“Wanna come with me to the bank?” Justine asked me after we dropped off the truck. She was going to deposit the snow cone money, but we were keeping our smoothie money in a shoe box in my closet. “I need to walk over from the shop. I can’t parallel-park this thing downtown.”
I hesitated. “Do I have to? It’s so hot.”
“Fine, I’ll go alone,” she groaned.
I was grateful for a chance to sit in the air conditioning.
Through the window, I saw Dennis swiveling around in circles on the stool by the front counter. He looked up when I came in. “Hola,” he said.
I smiled. “Hey.”
I couldn’t figure him out. I really wanted to, but I just couldn’t. He was a dork, but not a dork who was trying to be a dork because it was actually dorky-cool. He was really just a plain dork, not trying to hide it at all.
I plopped down in one of the desk chairs and scrolled through Instagram, reading inspirational love quotes.
Hearts live by being wounded.
—OSCAR WILDE
I clicked the little heart icon so I could go back and read this one again later.
“So how’s it going, Mamma Mia?” Dennis asked.
I cracked up. “Mamma Mia? I hope not!” I looked back at my phone, hoping he’d get the hint that I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I didn’t want to be rude about it, but I was just too hot to converse.
“Uh, I was just saying it because, like, ya know, the Broadway show…” His voice trailed off. “I didn’t mean, uh, that you’re like a teen mom or something.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said, cutting him off, and looked up at him. His cheeks were bright red, the color of our Strawberry Sensation snow cone.
“What are you reading?” he asked. “You keep nodding to yourself.”
I laughed. “Oh, just random quotes on Instagram. Like, inspirational stuff.”
“You need inspiring?” he asked.
“Well…my boyfriend broke up with me.” I rolled my eyes. “Soo…”
“Oh. When?”
“Like a month ago,” I said. “But I’m not really over it yet. It was kind of sudden.”
It sounded like I was talking about a death. But it was kind of like that. Our relationship died. And that relationship was one of the happiest parts of my whole entire life. Of course I was sad. Of course I needed cheering up.
Dennis looked away like he couldn’t figure out a response. It was the perfect opportunity to stop talking, but then it felt awkward to just leave the conversation hanging in the air like that.
“I’ve been really into making smoothies lately,” I said to change the subject. “I kind of feel like a chef now. A smoothie chef.”
He laughed. “They look good.”
I wondered if I should offer him a sip, but it seemed too intimate somehow. Sharing a straw. Saliva exchange. It gave me the shivers. “How’s your study of losing vice-presidential candidates going?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
“I need to come up with ways to remember all of them.” He looked up, and for the first time, I realized that Dennis had blue eyes. Like, gigantic blue eyes. Maybe I was hallucinating from the heat, but his eyes were amazing. Big and dramatic. Or maybe he’d never looked at me before, or I’d never looked at him.
Something about him was relaxing, easy, comfortable. He didn’t make me nervous. Everything with boys always felt so hard, like a game that I could never really win. But with Dennis, it was just, like, normal.
“Oh, um, well, that’s cool….” I stumbled on my words because all I could think about was Dennis’s gigantic blue ocean eyes.
“Yep, if you want to quiz me, just say the word.” He stood up. “I better get back to cleaning the blenders in the back. You know what they say—a clean blender is a sign of a successful business.”
“They say that?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”
I looked at him crooked and laughed behind my hands.
JUSTINE
“Can I help you?” a greeter at the door asked as I walked into the bank.
“Uh, I’m just here to deposit some money…for a business.” I rifled through my bag. “If I can find the money…I may have lost it on the way here.”
My scalp was sweating. I stopped my search to put my hair up in a high ponytail.
I finally looked at the guy. He was dressed in a short-sleeve plaid shirt, tucked into a pair of neatly ironed khakis. He had long, shaggy brown hair, pulled back behind his ears. It was like his whole outfit was one person and his hair was someone else.
I went back to rifling through my bag.
“You doing all right over there?” he asked.
I finally found the envelope and rolled my eyes in his direction. “Ya know, same shit, different day.”
He cracked up. Like, genuine, honest laughing. “Wow,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to say that.” He reached out to shake my hand and I reached back clumsily. I didn’t shake hands very often so I wasn’t sure if I had a weak handshake or a strong one.
“For the record, I don’t usually dress like this.” He pointed from his neck to his feet. “We gotta be business casual here. So I did the best I could.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I’m Emmett.”
“Justine.” I smiled. “For the record, I better go deposit this money before I lose it again.”
“Good plan.” He nodded and guided me over to the tellers. “I’m just the door greeter, so I think I’ve done my job.”
I smiled.
“Do you feel like you were sufficiently greeted?” He laughed.
“Oh, definitely.”
—
Mia was sleeping over again. We were side by side on my bed staring at our phones and a tiny, tiny, tiny part of me wanted to tell her about Emmett from the bank, but I wasn’t going to because there was literally nothing to tell. It was, like, a ten-second interaction.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him, though. I wondered how old he was, and tried to scan my brain to see if he’d mentioned anything about his age. In the three seconds we talked on the way out, he had said something about having to retake a math final. I noted that it was kind of ironic that he was working at a bank and he’d failed math.
