A Little Less than Famous

by Sara E. Santana

  "Ben Wright. Yeah, I know," I interrupted.

  Jake looked at me, puzzled. "You know Ben Wright?"

  "McKinley loves jazz," Amanda spoke up. For a brief moment, I was incredibly impressed that Amanda remembered anything to do with jazz, like Ben Wright.

  Jake was still looking at me strangely until Justin nudged him. "Well, anyway, we were wondering if you girls wanted to join us. We have special passes so there are no wait times.”

  Amanda looked like a five-year-old who had been told that Christmas had come early. Right as she was poised to answer, I burst out laughing. "You aren't serious, are you?"

  Jake and Justin exchanged looks. "Well, yeah. We'd love if you joined us," Justin said, slowly.

  I paused, biting my lip to keep from smiling. "Um, no, we're okay."

  A look of surprise passed across Jake's face and I almost started laughing again. The poor guy had probably never heard the word no before.

  "McKinley," Amanda hissed under her breath.

  I took her arm in mine. "We should be going. It was so nice meeting you." I flashed a smile and started walking away. Amanda pulled away from me and started scribbling something on a wrinkled receipt she'd pulled from her pocket. She walked back up to Jake, with all the confidence in the world, and placed it in his palm.

  "I'm Amanda, you should call me sometime," Amanda said, her hand placed on her curvy hip. She stood almost as tall as Jake, who looked to be at least six feet tall, but being tall wasn't exactly a setback for Amanda. She took her tall stature in stride, though it helped that she was blonde and blue-eyed, and tan from the insane amount of running she did. She had been the captain of the cross country and track team in high school. "It was nice meeting you guys."

  "It was nice meeting you, Amanda," Jake said, smiling. He looked around her at me and his smile grew wider. "Nice meeting you too, McKinley."

  I smiled sarcastically at him and, grabbing Amanda's arm, started walking away. When we were enough distance away, I scowled at Amanda. "You are completely unbelievable, you know that?"

  "Me?" Amanda said, moodily. "Why do you always have to do that?"

  "Interrupt your flirt session with a celebrity? I didn't realize that I'd interrupted your flirt sessions with Christian Bale or anything," I said, stopping to look at the wait time for Star Tours. I decided that it was not too long and walked into the line.

  "Oh come on, McKinley, don't be such a jerk, we totally could've hung out with those two today. I mean, aren't you obsessed with Ben Wright? Dating his son would be pretty awesome, wouldn't it?" Amanda said, slyly.

  I scoffed at this. "Okay, seriously, Amanda, this Jake Kennedy obsession is pretty ridiculous. Guys like that don't date girls like us," I pointed out.

  Amanda frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on, Jake Kennedy isn’t going to start dating some girl who works at the Macy’s make-up counter and has a mother who is in jail.”

  Amanda’s mouth became a thin line. “It could happen.”

  I immediately felt bad. “You’re right. It could happen.”

  My mom had left me behind at five years old and from then on, finding friends wasn't exactly easy. People just really didn't understand much why I was living with someone who wasn't related to me in any shape or form. Then I met Amanda, in 5th grade. She had just moved to Brea from Fresno and snapped at anyone who came her way. She wanted to be alone all the time but looked incredibly lonely. I found out through the grapevine that her mom had gone to jail, for some unknown crime, and she was shuttled to her aunt's house to live. She, like me, was abandoned.

  It took awhile for Amanda to want to be friends with me though. I sat patiently at the same table as her through fifth and sixth grade, not talking, just listening to my music on my cd player. Then, one day, someone dropped their lunch on my lap and Amanda jumped up and punched them in the gut, a reaction that both scared me and made me feel proud. We both got detention together and from then on, we were friends.

  That’s where the trouble started. When put together, Amanda and I became popular and I'm sure we drove Luke and Amanda's Aunt Alyssa insane. We went into high school and did it all: the sex, the alcohol, the weed, the parties, and the ditching. It was a miracle we even graduated. Well, that’s not entirely true. Amanda is smart as hell, even though her head is often up in the clouds, and she made it through fairly easily. Me, not so much.

  After high school, we got caught in a tight spot at a party and sort of woke up to reality. We both started taking our jobs more seriously-me at the diner and Amanda at the Macy's makeup counter. After saving up a bit of money, we both decided to go back to college and enrolled in classes at the closest community college.

  It probably sounded stupid and cliché and it was. Though both Amanda and I had been very neglected by our moms, we had been taken care of as well as anyone. Luke and Alyssa had given us everything that they had and neither one of us had a terrible childhood. We rebelled for the sake of rebelling. We liked to feel under-privileged because of our moms, like the world owed us something but we had been young and stupid and just liked to make trouble.

  But despite all that, there weren’t a lot of people in this world that I trusted, and I knew it was the same for Amanda as well. No matter how many years had passed, Amanda remained the person that I could trust only second to Luke.

