by Shen, L. J.
“Three. There’s only one correct answer, and our friendship is in jeopardy, Shaw.”
I capped the Sharpie with my teeth and leaned out the window, sticking the sign on the side of the open window.
That Taco Truck is HIRING!
Help Needed.
Four times a week.
Weekends included.
$16 per hour plus tips.
If interested please speak to manager.
I opened my mouth to answer Karlie at the same time I lifted my gaze. My body froze, every inch of it seized with a mix of dread and alertness.
Crap.
A herd of Sheridan University VIPs ambled toward the truck. Eight in total. It wasn’t the fact that they went to my college that sucked. No, I was used to serving my peers.
It was who they were in Sheridan University that made me break out in hives.
These guys were high commodity seniors. The cream of the popularity crop.
There was Easton Braun, Sheridan University’s hotter-than-Hades quarterback, dragging his fingers through his wheat-hued hair in slow-mo, like in an anti-dandruff shampoo commercial. He looked sickeningly perfect. Like those chiseled guys who lived in Pinterest Land and have arm veins as thick as hot dogs.
Reign De La Salle, the linebacker with soft, tar curls and pouty lips. A Sig Ep member, who reportedly slept with anyone with a pulse (and even that wasn’t mandatory, provided he was hammered enough).
Then there was West St. Claire, a completely different species from Braun and De La Salle. A myth at Sher U. He was in a league of his own.
He wasn’t an athlete, but he was by far the most infamous out of the three. Best known for being a hotheaded bully who dominated the local underground fight ring unchallenged. Rude, crass, and flat-out unresponsive to people who weren’t in his tight circle.
Even I, who wasn’t particularly privy to town gossip anymore, knew nobody messed with St. Claire.
Not his peers.
Not the townsfolk.
Not his professors, nor his friends.
It didn’t help that West St. Claire had ticked every sex god cliché box on the list.
His dark hair was always messy, and his emerald eyes had that dangerous glint that promised you your life would never be the same after a ride on his motorcycle. Six feet, four inches of golden skin and corded muscles. Broad, athletic, and unfairly gorgeous with thick, dramatic eyebrows, eyelashes most starlets would kill for, and narrow lips pressed into a hard, formidable line. He wore dirty Diesel jeans, faded shirts worn inside out, dusty Blundstone boots, and always had a green apple candy stick wedged in the corner of his mouth, like a cigarette.
He was widely known as Sher U’s biggest catch, only no one had ever caught him—and not for lack of trying.
The girls with them were familiar, too. One of them was even a semi-friend of mine—Tess, a raven-haired beauty with more curves than a barrel of snakes. She majored in theater and arts, like me.
“Two! I would like an answer now, Shaw.” Karlie waved an imaginary microphone in my face, but I couldn’t find my voice, stuck in a weird trance.
“One. The correct answer was curtain bangs, Grace. Curtain. Bangs. I mean, hi, Kate Moss circa 1998. Fashion icon.”
They were all heading toward the food truck from Sheridan Plaza, a deserted mall across the street. The so-called mall was a naked cement frame a bunch of bigwigs started building five years ago before realizing they weren’t going to make any money. Everybody shopped online, especially students. The two refineries that were supposed to open nearby had decided to relocate to Asia, so the mass migration into Sheridan they were counting on hadn’t happened.
Now we had a monstrous structure in the middle of town, sitting empty.
Only it wasn’t technically empty. The college students used it for raves, an underground fighting arena, and hookup spots, rent-free.
These folks were probably getting back from a fight.
Tess laughed, tossing her hair to one shoulder and jumping on Reign’s back, looping her arms around his shoulders.
“Gummy bears? In a slushie? That’s, like, bananas.”
“That’s, like, orgasmic,” Easton volleyed back, his palm shoved into the back pocket of some blonde’s Daisy Dukes. “I can’t believe I’ve never hit this place before.”
“The locals swear by it. Even Bradley, who’s a total taco purist, goes here,” another girl chimed in. I tucked my chin down, putting my thumb ring to my lips, mouthing a prayer.
