Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender

by Lisa Greenwald

  “And you two young girls, running your own business like this,” she continued, rolling her lips together. “It’s incredible. It really is. Feminism! Entrepreneurship!”

  She was all choked up. About smoothies. About us making the smoothies.

  The next lady came up to the counter and plopped down her oversize handbag. “I’d like one Ora—”

  “What is happening here?” Uncle Rick asked, seeming to appear out of nowhere. “Everyone here for snow cones? So early in the morning?”

  “Oh, actually I’d like a—” Handbag Lady tried to continue ordering, but I cut her off.

  “Uncle Rick! Yes! We created this whole morning snow cone with fruit, and a tiny bit of yogurt, and it’s really taken off.” The lady stared at me. “So, uh, we better get back to work.”

  Was Justine really not hearing this? I kept turning my head to see what she was doing back there.

  “I love to see you guys in action,” he said. “Justine’s in the back blending?”

  “Yup! Come on, hop in the truck.” I opened the side door for him. “Let’s find her.”

  I held up a finger to tell the woman to wait a minute, and I mouthed Sorry.

  “Justine!” I yelled. “Uncle Rick is here!” I hoped that would give her enough warning to put the smoothie evidence away. “Justine…”

  “Hi, Uncle Rick!” She greeted him more excitedly than I’d ever heard her greet him before. “I’m so glad you’re here, actually….Can we walk for a bit? I need to talk to you about something.”

  Justine gave me a thumbs-up to let me know she had it all under control. They left the truck and walked around the baseball field.

  We made a good team, Justine and me.

  It wasn’t like we were doing anything that bad, really. We used the money we made to replenish our supplies, so we weren’t messing with Uncle Rick’s profits or anything….I wasn’t sure why we couldn’t tell him, but it felt like we had to keep it a secret.

  He wanted only snow cones and we were going against his wishes.

  I had no idea what we’d do with the money we were making. Shopping spree, maybe? Spring break trip to Turks and Caicos?

  We had time to decide.

  MIA

  A few afternoons later, I was in the back pouring our most popular mixture into plastic cups when I heard a familiar voice.

  “One Epic Kale, please,” she said.

  I’d know that voice anywhere.

  Seth’s mom.

  “This is an incredible business you have going on here,” she continued.

  “Thanks,” Justine replied. “It’ll be just a moment.”

  Did she have any idea who she was talking to?

  Justine called to me, saying she needed those six Epic Kales ASAP.

  I tried to hide in the back, but I had no choice.

  I had to face her.

  So I brought out the tray, and when she saw me, her face lit up. It really did. I’m not just saying that.

  “Mia! I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Manzell,” I said.

  “Oh, call me Michelle.”

  I smiled. It was all I could do not to crack up, because Seth and I always laughed about how his mom’s name rhymed—Michelle Manzell.

  “So you two are the ones behind this crazy obsession all the ladies around town are talking about?” she asked.

  Justine and I looked at each other. “I guess,” we said at the same time.

  “This is amazing,” Michelle said. She turned around. “Wow, look at this line. I better let you get back to work.”

  She reached into her wallet and came up a few dollars short.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said. “You can get us next time.”

  “No worries. Seth’s in the car.” She took her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket, pushed a button, and put the phone up to her ear.

  My heart pounded. I tried to make a beeline to the back, but Justine grabbed my hand and forced me to stay.

  Before I knew it, Seth was right there.

  Right in front of us.

  “Oh. Hey.” He crinkled his eyebrows and half-smiled.

  “Hey.” I pretended to be really busy lining up the cups of Epic Kale.

  “Thanks so much, girls,” Michelle said. “I’ll be back, probably tomorrow!”

  Seth and I stared at each other for a second.

  “I didn’t know you guys were doing this.”

  I wanted to say Well, you knew about my summer plans and the snow cones, but all I said was “Yeah.”

  “Cool.” He shrugged. “I gotta run.”