  * * * * * *

  It was my favorite time of day, the late afternoon when the sun starts going down but the darkness hasn’t quite covered the sky yet. We closed the diner every day at five p.m., whether or not there were actual customers in the building. The shades were pulled down, the chairs were stacked on the tables and the music was turned on.

  Most days, it was turned to an oldies station; this was Luke’s preference. On days where I reached the radio first, the jazz station was always my first pick. We turned the knob all the way to the right and let the music fill the entire diner. This is what we called the after closing dance party.

  The participants always varied between the five of us that worked in the diner: Luke, who actually owned the diner, me, the assistant manager, Crystal, the other server, and Chris and Mitch, who were our cooks. We’d crank up the music and parade around the café, dancing and singing at the top of our lungs, while we broke everything down, cleaned and set everything up for the next day.

  It was literally my favorite time of day. It was a time to unwind and let out all the stress of the day. Working in the restaurant was fun and was the only thing I really knew but it wasn’t the easiest job in the world. First off, you were dealing with food, which was an issue in itself. And secondly, you were dealing with people. Put those two together and you have a recipe for disaster, no pun intended. People had allergies and preferences and people just plain liked to complain.

  As soon as the digital clock sitting next to the coffee makers clicked to 5:00, I let out a little sigh of relief and practically sprinted to the door to lock it. Chris came out from the kitchen and started helping me to pull the shades down and putting the chairs up. Then we both turned and raced toward the radio.

  Luke laughed, switching the radio to his favorite station and shimmying past us as the Temptations came blasting out. Chris and I looked at each for a moment before he grabbed my hand twirled me around once, bouncing up and down towards the kitchen.

  I started wiping down the counters, mouthing the words to the song, shaking my hips back and forth. I saw a couple customers that were still lingering in the diner, glancing at us curiously. Sometimes, if we were lucky, customers would get up and join in, definitely the regulars.

  These ones, on the other hand, were looking a little uncomfortable and were shoveling food into their mouth, as if in extreme hurry to get out. They dropped their utensils with a clatter on their plates and threw a few bills on the table before making a beeline towards the door.

  “Have a good evening guys!” I called, laughing and waving to them as they walked out.

  “What
was up their butt?” Crystal asked, taking clean utensils from the dishwasher and stacking them in their containers. She came over and knocked her hip with mine.

  “Hmm,” I said, thinking about it. “Maybe it was the dancing…”

  Crystal laughed, tossing her head back. One thing that I loved about Crystal was her laugh. Some girls tried to hold back their laughs, making up little giggles that they figured boys loved. Not Crystal. When she laughed, she laughed with her whole body; her breasts jiggled, her head was thrown back, and the sound of it filled the whole room.

  “Come on,” Luke said, holding a mop and singing into the handle as if it were a microphone. “Come help me mop the floor.”

  I laughed, grabbing a mop of my own and danced my way into the dining room.

  Chapter Two

  A couple days later, we were sitting in the diner, discussing Jake Kennedy. Amanda was beside herself over the fact that he hadn't called her.

  "Well, whatever, Amanda, he is a terrible actor," I said, peering at a difficult math equation in my textbook. Amanda glared at me. "Besides, isn't Jake dating Andrea Tremaine?"

  "Not anymore, McKinley," Amanda said, exasperated at my lack of celebrity knowledge. "They broke up ages ago and she's married to some Scottish director...who is so super old!"

  I shrugged. "I'll take your word for it." Amanda continued to mope. "Amanda, seriously, he's a stupid actor. Who cares? You can do way better than him," I said, confidently, shutting my textbook and turning around to tie on an apron.

  "Yeah, yeah, you're right," she said, tucking her spiral notebook back into her enormous purse. 'You're going to Will's party on Saturday, right?"

  I sighed. "Yeah, I suppose so."

  Amanda laughed. "Jesus, McKinley, Will is the best friend of your boyfriend. You have to go."

  "Gabriel is not my boyfriend," I said, lightly.

  It was Amanda's turn to roll her eyes. "Then why do you keep him around?"

  "I don’t know, the sex is good," I said, waving her off.

  "I always knew you were a charmer."

  I looked up and smiled. My first lunch regular, Iris, had showed up.

  I wasn’t lying when I said that I had grown up in this dining room. I had every birthday since I was five in the diner. I had learned to dance, had my first kiss, gotten my first period and done all my homework and studying in this diner. And the people that came in every day, over the years, had become part of my family, sharing in these memories with me as I had grown up.

  The morning regulars included Robert and Diane, Dave, Cassandra and Oliver. Robert and Diane were an elderly couple that had been coming to Luke's for as long as I could remember. They showered me with presents as I got older and babysat me for Luke all the time. Dave worked at the local grocery store distribution center overnight and came in for breakfast before going home to his wife and three kids, Emily, Kammie and Kevin. Cassandra was a college dropout, really sweet but very wrapped up in her art and poetry. Oliver was my age, and worked at a local smoothie shop when not studying to be a chemistry teacher and playing video games at home.