I hated when people looked directly at my face.
Especially people my age.
Especially people like Easton Braun, Reign De La Salle, and West St. Claire.
Especially when I knew they were going to have two possible reactions: they’d be grossed out by the gory scar under my makeup, or worse … they’d pity me.
Though it was probably going to be a mixture of both.
I tugged my ball cap lower. Their voices grew louder. The air around me rattled with rusty laughter and gauzy female screeches. The fine hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Oh, snap,” Reign hiccupped, giving Tess a piggyback ride without breaking a sweat. “Before I forget. When we get to the truck, check out the chick who takes your order. Gail or Gill or whatever-the-fuck. The entire left side of her face is disfigured. Purple as a grape. Got a nice Rice Krispy complexion, too. Like, you can’t really see all of it because she puts hella makeup on, but it’s there. Apparently, people ’round here call her Toastie.”
Reign didn’t mean for me to hear it. He was clearly trashed. Not that it mattered. Bile rose up my throat. The sour taste filled my mouth. I was facing another take-the-bandages-off moment, and I wasn’t ready.
Tess slapped the back of his head. “Her name’s Grace, you moron, and she is super nice.”
Easton glared at Reign. “Seriously? What’s wrong with you, jackass?”
“He’s right, though.” Tess dropped her voice, forgetting the echo the vastness of the nothing around us created. “We have the same major, so I see her all the time. It’s sad, because otherwise, she is so pretty. Like, imagine what it feels like to almost have it all. She can’t even do any of the practical theater stuff, she is so ashamed of her face.”
Tess was referring to that time I walked into an audition freshman year, and broke down in front of the director when he asked me to do my lines. It was very public, very embarrassing, and very much the talk of town for that semester.
“Aww,” Blondie, next to Easton, put a hand to her heart. “That’s so sad, Tessy. You’re givin’ me goose bumps.”
“I wonder what happened to her,” another girl murmured.
“Ground control to Major Shaw? Are you with me?” Karlie poked her head behind my shoulder to see what had turned me into a salt statue.
They stopped in front of us. I trained my face to appear calm, bored, but my heart was thrashing so violently inside my chest, I thought it was going to blast through my bones, cracking its cage in half.
I pinched Karlie’s wrist under the window, signaling, they’re too late, praying she’d let me send them away.
Karlie slapped a hand over her mouth, like the entire Kardashian clan had stopped by.
“Bro, we’re serving ’em. We have plenty of ingredients left. You know Momma Contreras doesn’t play when it comes to leftovers. Besides”—she pinched me back—“it’s them!”
We lived in a small college town, where everyone knew everyone, our D1 football team was worshipped like a religion, game days were church, Easton Braun and Reign De La Salle were holy saints, and West St. Claire was God. We couldn’t refuse them, even if they arrived at three in the morning and paid in human hair.
“Howdy, Grace!” Tess unloaded herself from Reign, drum-rolling the neon-teal truck as she scanned the menu under the window.
“Hi, Tess. Y’all havin’ a good night?”
“Fab, thanks. Reign here says you have margarita slushies with gummy bears. This true?”
>
So many customers were disappointed by the fact we called them margaritas when there was no tequila inside. “Sure do. Virgin, though.”
“Wouldn’t expect anything else from you,” Reign deadpanned, hiccupping again. The girls burst out in laughter. For the sake of keeping my job—and my butt out of jail—I ignored his jab.
Tess punched his arm. “Don’t mind him. Can we have ten to go? And twenty tacos, por favor.” She gave her shiny hair another toss. “Oh, hi, Charlie.”
Karlie waved at Tess behind me, not bothering to correct her. I hated being the one working the front window, but Mrs. Contreras and Karlie insisted on it. They wanted me to get out of my shell, face the world, yada, yada.
“Soft or crunchy shell?” I asked.
“Half and half.”
“Right quick.”
