I watch them bicker, curious. When I was on the other side of the counter, just a lowly customer, I figured that the staff here were all the best of friends. It sure seemed that way from my vantage point at the back table, watching them laugh together across the room. But after listening to LuAnn talk about Carlos, and Dominique talk about . . . well, just about everyone else, I can see they’re really more like family — the big, dysfunctional kind that fights over everything and doesn’t care what each other thinks.
“Josh!” LuAnn yells, pulling her hair back into a twisty bun that she secures with a couple of pencils.
He pops his head out and affects a low southern drawl. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Get this girl some sustenance before she passes out.”
“Really, I’m fine,” I say, embarrassed, but LuAnn is in full flow.
“Fetch a chair! Find some water!” she cries, dancing around the small space. “We don’t want the child-labor people beating down our door for exploitation again!”
I cringe, but Josh just laughs along.
“Look, she’s pale with malnutrition.” LuAnn squeezes one of my cheeks. “Make her one of those fantastic BLTs.”
“Um, actually, I don’t eat bacon,” I pipe up awkwardly. “Or ham. Or, you know, any pork products, really. . . .” I trail off.
Josh throws a dishcloth at LuAnn. “And the award for cultural insensitivity goes to . . .”
She smacks her forehead. “Jewish! Man, I’m sorry!”
“It’s OK,” I say quickly, burning up now. “Really. I don’t even keep full kosher — it’s just a habit, I guess.”
Finally, Dominique looks up. “Leave the poor child alone,” she tells them. I smile at her, grateful for some support, but then she adds, “If she quits on us, I’ll have to take her shift tomorrow.”
Charming.
With the Beast just about tamed and my magical Post-its marking the route to coffee utopia, my first week at work soon slips into a steady rhythm of grind, pour, froth, and serve.
“I even made twenty whole dollars in tips,” I tell Garrett as I clutch the phone between my ear and shoulder and shimmy into some jeans on Saturday morning.
He laughs, his voice clear and strong even a hundred miles away. “Big tippers, huh? Don’t go spending it all at once.”
“I have to.” I sigh. “I’ve nearly ruined all my cute outfits with coffee grounds. I don’t know how Amélie didn’t wind up with cappuccino foam all over her dresses.”
“It sounds like you’re having fun, hanging out with all these new people.”
“I am,” I agree. I hesitate, then say casually, “I wish you could meet them all. You’d get a kick out of LuAnn, she’s the one with red hair. She’s great.”
“I keep thinking the same with people here,” he says. “My bunkmates are probably sick of hearing about you. It’s ‘my friend Sadie’ all the time.”
Delight dances in my chest. See, he’s thinking about me. He’s talking about me! But before I can find out exactly what he’s been saying, Garrett sighs.
“Look, I’ve got to get to a workshop.” He sounds regretful. “Will you be around later? I’ve got a ton of stuff to tell you.”
“Yes!” I cry. “I mean, sure, just call anytime.”
“Great, later then.”
He hangs up, and although I’m tempted to just mooch around the house for the rest of the day until he calls back, my poor, coffee-stained wardrobe is calling out for reinforcements, so I grab the keys to Mom’s car and drive out of town thirty minutes to the looming concrete vista of the Hadley mall. I usually try to stay away from this place — Garrett calls it a soulless temple to modern capitalism — but my budget limits my options.
I’m browsing the department store bargain basement when a familiar face appears from around the next aisle.
“Sadie? Hey!”
“Kayla.” I pause, embarrassed. She’s looking cute and shiny as always, in jeans and a snap-front plaid shirt.“Um, hi.”
“Hey!” She beams, her blond hair falling in effortless waves. Effortless for her, anyway — she was born without the dreaded frizz gene. “What’s up? Are you — ooh!” she exclaims, suddenly reaching for the rack behind me. “This is perfect!”
“It is?” I blink. Kayla’s holding up a pair of hideous shorts: khaki, with a red flower print, they reach at least to her knees when she holds them up against her body.
She catches my expression and laughs. “No, I mean, they’re disgusting, but that’s perfect. Those kids destroy everything I own.” She plucks a lurid chartreuse T-shirt and adds it to her basket.