  I watched him walk away. I kept my eyes on his back until I couldn’t see him anymore.

  My heart sagged, like tree branches after a rainstorm.

  The freckle under his left eye. The way his hair curled on the sides. His raspy voice. His sweet lopsided smile.

  He was here and then he was gone so quickly. It was like when you got the taster-size mini-cup of frozen yogurt to try a new flavor and then you really, really wanted the regular size.

  We continued serving the ladies on the line. They thanked us, and asked about the ingredients, and told us how we were so “unbelievably enterprising for such a young age.”

  “We try,” I replied, running out of responses. Every time I opened my mouth to talk about the Seth thing with Justine, it was the next lady’s turn on line. And some of them had requests.

  “Can you make it thick?” this one asked. “I want to really taste the vegetables.”

  “Hold the spinach,” another lady whispered. “It gives me gas.”

  Wow. Too much information. Way too much information.

  The line finally dissipated.

  “So I guess he knows we work in this food truck now?” Justine asked before I had even brought it up.

  “Obviously.” I didn’t mean to snap at her, but my heart was a lump of mashed potatoes. All I wanted to do was sit alone and replay that interaction over and over again in my head. I was going to add it to the Seth Memory Slideshow. “We’re screwed, I guess.”

  “Not at all,” Justine squawked.

  “I don’t know….” I brushed some sweaty strands of hair away from my face. “Our stalking vehicle won’t actually be a possibility anymore. Like, we can’t stalk in it. He knows we work in this truck. Do you get what I’m saying?” I felt prickles behind my eyes.

  “We weren’t really driving around stalking him anymore. We’re past that part. It’s okay.”

  “Maybe.” I looked down at the floor.

  “We have Katie,” Justine reminded me. “And that’s all we need. Just remember that.”

  She tried to get me to feel better, and I only half-listened. Finally she went to the back of the truck to straighten up.

  I took the BRIDGEFIELD ESTATES pen out of my bag and held it in my hands. It was so pathetic—but it was all I had left.

  “Oh, here,” Justine said, coming over to me. I quickly stashed the pen away. “I found these in the back under a Post-it with your name on it.” She read a flash card and handed me the stack. “Well, duh, this one’s easy—Sarah Palin.”

  We laughed for a second.

  “Why does that one even need to be on a flash card? Dennis lived it,” Justine remarked. “I don’t get what this is. And why did Dennis leave them for you?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Let’s go clean the blenders,” Justine said. “We may have more customers today. We are on fire!” She shimmied back and forth and I forced a smile.

  She tilted her head and stared at me. “When you leave the maze of your thoughts, let me know. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  Seth’s half-smile from before kept appearing in my mind. And then our memories flashed one after another: the night his parents were out and we ate scrambled eggs for dinner. I sat up on the counter and watched him cook.

  At the beach, when he sat behind me on the rocks and he played with my hair.

  When
we went to Boston for Model UN and we snuck out of our rooms in the middle of the night and hooked up behind the vending machines.

  I thought he liked me. Like, really liked me. I thought he’d love me one day.

  I loved him.

  But I hated him, too.

  MIA

  “I can come with you to the bank,” I told Justine when we were driving over to the shop. There had been a Little League world series and a youth soccer tournament going on over the past few days, so we had lots of snow cone money to deposit.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Actually, can you look over the social media sites and make sure Dennis is keeping up with everything?”

  It seemed like a simple enough thing for her to do, but I could certainly handle it.

  “Sure.”

  “K, just go onto the computer in the shop and make sure everything looks normal,” she instructed. “Also, can you go on as Katie on the computer and click like on some random stuff, maybe a status update? I feel like we’ve been slacking with her pages.”

  “That’s a lot to do,” I groaned, half-kidding.

  She counted the money one more time before she left.

  “Mia, Mia, Bo Bia, Banana-Fanna Fo Fia, Mi My Mo Mia,” Dennis sang as I walked into the shop.