  My afternoon family was Iris, Frank and sometimes Oliver and Cassandra, though they mostly stuck to mornings. Iris was a lawyer, a complete workaholic who loved to complain about her ex-husband but had a sassy attitude a mile long and made me laugh. Frank was a high school English teacher who came on his lunch and graded papers, often reading them out loud to us, more often when they were really horrible.

  These people were some of the most important people in the world to me. Diane had taught me how to write my name and Iris always helped me with my homework when I could pull her away from her own work. Frank taught me how to tie my shoes and Robert had taught me how to foxtrot and introduced to me jazz. And they were always there, everything birthday, every holiday.

  "Hey Iris," I said, as she took her usual spot at the end of the counter. She pulled out her laptop and started getting it set up. Behind her, I saw Frank come in and take his usual seat in the Marilyn Monroe. I looked at Amanda. "You better go. Lunch is going to get crazy."

  "I better get going anyhow," Amanda said, hopping off her stool. " I have class soon."

  "See you after," I said, pouring Iris her cup of coffee.

  "Yup," Amanda said, nodding. "Bye Iris."

  Lunch rush wasn't too bad, once Luke had come downstairs to help our cook, Chris. We made it through, of course, though there was the one incident with the toddler throwing French fries at the ceiling to see if they would stick. Later I had to remind myself to clean the ceiling and get all the ketchup stains off. Luckily I had pulled in quite a few tips to make up for that and the disaster that was left underneath the James Dean table. I didn't understand how adults could make such a mess; I'd seen five year olds with better table manners than some of the adults that had come in. I counted my tips at the counter as I contemplated getting a new book that had come out. I was too wrapped up in checking the different prices of the book-on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites-that I didn't notice when he walked in. I didn't notice until he sat at the counter and cleared his throat.

  I looked up and saw a young man, probably a few inches over six feet tall. (At barely over five feet four inches tall, I always was extremely perceptive to how tall people were.) He was wearing a dark brown hoodie with the hood pulled up. This was the first thing that surprised me; a hoodie in the middle of August at two o’clock in the afternoon in California wasn't the smartest idea if you wanted to avoid dehydration or dying of a heat stroke. The second was that he'd sat at the counter and for the most part, only frequent customers sat there. I looked disbelieving at Iris, who pursed her lips and shook her head. This guy obviously didn’t know how things worked around here. I put down my iPhone on the counter.

  "What can I do for you?" I asked him. I couldn't even see what he looked like; his face was turned down and cast in shadow. For a moment, I had the wild thought that he might rob the place.

  "Just a coffee." His voice sounded vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place it.

  "Okay." I took a mug out from underneath the counter and poured the steaming coffee to just under the rim. I slid it across the counter to him. "There you go."

  "Thanks McKinley."

  I took a step back, confused. As a general rule, no one at Luke's wore a nametag. There were so little of us that it was hardly necessary. Then the constant horrible thought came to me; an ex-boyfriend. He was an ex. Admittedly, I'd had quite a few and it was getting a little hard to keep track. "Do I know you?"

  The boy looked side to side before pulling his hood off. My mouth fell open slightly in surprise. I recovered myself quickly and fixed a bored looked on my face, refusing to play into this.

  "Well, if it isn't Jake Kennedy," I said, flatly.

  "Can you maybe not talk so loudly?" Jake asked, nervously, glancing over at Iris, who was one of the only people in the diner.

  "Sorry," I said, picking up my iPhone and browsing through Amazon again. "Are you looking for Amanda?"

  Jake stared at me for a moment and then smiled brilliantly, white even teeth. Nobody had teeth like that. "Actually, I came here looking for you."

  I raised my eyebrow at him. "Really now? Why?"

  "No special reason," Jake said, taking a sip of his coffee.

  I stared at him for a moment. "How exactly did you find me anyway?"

  "Your shirt," he answered, picking up the menu and flipping through it. "You were wearing your Luke's Diner shirt and I looked it up online. Who's Luke?"

  "The owner," I said, quickly. "You know, that kind of behavior could be classified under the behaviors of a stalker, I don’t know if you know that."

  Jake shrugged and continued looking at the menu.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I supposed when you were a celebrity, what you did didn't matter as long as you got what you wanted. "Are you going to order any food or what?"

  Jake looked up, surprised, most likely at my tone. "You really intrigue me,
you know that?"

  I burst out laughing and saw Iris look over at us. Was this really a pick up line? "You intrigue me?" I asked, giggling. "Really, Jake? You couldn't come up with anything better?"

  Jake didn't look too fazed at my laugh; instead, he continued to just stare at me, that blue-eyed stare that captured the hearts of millions of viewers every Thursday night. "What are you doing after this?"

  "Are you asking me out?" I asked, the smile on my face getting bigger.

  "Yes," Jake said, honestly. I took this moment to study him. Of course I had seen him all over TV and magazines and that horrible Robin Hood movie he had done last summer. But outside of that, sitting at the counter of Luke's Diner, he looked so different and normal. He could be any other guy in the world, sitting in my diner, in a hoodie and jeans.