I got to work, snapping and popping a pair of black elastic gloves. I started with the crunchy shells first. They were harder to work with. They kept breaking all the time, so I liked getting them out of the way. Grandmomma always said people were like tacos—the harder they were, the easier they broke. Being soft meant being adaptive, more flexible.
“When you’re soft, you can contain more. And if you contain more, the world can’t break you.”
I felt everyone’s eyes on my face as I shoved shredded lettuce, cream cheese, and Mrs. Contreras’ homemade guac into the tacos’ tiny mouths. Karlie flipped fish on the grill, bouncing on the soles of her feet excitedly.
In my periphery, I could see Reign shoving his elbow into some girl’s side, jerking his head toward me.
“Psst. Domestic violence?”
“Arson,” the girl suggested, trying to figure out how I got the scar.
“Bad plastic surgery,” a third coughed into her fist. They all snickered.
Heat rose up the back of my neck.
Five more minutes and you’re done. You went through physiotherapy, surgeries, and rehabilitation. You can survive these idiots.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, West St. Claire finally decided to see what all the fuss was about. He took a step closer to the truck. His eyes zeroed in on the left side of my face, noticing my existence for the first time in the two years we’d attended the same college, even though we shared three classes. I swallowed, trying to push down the baseball-sized ball of puke in my throat.
I finished the crunchy tacos and started on the soft ones. West took another step, not bothering to conceal his open fascination with my scar. I felt naked and raw under his gaze and almost sighed in relief when his eyes tore away from my cheek, landing on the wanted sign. I chanced a quick glance at him. If he’d fought tonight, I couldn’t tell. He looked relaxed and quiet. Tranquil, almost.
“Looking for a job?” Reign snickered.
“Seriously, Reign, zip it,” Easton, who was probably the nicest of the three, barked.
West plucked the paper from the truck, balling it in his fist and tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans.
“Savage,” Reign tutted, inching backward on a cackle, his face tilted up to the sky.
“Way harsh, West.” Tess’ voice lacked that same punishing bite she reserved for Reign. “Why would you do that?”
West ignored them both, turning his head to look directly at me. He rolled the candy stick in his mouth like a toothpick, giving me a look that crammed a loaded question into it.
Whatcha gonna do about it, Toastie?
I poured the margarita slushies in record time and tallied up the bill for Tess while Reign, Easton, and the rest of the girls scurried toward the edge of the parking lot to tuck into the food. West stayed by Tess’ side, his eyes still stuck on my scar.
I braced myself for an insult, my shell hardening like a taco.
“So, I wanted to ask,” Tess purred, taking his wrist and flipping it palm up so his inner bicep was on full display. “What does your tattoo mean? What does A stand for?”
My eyes betrayed me, and I stole a quick look to what she was talking about. It was a simple tattoo of the letter A. No special font or a design. Just one letter, in Times New Roman.
“Probably asshole,” I muttered under my breath.
Both their gazes flew up to me.
Lord. I’d said it aloud. A soon-to-be dead idiot. What was I thinking?
You were thinking that he is an asshole. Because he is.
“Grace.” Tess slapped her mouth. “For shame.”
West spat the candy out on the ground, his slanted, fierce eyes on me. My head was dangerously close to exploding from all the blood rushing into it. After a long stretch of silence, he finally slapped two Benjamins into Tess’ open palm, turned around, and walked away in catlike grace, paying for everyone’s food and drinks. Tess rolled her eyes, handing me the money.
“Sorry about the want ad. West’s got a bit of a mean streak. He’s my work in progress.”
“Ain’t your fault.”
I peeled the plastic gloves off and handed Tess the change. She grabbed my hand and gasped. Her unexpected skin-to-skin contact made me shiver. I wasn’t used to being touched.
“Cool ring! Where’d you get it?”
“It was my momma’s. Here’s your change.”
“Keep it.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. That was one hell of a tip.
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Screw him for acting the way he did. You know, West really gets a bad rep, but honestly, he is a big softie. He can be, like, super sweet when he wants to be.”