“I know what you mean,” I say. “About the destruction, anyway. You have no idea how hard it is to get melted chocolate-chip smears off your jeans.”
“Oh, I do,” Kayla says, “if it’s anything like finger paints. I swear they do it on purpose.” She adds, “This one kid, Jaden? He slapped bright-blue handprints all over my favorite shirt. Ruined!”
“How is it?” I ask as we stroll toward the dressing rooms. “Working at the playgroup. That must be fun.”
“Sure, they’re just adorable,” she says. “For the first five minutes. And then I want to wring their adorable little necks.”
I stop, shocked. “I always figured you loved kids.”
“Yeah, no.” Kayla shakes her head emphatically. “One kid, I can do, even two — just stick them in front of a Disney movie, let them play Xbox all night. But a herd of them?” She shudders.
I laugh. “Come on, they’re just kids.”
“Have you been stuck with a group of ankle biters before?” Kayla stares at me, wide eyed. “Sure, they toddle around quietly, but if they turn on you . . . it’s like in the movies. The ones that seem sweet and innocent are always, like, possessed. Or zombie spawn.”
“The kids are demons?”
“It would explain a lot. But hey, I get to use it on college applications. I want to major in psychology,” she explains. “And it’s fun watching the parents, trying to figure out how traumatized and messed up their kid is going to be.” She beams happily at the thought of all the future therapy the kids will require.
“Um . . . great.” Clearly, I’ve been underestimating Kayla.
She looks around at the fluorescent-lit room full of limp sale signs and people dejectedly picking through the remainder bin of underwear. “Oh, my God, this place is so depressing. I should go buy these before I change my mind. Or kill myself.”
“You’re not going to try them on?”
“And see just how bad they look?” Kayla backs away. “You’re way braver than me. See you!”
As I watch her walk away, I feel a strange pang. This conversation must be the longest one we’ve had in years, and right now, I can’t even think of the reason why.
“Kayla, wait!” I call suddenly. Then I stop, embarrassed, but she’s already turned. “Do you have plans?” I ask. “I mean, we could maybe get a soda or something. Exchange stain-removal tips,” I add, my face heating up.
Kayla pauses for a minute, then shrugs. “Sure, I don’t have to be anywhere.”
“Great!” I realize how eager I sound and dial it back a couple of notches. “I mean, OK. That’s cool.”
“Meet me out front when you’re done.” Kayla smiles. “I swear, I’m breaking out in an allergic reaction to all this polyester.”
“OK!” I feel a weird sense of achievement. “See you outside.”
“So, Totally Wired,” Kayla starts as we claim our monster neon Slushies from the food-court stall. The mall is busy with gaggles of preteen girls camped out on every bench and weekend shoppers drifting aimlessly down the fluorescent-lit fake streets. “Want to switch? You take tiny demons and I’ll serve coffee. That place has the cutest guys on staff.”
“It does?” I slurp at my drink, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia. Or is it déjà vu? Either way, this is a scene I must have played out with Kayla a hundred times when we were younger, back when a day at the mall and icy t
reats were pretty much heaven to us. “Like who?”
“Where do I start?” Kayla asks, flipping her sheet of blond hair over her shoulder. “The chef guy, with the messy hair? And that tall one who’s always in black.”
“That’s Denton.” I nod. He’s joined at the hip with Aiko, or rather, joined hip to thigh, since he towers about eighteen inches over her. “I don’t really know him — our shifts never overlap. He’s dating Aiko — they’re really cute together. But Josh, the chef guy, he’s nice. Kind of a goof.”
“Oh?” Kayla gives me a look.
“What?” Just then, I feel my phone buzz. Garrett! I sneak a glance at the screen. Nope, phantom buzz.
Beside me, Kayla keeps talking. “You know, he’s cute, and you’re working all those long shifts together. . . .” I look back in time to catch her giving me a meaningful wink.
I suddenly realize what she means. “Josh? No way. He’s like, old.”
Kayla smirks. “And?”
