned crap. I excused myself and went to my room.

  I looked at Ella’s Facebook page. There, front and center as her profile picture, was the photo of the two of us on the roller coaster. I looked awful! And Ella did look good.

  Then I read the caption. Me and my almost-always-beautiful friend Soph—talk about a different!

  That was sort of funny. And a little bit mean. Maybe I’d ask her to take it down. No, I couldn’t do that. That was too, well, vain. Besides, she’d told me I had to change my profile picture every few days, so I had to assume she did the same.

  And then I thought back to what she’d said about how people reacted when the two of us walked into a room. If the two girls from that picture strolled into a room, I knew which one the guys would be interested in. It wouldn’t be me. And that bothered me a little—okay, more than a little. Is that how Ella felt being around me?

  DAY 9

  “That was quite the jump in friends and followers in the last few days,” Ella said as we drove along.

  I now had 356 friends on Facebook, just under 200 followers on Twitter and 78 on Instagram.

  “I guess people like pictures of terrified-looking roller-coaster riders,” I said.

  “That was some picture of us!” Ella laughed.

  She’d kept it as her profile picture, and I’d thought a lot about it the last two days. This was my opening.

  “You look pretty good.”

  “I look gorgeous!” Ella said.

  “Better than I look.”

  “I’ve never seen you look so awful, and that’s what makes it so hilarious.” She paused and looked at me. “You’re not having a problem with that, are you?”

  I wanted to blurt out the truth, but I didn’t. “It’s just a picture.”

  “Good. I was afraid you were going all prima donna on me.”

  “Is that how you see me?”

  “Not really, although you’re certainly more made up today than you usually are.”

  I shrugged. It was true that I’d taken a little more time with my makeup, and I was wearing a new top. And maybe it did have to do with that bad picture. Did that make me a prima donna?

  “And here we are,” Ella said as she turned into the parking lot of Burger Barn.

  “Aren’t we about three hours early for lunch?”

  “We are definitely early for lunch, but just on time to report to work. You are one of the Burger Barn’s newest employees,” Ella said.

  “You arranged for me to work at a burger place?”

  “Yes, I applied online, and we were both hired. I didn’t want to miss out on having or watching the fun. Apparently, they’ll just about take anybody, sight unseen. Training starts in ten minutes.”

  “But how is this a different? I worked in a fast-food place before—two summers ago with you, remember?”

  “I’ve tried hard to blur that memory. I also remember you were such a diligent little worker bee that you were the employee of the week half the time.”

  “So how is us working here a different?” I asked.

  “For starters, the last time you worked fast food, you were trying relentlessly har
d to do a good job.”

  “And this time I’m not?”

  “Your mission is to do such a terrible job that you get fired, stripped of your uniform and hairnet, before the end of the lunch rush.”

  “You want me to get fired?”

  “Not just fired, but gloriously fired. I want them to put your picture on the wall as the worst employee of the week, month and year. I want you to become a legendary bad employee. You remember all those stupid things customers said to us, all the ridiculous requests, all the dumb orders given by stupid supervisors?” Ella asked.

  “Some of them are hard to forget because they were magnificently stupid.”

  “And do you remember how you just had to suck it up, nod your head, smile and pretend the customer and the boss were always right when they were clearly wrong?”

  “That’s part of the reason I never wanted to work fast food again.”

  “Today you will look forward to those comments, enjoy them and react to them. Forget about the customer always being right. The customer is going to be painfully, relentlessly, always wrong. Today, instead of being the best employee you can be, you have to be the worst employee imaginable. Do you accept your different?”

  “Um…it’s just that I’m not sure if I can be a bad employee. You know I like to do my best.”

  “You will do your best at being bad. Well?”

  It might be fun. “I gave you my word, Ella.”

  “Oh, by the way, you should start calling me Sky.”

  “What?”

  “On the applications, I wrote that I was Sky Fall and you are Meadow Fields.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “What’s ridiculous is that nobody even questioned those names.”

  “But why didn’t you just fill out our real names?”

  “Oh, believe me, by the time this is over you’re going to be so glad they don’t know your real name.”

  The training was pretty easy. Of the five new Burger Barn employees, Ella and I were not only the oldest but the only two with experience. That didn’t surprise me. People who had experienced fast-food employment once seldom did it again.

  We were dressed in our new uniforms. Well, new to us—mine had a stain at the back. How I would have liked to wash it before putting it on. They were also ill fitting, worn and a strange color combination of mustard, brown and white, which were the official colors of Burger Barn. To top it all off, we wore little badges that read Trainee—please be patient. Our plan, of course, was to push people’s patience to the breaking point.

  We had asked to work at the front, and the manager, Barney, was thrilled to oblige, in part because of our experience but also because nobody else wanted to. It was definitely the hardest and worst place to be, because it required direct contact with customers. Ella had said that’s what made it the best place for us to be, and that’s what was scary.

  Barney said he had himself “a couple of keepers” in the two of us. Boy, was he going to be proven wrong.

  We were going to be a pair, me working the cash register and Ella getting the meals. Barney hovered over us as we handled the first few customers. The register was easy, and the menu was simple.

  “Meadow, Sky, you are both doing incredibly well,” Barney said.

  He sounded so proud that it made me feel guilty.

  “Thanks,” Ella said. “Do new employees qualify for employee of the week?”