  I giggled and sat down at the computer ready to do all of Justine’s tasks. “Oh, I found the cards under the bananas in the truck.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “I can quiz you whenever you want,” I offered. “Did you leave them for me so I can learn them too?”

  I checked all the Simply Snow Cones social media sites and everything looked in order. I signed on as Katie, changed her profile picture, and clicked like on a few things.

  I sipped my newest smoothie creation: Reset. It was inspired by the Seth sighting at the truck. I needed to reset my brain, wipe away the obsessive thoughts.

  I read somewhere that chia seeds help with memory and focus…so maybe putting them in a smoothie would help me focus on…other stuff. Other non-Seth stuff.

  “Yeah, it’d be cool if you learned them,” Dennis said. “I just like leaving them in random places for you. It’s funny, right?”

  “Yeah, um, I guess so.” I looked at my phone to see if Seth had written to Katie. Nothing.

  “It’s so hard to remember it all.” Dennis wheeled the desk chair around in a circle. “I should’ve picked something easier. Like state capitals.”

  I put my feet up on the desk and then took them down. “Well, that’s not exciting. We learned them in fifth grade.”

  “Right.”

  “Here.” I handed him my smoothie. “Chia seeds. Supposed to help with memory.”

  “Really?” His cheeks flushed red, but he didn’t take the cup.

  “Just try it.”

  “Interesting,” he said after a sip. Then he scrunched up his nose and handed it back to me. “Come here. You have an eyelash.”

  I rubbed my eye.

  “I got it,” he said, touching the space just under my bottom eyelashes. Is there a name for that spot? “Make a wish.”

  I moved back a little and blew away my eyelash. “I didn’t see you as the superstitious type.”

  “My mom taught me. She’s pretty religious about it,” he explained. “So, did you make a good one?”

  I nodded, and we sat back down. “But if I tell you what I wished for, it won’t come true.”

  “I know,” he replied.

  There was only one thing I wished for these days: for Seth to love me again.

  In my mind, every penny wish in a fountain was a guarantee; every eyelash whispered away, every birthday candle blown out, every time the catch of my necklace was in the front. They would all come true.

  “So…1960. Anything come to mind?” Dennis asked, tapping my knee.

  “Ummm.” I paused. “No clue. I don’t think you left me that one yet.”

  “Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.” He rolled his lips together. “Makes me think of maple syrup…soo…hmmm…a good way to remember this.”

  “Maple syrup?” I burst out laughing. “What are you even saying?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea. Honestly.”

  “You guys have the most riveting conversations,” Justine said as she came into the store. I wondered how long she’d been listening. “Ready to go, Mi-Mi?”

  “Chia seeds,” I reminded Dennis, standing up. “Try it.”

  “Lovely sharing a drink with you,” he called as I was out the door.

  JUSTINE

  “Diner tonight?” I asked Mia after work a few days later. We’d cleaned up the truck and we were just sitting on a bench on the boardwalk, relaxing.

  We’d had a busy week with all the moms coming for smoothies and local day camps coming for snow cones.

  “Nah,” she said. “I’m prob just gonna stay in and go to bed early. I’m so tired.”

  “Mia…”

  “I was just thinking about that night that Seth and I went to Coffee & Co. and you and Alexis were there….Remember?”

  I sighed a deep sigh. “Yeah. It was, like, two months ago.”

  “And we played Uno? He was so good at it.” She stared out into the sea like a woman whose husband had gone off to war. “He won every time.”

  “Mia, I love you. You know that, right?” I turned to face her.

  She nodded.

  “But I can’t deal with the Seth memories every day.” She didn’t meet my gaze, and I felt my throat prickling. “There are other things to talk about. I can’t hear it all the time.”