“And he’s always goofing around,” I tell her, and tuck my phone away. “Yesterday, he wore bunny ears the whole day. Not my type.”
She lets out a disappointed sigh. “I forgot, you don’t date.”
“Um, can you blame me?” I say, self-conscious. Is that my reputation — the nondater? “You know what Sherman boys are like.”
“Come on, there are some good ones!” she protests. Suddenly, her eyes brighten. “Ooh, maybe I could set you up with one of Blake’s friends —”
“Don’t!” I yelp. She looks startled. “I mean, that’s sweet,” I add quickly, “but I’m OK for now. Being single.”
“Suit yourself.” She shrugs. “But those guys are a ton of fun. Trust me.” She winks again, and I’m reminded of what different high-school lives we lead. Me with Garrett, her with her table of peppy friends and weekends partying up at the lake.
“So what’s Blake up to this summer?” I ask, steering the subject away from me and my long dateless nights of solitude.
Kayla makes a face. “Mainly college prep. He’s heading to NYU in the fall.”
“Oh.” I pause. “Are you guys going to try and stay together, or . . . ?” I trail off, not wanting to bring up any potential angst. But instead, Kayla just slurps her mammoth raspberry Slushie, unconcerned.
“Oh, it’s going to be fine. We’ll do long distance, and vacations and holidays, and then in two years I’ll be at Columbia.” She says it casually, as if it’s a plan for the weekend, and not the next few years of her life.
“Wow, that’s . . . great,” I venture. “That you’ve got it all figured out, I mean.”
She shrugs. “We’re meant to be together. So we’ll make it work.”
“Oh.”
I can’t help but wonder about her resolve. I mean, sure, I’m certain that things will work out with Garrett, too, but we’re destined to be together. Kayla and Blake are cute, but can a high-school crush really last? “Good luck with that,” I offer. “It’s not easy to keep things together when you’re both off doing different things.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she says. “Garrett’s gone for the summer.” She pauses. “I’ve always wondered, did you two ever . . . ? You know.”
“Nope,” I say. At least, not yet.
“Really?” She crinkles her forehead in a frown. “Not even a ‘friends with benefits’ thing?”
“No!” I reply, horrified. “We would never risk our friendship for something like that.”
“Oh, sorry,” Kayla looks as if she’s mentally reassessing something. And that’s when my back pocket buzzes. For real this time.
It’s a text. Tried calling, got your voice mail. Can you talk?
Garrett. How did I miss his call?
“ . . . don’t you think?”
My head snaps back up. “Um, what was that last part?”
Kayla sighs. “Do you need to call someone? You’ve been checking that thing, like, every two minutes.”
I can tell from her face that “Yes, I have to go, now!” wouldn’t be the right answer. “It’s fine,” I lie, snapping the phone shut and stowing it in my back pocket. “It can wait.”
“OK. Hey, can you hold these? My lips are crying out for ChapStick.” She passes me her shopping bags and Slushie until I’m laden with handles and cups in both hands. “Man, where is that thing? I’m sure I saw it in here somewhere. . . .” Kayla digs through her purse while I juggle our collected junk.
“Um,” I murmur, trying to keep hold of everything. “I don’t think I can keep . . .”
“I swear, this thing is like a portal to some other dimension.” Kayla grins, still rummaging in the cavernous confines of her pale-blue shoulder bag. “It swallows everything whole.”
And then I feel the buzz of my phone again.
“Kayla?”
But she’s upended her bag and is dumping makeup and spare change and tampons out onto the floor. I edge over. “Could you . . . ?”
“Sure, just a sec!” ’
My phone buzzes again, this time with Garrett’s ringtone, an obscure Belle & Sebastian song he loves. He’s calling!
That second drags into an eternity as I watch Kayla hunt for the mythical missing ChapStick. Garrett’s ringtone sounds again. And again. This is torture. I can’t focus on Kayla, the mall, anything! Not when Garrett is waiting on me, somewhere out there. . . .
What if he can’t deny it anymore? What if he has to tell me how he feels?