I wasn’t sold on West being anything other than a raging psychopath, but this was not a conversation I was eager to pursue. I wanted to get out of here, erase tonight from my memory bank, and binge-watch Friends reruns until my faith in humanity was sufficiently restored.
“All righty,” I said robotically. “Thanks for stoppin’ by and shoppin’ at That Taco Truck.”
Tess flashed me a dazzling smile and turned around, running toward her friends.
I followed her with my eyes. She cut between the golden dunes framing the parking lot, straight to her popular friends. They clinked their slushies together, laughing, talking, and eating. My gut twisted.
I could have been Tess.
Correction: I was Tess.
I guess that was the part I hated most about my life. I was once a Tess. Showing off my legs in tiny cut-offs. Hanging out with the likes of West, Easton, and Reign. Sitting on the back of their motorcycles as they did wheelies on the old dirt road at the edge of town by the water tower. Explaining to lowly mortals how the mind and soul of West St. Claire worked, letting them in on some exotic top secret.
I rolled down the food truck’s window. When I turned around, Karlie squealed, barely containing her excitement. She high-fived me. My best friend was five feet tall on a good day. Tan and curvy, she had a round, gorgeous face laced with a constellation of freckles stretching from cheek to cheek. Once upon a time, when I was the designated Queen Bee of our school, I let her in with the cool kids. But that was four years ago. I could no longer offer her this perk.
“Easton Braun and Reign De La Salle, man. I’d like to be the pastrami between their buns.” She fanned herself. “But West St. Claire was the cheddar on the taco. I think he fought today.”
“He didn’t look too beat up to me.” I turned off the grill, taking out the cleaning products from the cabinet next to the fridge.
“That’s because he wipes the floor with these guys. Though, I hear sometimes he lets them throw in a punch or two, just so people will bet on someone else. God help me, his eyes.” Karlie sucked on the remainder of her slushie, before dropping it in the trash. “They’re, like, radioactive green. And you can forge metal with his cheekbones. Seriously, he could destroy my life, and I would literally say thank you.”
I grunted, throwing water over the grill. It spat fumes in my face.
“C’mon. Give me the tea. The grill was too loud for me to hear anything. Did they say anything
interesting? Any gossip?” She nudged me.
They said I was a freak.
“They were pretty tanked, so not much coherent conversation was going on. But they went gaga for the margarita slushies.” I scrubbed the grill.
“Wow. Totally riveting.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you think Tess and West are hooking up?”
“Probably. They’ll make a corny couple, though. Their names rhyme, for crying out loud.”
“Couple? Tess can dream on. West only does one-night stands. That’s a known fact.”
I offered a shrug. Karlie gave me an exasperated shove.
“God, you’re the worst gossip ever. I don’t even know why I bother. Last question: therapeutically-speaking, would you rather internet-stalk all the people in Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ video and freak out about how old they are today, or give Barbie a Joe Exotic mullet?”
“The latter,” I mustered with a tired smirk, realizing how much I was going to miss her once she found a new employee to take most of her shifts. “I’d give Barbie a mullet, then dress her up as a cowgirl, put her in her Glam Convertible, and TikTok a video of her singin’ Bratz Dolls Ate My Pet.”
Karlie threw her head back and laughed. I peeked in her pocket mirror, which was sitting on the windowsill, checking my makeup.
The scar was mostly hidden.
I let out a relieved sigh.
The crunchy taco survives another day. Cracked, but not broken.
I got home at eleven. Grams was sitting at the kitchen table in her tattered calico housedress, the radio beside her playing Willie Nelson on full blast.
Grandma Savvy had always been an eccentric woman. She was the lady who went ham with her costumes each Halloween to welcome the trick-or-treaters. Who painted funny—often inappropriate—figures on the plant pots in her front yard, and danced at weddings like no one was watching, and cried watching Super Bowl commercials.
Grandmomma had always been quirky, but recently, she was confused, too.
Too confused to be left alone for longer than the ten-minute overlap between the time her caregiver Marla went home and I pulled into our garage.