  “It’s employee of the month, and they definitely do,” Barney said.

  “That’s what we’re aiming for, right, Meadow?”

  I’d almost forgotten my name. “Yes, that’s my goal.” In real life that always was my goal, whether it was working in a fast-food place or getting the best marks or being the star of the volleyball team.

  “I was employee of the month eleven times when I was front line,” Barney said. “You know, before I made the big move into management.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Ella said.

  It didn’t surprise me either, but it did sound a bit pathetic that he was so proud of it. Had I sounded that pathetic or that proud?

  “Meadow was often the employee of the week where we used to work.”

  “Good to know. I suspected as much.”

  He gave me a big goofy smile. Great, just what I wanted. Ella had been kidding me, saying she thought Barney had a little crush on me.

  “Burger Barn has a strong corporate culture that believes in the benefits of promoting from within,” Barney said.

  “So if we do a good job, we could someday be managers?” Ella asked. I heard the sarcasm, but Barney didn’t.

  “I like the way you’re reaching for the stars,” Barney said.

  “It’s good to have a plan,” I said, jumping in before Ella could say anything about him seeing his job as being the stars.

  “Let’s get through the first shift before you start taking over,” Barney said. “I like that type of ambition in my—”

  “Barney, we have a problem with the fryer!” another employee said as she rushed up.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said and then turned his attention back to us. “Do you think you two can handle this solo?”

  “We won’t be solo. We’ll take care of each other,” Ella said.

  “I love that confidence and that sense of teamwork. I’ll be back soon,” he said and left.

  “Game on,” Ella said enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, game on.” I could repeat the words, but I wasn’t feeling the same way.

  I turned to the customer standing in front of me. “Welcome to Burger Barn. What can I get you today?”

  “I’d like a number three meal with extra biggie fries,” the man said.

  I started to punch in the order, and Ella tapped me on the arm. “Is that it?” she asked. “Don’t you have something else to say to the customer?”

  This was actually going to happen. I turned back to the man.

  “Um…do you know that meal has over two thousand calories?” I asked him.

  “Um, no, not really,” he mumbled.

  “Shouldn’t you be having a salad instead?” I suggested. I felt uneasy and guilty saying that.

  “What?” he asked.

  Ella gave me a little nudge in the back. There was no point in only going partway.

  “I think you should have a salad. Obviously, you haven’t been having enough of them.”

  “She’s right,” Ella said. “I think you’ve had a few combos too many.”

  I held my breath, waiting for his reaction.

  “Um…maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Yeah, make it a salad, and hold the dressing,” he said. “And give me a water to drink.”

  I could hardly believe what he’d said. Ella went to get the salad and water. She handed it to him.

  “No charge,” I said.

  “Really?” the man asked.

  “It’s Free Salad Saturday. You deserve a free meal for making a healthy choice,” I said.

  “Thanks! Thanks so much!”

  He looked like he’d won the lottery. Maybe giving away food wasn’t the best way to make people angry.

  “Tell your friends that’s the new policy at Burger Barn—healthy is free!” Ella yelled out after him.

  “That was a spectacularly good start. I really didn’t know you had it in you,” she said to me.

  “Neither did I, but isn’t that the plan?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but giving away food is a bad start unless the manager hears you do it. Ramp it up—I want to get out of here.”

  “Next,” I barked at the woman in line. “What do you want?”

  “I’m not sure…I was thinking that…”

  “Time for thinking is over. You’ve been standing in line. You should have made a decision before you got here. If you d
on’t know what you want, step aside. I don’t have time to waste,” I said.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “It’s Burger Barn, not fine dining. The whole menu is up there on the board,” I said, gesturing behind me. “It’s not like one of these meals is any better than the other, so just order something.”

  She looked shocked. I was shocked at how good that felt. Rather than guilt I felt relief and joy at finally saying what I’d been thinking every day of the summer when I’d worked fast food.

  “Okay, you’ve lost your chance,” I said. “Step aside, and I’ll serve the person behind you.”

  I braced for her reaction. Was she going to yell or demand to see the manager or—

  She compliantly stepped to the side. I heard laughter from Ella but didn’t look back.

  “You better know what you want,” I snapped, pointing my finger at the couple next in line, who were about my age.

  “We do!” the girl exclaimed. They’d obviously overheard what I’d said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “We’d like a number one combo and a number three with extra cheese and bacon,” the guy said, “and make the drinks Cokes.”

  “Who’s the number three for?” I demanded.

  The guy raised his hand.

  “Really? You know she’s dating down to be with you as it is. Do you really think you can afford to chunk up?”

  The girl laughed. “See, it isn’t just my girlfriends saying things like that.”

  I snatched the twenty-dollar bill from his hand as the two of them started to argue.

  “Stop fighting or take it outside,” I said. “Or at least step to the side.”

  They continued to argue as I turned to the next person in line. I’d started to take the woman’s order when Ella returned with the two meals. Neither drink cup had a lid, and cola sloshed slightly over the edges as she put them down. That gave me an idea. I hit both drinks, and they toppled over, the cola splashing over the counter, people jumping back and screaming. At least it stopped the couple from arguing.

  Next I grabbed the triple burger with bacon and cheese and took a gigantic bite out of it, then handed it to the startled guy.

  “This is awful!” I called out. “Did they put extra cheese or extra disgusting on this?”