“Intern,” he said with a shrug. “My dad’s a VP, like on the corporate level. He wanted me to start here and do something for the summer. He wants me to make something of myself.”
He air-quoted the last part.
Okay, so maybe we talked for more than three seconds. The important thing was that he was in high school somewhere, and that meant it would be totally legal for me to make out with him.
“Oh, post that picture from last weekend.” Mia tapped my knee. “From when Katie went hiking in Glacier Hills.”
“Oh, yeah.” I sat up straighter. “Good call.”
We made sure to keep up with Katie’s Instagram and do stuff that would make her seem like a normal girl. She was living it up: communing with nature, getting ice cream at Brownies on Bond Street, shopping for flip-flops, getting manicures.
On occasion, Seth would click like on a photo. But he never commented.
“She never shows up at the events.” Mia threw her phone across the bed after a long scroll through all of Katie’s social media sites. “So Seth’s not gonna get into this.”
“She only bailed once, I thought.” I needed to keep better track of this. Was there an app to help you keep track of the fake person you made up so you could stalk your best friend’s ex-boyfriend and help her get over him? I wondered if I could find some techy person to help me make one. Genius business idea?
Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.
“I thought twice,” Mia said.
I got up and walked around my room and tried to come up with a plan. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She can’t show up until the end. It’s too soon. He needs to fall in love with her without seeing her in person.”
“I know she can’t really show u
p,” Mia said. “But he doesn’t seem to be falling in love.”
I sighed. “Okay. We need brain food. I’m going downstairs to get us some snacks. You think about what makes Seth tick, what will get him talking.”
“Bring me an apple if you have one,” Mia called after me.
She was still doing the diet thing, but in all fairness, it wasn’t starvation, just sensible eating. It wasn’t the worst thing.
I got downstairs, and my parents were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, staring at the TV; it sounded like one of those detective shows.
I looked in, but they didn’t see me.
I grabbed potato chips, Doritos, a few chocolate chip cookies, two bottles of Snapple, and an apple for Mia.
I could eat all this by myself, and I didn’t even care if it was fattening. It wasn’t like I was obese. Maybe I had an extra ten pounds. The pediatrician wasn’t worried about it or anything. What was better—being stick-skinny like Laurel Peck or eating snacks?
I’d take the extra ten pounds and the cookies.
“I figured it out,” Mia said as soon as I was back in my room with the door closed.
“You figured what out?” I licked Dorito dust off my fingers.
“We’ll start talking about relationships,” Mia said, biting into the apple. “Katie will confide that her boyfriend just broke up with her…and then we’ll see what Seth says.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Katie needs to open up…to reel him in!”
“Exactly!” Mia jumped up from my bed. “Let’s get started!”
MIA
I was so excited that Justine actually liked my idea. She never really loved my ideas. I mean, sometimes she pretended she did, but I could see through it.
Right then, sitting next to each other at Justine’s antique desk, it just felt like things were going to go right. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but there was a shift in the universe.
“So what should we say?” Justine asked.
“Well, first of all, he’s actually online now,” I said. I showed Justine the little icon thingy that let us know he was logged in on his phone. “So we should click like on a recent post. It’ll jog his memory…and maybe, just maybe he’ll write us first.”
She bit her bottom lip. “Ummm. You think? I guess it doesn’t hurt to try.”
So we clicked on his page, and he’d recently posted an article about some coach getting busted for not cracking down on a high school football team’s cheating ring.
Boring. But whatever.
“We can’t like that,” Justine said. “No one likes that.”
“We can make something up.” I raised my eyebrows. I felt confident. Daring. I was actually in charge, in control. Katie was that way, and I wasn’t. But when I was Katie—well, that’s when the magic happened.
Justine raised her shoulders. “Like?”
“My cousin goes to that school,” I suggested.
“What if he asks who your cousin is?”
“Justine.” I folded my hands on my lap and tried to be patient with her while I explained. “He doesn’t know anyone at the school. He’s just posting because he plays high school sports and finds the topic interesting.”
“Oh. Right.” She shook the crumbs from the potato chip bag into her mouth.
I typed in: Crazy. I know someone who went to this school.
And then we waited.
JUSTINE
By the time I got back from the bathroom, Katie and Seth were in a full-on back-and-forth chat.
“What’s happening?” I screeched. I hadn’t even been gone for that long.
Mia pointed at the computer.
I never Facebook chat with people, by the way, Seth had typed.
“Wait, scroll up,” I demanded from the edge of my seat. I needed to see the rest of the conversation. I didn’t realize Mia was that fast of a typer.
She scrolled back to the beginning.
Seth: Hey. Sorry I never wrote back the other day.
So it worked. Mia’s plan worked. He saw Katie was online, and he wrote to her.
Katie: No problem. You’re writing back now, aren’t you?
Seth: I guess I am.
“There was a lull in the conversation right around here,” Mia explained, pointing to the screen. “I had to say something. So I brought up the volunteer stuff.”
I nodded.