Enough! Carefully, I move one of the Slushies over into the crook of my right arm, so I’m clutching it to my chest. Then I set about transferring shopping bags out of my left hand, hooking two onto my pinkie and trapping the handle of another between my teeth. There: my phone hand is free! Now, if I can just stay very still, I might be able to reach around. . . .
I grope across my body for my left back pocket and reach my ringing phone with the very tips of my fingers. Gently, gently, I nudge it closer, until I can almost —
“Found it!”
Kayla suddenly bounces to her feet, proudly clutching the pink tube of ChapStick.
“No!”
But it’s too late. She knocks into me; I teeter, losing balance, and then — as if the world has slowed — I realize in a split second that I have a terrible choice to make: answer Garrett or keep my load stable.
Phone or Slushies. Phone or Slushies.
So I choose.
I’m not proud of what happens next: the horrifying arc of lurid red liquid spilling through the air, Kayla’s squeal of disbelief. But what was I supposed to do? Destiny doesn’t wait for a convenient moment to call, and if you’re too slow, then you risk letting it pass you by forever. No, you’ve got to cling on to fate — or your cell phone — tight with both hands, and to hell with the consequences. Which in this case are a ruined outfit, and Kayla fleeing from me as fast as her cute blue sneakers will take her.
Even the next morning, I still feel bad, and after all that, Garrett only wanted to know the name of the guy who wrote that book about all the sad young literary men. At least, that’s what he says he was calling about, but who knows what emotional truth was lingering on the tip of his tongue, had I only picked up the call sooner?
I’m saving all the notes and handouts for you. Garrett’s IM bubbles to life on my screen. Early mornings are the best time for him to chat, before classes get started. I’ll mail them this weekend — I promise.
No problem, I type back, wistful. For the first time in years, I don’t know exactly what he’s doing; the stories he tells me are all at a distance, secondhand narrations of what he’s been seeing, and doing, and thinking. Are the classes fun?
More work than fun. His reply comes a moment later. But worth it. I’m learning so much.
“Honey, I’m leaving in two minutes!” Mom calls upstairs.
“OK!” I yell back, typing a quick good-bye. Text if you want to talk! I even allow myself a casual x sign-off before I log out, grab my bag and my comfiest pair of sneakers, and hurtle downstairs.
>
“You look nice.” Mom smiles as I burst into the kitchen, but she can’t stop herself from reaching out to rearrange my hair. I bat her hand away. “I’m glad you’re finally growing those bangs out.”
“Nope, I just forgot to trim them,” I tell her, taking a slice of leftover apple strudel from the fridge and then — at her expression — adding a real apple.
“But they’ll be so cute longer.”
“Cute is for six-year-olds,” I tell her as I nibble at my cold, delicious breakfast. “Cute is only one step away from adorable.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
I sigh. If she had it her way, my mom would still be braiding my hair and tying satin bows on the ends, but there comes a time in a girl’s life when she has to take other things into consideration when it comes to her hairstyle choices. Male things. And so when I sat down to watch Amélie with Garrett back after we first met and he commented on how stylish she looked, I figured, why not? The blunt-cut bob works for me, kind of. It balances out this nose of mine, and on good days, I even look foreign and interesting.
“We should get going,” I tell Mom before she can segue from my bangs to my clothing, demeanor, and general life choices. “I don’t want to be late for work.”
No such luck. My mom can segue with the best of them. “Are you sure you want to serve coffee all summer?” She follows me out to the car. “It’s not too late to quit, and I still need an assistant for the Positivity Now! seminars next week.”
“No, thanks,” I tell her carefully, rather than explaining why handing out name tags to a flock of lost souls in search of purpose via seven-step plans is pretty much my idea of hell. I’d rather wrestle with the Beast than hear how a simple organizational chart can save the world. “Anyway, there’s a whole literary tradition I’m following. Garrett says even Trotsky wrote in the coffeehouses of Vienna.”
Mom doesn’t look convinced. “I can pay ten dollars an hour. And you’ll have free entry into all kinds of motivational talks.”
Motivation enough to turn her down. “Thanks, but I’m having fun.”
Lie.
“And the people are great.”
Getting Over Garrett Delaney Page 6