  She stayed quiet, and I felt guilty. I knew she was hurting, and I knew she wanted to talk about the memories over and over again. As her best friend, I was obligated to do whatever I could to help her. But I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

  “I mean, it’s not getting any easier with time?” I asked. “He didn’t even have anything to say when he showed up at the truck.”

  She sniffled. “It is getting a teeny bit easier. Like, Seth used to be an elephant in my brain, taking up all my thoughts, and now he’s, like, a newborn baby elephant.”

  I put my head back against the bench. “Okay, well, that’s progress.”

  We needed to speed up the Katie plan. Make it happen faster. The sooner we humiliated Seth and crushed his heart, the better Mia would feel.

  —

  A few hours later, I texted Mia to see if she’d written to Seth, but she didn’t respond. Maybe she really had gone to bed early.

  I stared at my phone, waiting for Mia to text back. I clicked around through all my apps and scrolled through my old pictures.

  And then I noticed something.

  I had a new follower.

  Emmett Neufeld. The guy from the bank.

  I couldn’t believe it. That meant he was thinking about me; I was on his mind. He had taken the time to find me; it wasn’t like we had any friends in common.

  I scrolled through his photos before I started following him back. It was pretty much random objects, like a really beautiful picture of a spoon, but not an antique spoon, or a family heirloom or anything. It was just a plain, old, boring spoon you’d find on the table at a diner.

  It was beautiful, but I wasn’t sure why.

  Maybe because he took it.

  MIA

  “Is it weird that I’m calling you?” Dennis asked me over the phone.

  “Not really. I mean, we are coworkers.”

  “Right, that is most certainly true. So how are you?” He guffawed. “Sorry for the rhyme.”

  I laughed at how bizarre he was. “I’m okay,” I said. “Well, I’m not really okay.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did I tell you Seth came by the truck the other day?” I wasn’t sure why I brought Seth up to Dennis. He didn’t even know him. He didn’t care. But Justine was bored of it. I needed to talk about him with someone. “I know you’re probably sick of me talking about him. I mean, Justine literally told me it’s getting annoying, so…”
<
br />   “You did tell me,” Dennis said. It seemed like he was really listening, like he wasn’t that bored. “You can talk about him all you want, but I still think that guy’s a huge jerk. I don’t know him. But what he did to you—that’s like full-on jerk zone.”

  Jerk zone. That was such a Dennis expression. He was like a dad in training.

  I signed on as Katie, on my computer, to see if Seth was online. “I know that. But it’s like—I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Just do this,” Dennis said. “When you feel your mind wandering over in the Seth direction, think of something else. Like, pick a thing—something funny or random or whatever. Force yourself to think about that thing. It’s a good trick. I promise.”

  “Okay.” I was willing to give it a try. “But what should my thing be?”

  “Hmmm.” He was quiet for a second, thinking. “Okay, promise not to laugh?”

  “Um, maybe.” I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Okay, promise.”

  “So I have this pair of socks—I got them at Disney World a few years ago. They’re covered in Mickey Mouse heads.” He laughed then, so I figured I could too. “Kind of weird to have decapitated Mickeys, but that’s another story….They have a hole in the heel, but I can’t seem to throw them away. I wear them once a week.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “That’s your thing. Think about my Mickey Mouse socks.”

  I pulled my knees up, wondering if something like this could actually work. “So when Seth comes into my head, think about your old, holey Mickey Mouse socks?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I figured, what did I really have to lose? And it wasn’t like Dennis would really know if I did it or not. “Okay. I’ll try it.”

  “You have to really try it, though. Don’t just say you’re going to and then not do it.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. It felt like this was a secret that only Dennis and I knew. His socks were a secret. And the fact that we were talking on the phone was a secret. And something about that felt exciting. “I promise.”

  —

  “So my cones are selling?” Uncle Rick asked us when we were picking up the truck the next day.

  We nodded.

  I swallowed hard. I mean, they were selling. Just not as well as our smoothies. It wasn’t a total lie.

  “Really?” Even he was surprised.