Katie: So how’s the volunteer stuff going? I need to show up. I don’t understand why I’m this lazy.
Seth: It’s summer. That’s why.
Katie: Yeah, that. And I’m dealing with an f’ing breakup.
Seth:
Katie: Actually, can I ask you something? Like, ya know, from a guy’s perspective?
Seth: Ummmm…sure, I guess.
And then we were back to where we had started: Seth saying I never Facebook chat with people, by the way….
“So, type something!” I yelled. “He’s been waiting.”
“That’s okay,” Mia said. “He can sweat it out a little bit.”
I took a sip of my lemonade. “I wonder if he’s actually sweating this. Does Seth sweat stuff like this?”
Mia looked at me, chewing on her pinky nail. “Um. I don’t even know.”
Maybe she was slowly realizing she didn’t know her beloved Seth as well as she thought she did. I wondered if her heart was pounding like mine was.
“He’s really into the whole dot dot dot thing,” I announced.
Mia looked at the screen and said, “It’s called an ellipsis.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course she knew the word for it. Mia was the tippity-top of our class, and the worst part of it all was that she got As without even really having to try. “Just type. Please.”
Katie: I never do either…it’s really weird. But, anyway. Ready for my guy dilemma?
Seth: How do you even know I’m a guy? Huh?
Katie: You look like a guy in your pictures, and why would you lie? That would be super creepy, you know.
Mia and I side-eyed each other. We were beyond creepy; we both knew it.
Seth: I’m just kidding. Sheesh.
“I don’t know what to say now,” Mia said, shaking her foot. I wasn’t sure either. To be honest, I was surprised we had gotten this far. And then Seth wrote again.
Seth: Aight. Shoot. What’s the dilemma? I don’t have all day here, ya know.
“He seems really into this,” I said, and Mia nodded. I couldn’t tell how she was feeling about it all. She wasn’t crying or anything; she just seemed determined. Very, very determined.
It felt like we owned Seth. Up until that moment, he’d made all the decisions—to go out with Mia and then to break up with her. But now it was our turn.
Katie: So, basically, I’m really into this guy. And we were hooking up for like a month. We were having fun and everything. And then I think he got freaked out that it was becoming something more, but it really wasn’t. I’m not into anything serious. I don’t even want that. So he broke it off. But how can I tell him that I don’t really want anything serious? Basically, I miss him, and I’m bored and it’s summer. You know the deal…
I watched as Mia typed this, and I couldn’t believe it. She was making up problems, plot lines for Katie, stuff to get Seth talking. But it was nothing too obvious. Nothing that would cause him to suspect it was us.
This wasn’t the Mia I knew. Not at all. As Katie, she was confident. Katie could say whatever she wanted to say.
Or maybe it was our high school that made Mia shaky, unsure, invisible-feeling.
Seth took a while to respond. We saw the three dots that let us know he was typing but it felt like forever before his answer finally came through.
“I’m nervous,” Mia said, tapping her fingers on her leg. “What if he figures it out? What if he’s already figured it out?”
“Figures what out?” I asked, staring at the screen.
“That it’s us. Duh.”
I couldn’t focus on what sh
e was saying. All I could do was stare at the three dots on the screen and wait to see what he would say. “Oh, don’t worry. He won’t. Not yet, anyway.”
Finally, we saw a flash on the screen.
Seth: Here’s the deal: guys are dumb. They don’t know what girls are thinking. If you want them to know something, you gotta spell it out.
Katie: Really?
Seth: Yup. I gotta go. Later.
And then he was gone. He signed off. We waited for a good five minutes, just sitting there, staring, not even talking to each other.
“What was that about?” Mia shrieked. “He just signed off so fast. That was weird, right?” She stood up and paced around my room.
“Calm down,” I said. “He’d told us he had to go.”
“I guess,” Mia said, coming back to look at the computer. “I’m totally freaked out.”
I put my hands on her shoulders. “Don’t be freaked out. This is good. This is very, very good.”
MIA
We got to our morning spot a few days later and there was a line deep into the parking lot.
“What is happening here?” I asked Justine. “They know we don’t get here until nine-thirty.”
She rubbed her eyes. “Umm. I have no idea.”
We opened the front window of the truck, and the line moved closer.
“Thank God you’re here,” one lady said. She was in a tight black tank top and yoga pants. “My class starts in ten minutes. But I need my kale!”
It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.
“We’ll, uh, get started!” Justine couldn’t do it—she fully cracked up.
So one by one we gave the ladies their smoothies. Most of them ordered the same thing as the others did, every single day: our kale, blueberry, almond milk, banana concoction we started calling the Epic Kale, since it pretty much embodied our business.
A few ladies liked the mango, coconut, vanilla yogurt, and peanut butter smoothie. We called it the Guilty Pleasure. They were the chubbier moms, the ones who didn’t arrive bright and early. We could count on them around noon, usually.
“My husband is so happy that I’m saving so much money,” one lady said. “Compared to Juiceteria, you guys are a bargain!”
Justine and I slow-nodded at her, listening, feeling pretty proud of ourselves.
Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender Page 7