***
I stood over the TacoTown staff table looking down at the new work schedule a little disbelievingly. It was patched up with flaking, lumpy bars of dried white-out fluid. Tom’s name had been blotted out of the schedule. Today was the last day of his new employee probation and he had been fired. He was just walking out of Sandy’s office, white faced, as I stepped up to the lockers.
“Tom,” I called after him. He slowed down and waited for me to reach him. “What the heck happened?”
Half of his mouth worked at something like a smile. “The triplets,” he said. “Well, Wayne, anyways.”
I couldn’t accept that the word of one cute teen-aged dragon-boy could be powerful enough to cost Tom his job. “But how –”
“It’s okay,” he interrupted. “I didn’t like working with that jerk anyway. I hear you and Crystal are best buds now so you should be fine under her protection. You sure don’t need me anymore. See ya.”
I guess I understood why he didn’t want to stay and chat. “Well – see ya,” I called. I watched Tom push open the glass entry doors and saw how he was sure to press two large, smeared handprints onto to their surfaces.
With no more Tom, it was up to me to operate the terrifying deep fryer. Sandy was still recovering from firing him and had shut herself in the office to smoke away her anxiety. Darren was the person who came to train me to use the fryer.
“The most important thing to remember,” Darren cautioned, “is not to splash any water into the oil.”
I nodded and nodded.
The next hour was a nightmare of beeping timer alarms and popping grease but I made it through the suppertime rush unburned. There was just one lull in all the furious activity. In the fleeting quiet, I stood at my counter not realizing I was glaring through the indoor window to the place where Darren and Wayne were folding tacos. I was looking right at Wayne as he raised his head and glanced back at me. He didn’t seem to be surprised to see me staring at him – maybe it happens to pretty people all the time. Completely unfazed, he just looked right back into my face. For once, he wasn’t burning but cold and aloof.
The timer on the fryer starting beeping just as my pulse started to beat against my throat. I looked away from Wayne knowing that I hated him. I didn’t want to hate him. I wanted Wayne’s power to affect my emotional state to be flat – as flat as a heart monitor tone at the end of a sad movie, as flat as the horizon all around us for hundreds of miles. I didn’t want my feelings to have any connection to him at all.
As usual, when the dinnertime crowds died away, the staff from the front of the restaurant came into the back to relieve some tension. They stood around my deep fryer counter laughing and joking over my head. I kept my eyes on the fries for as long as I could before my accusation burst, “So, you managed to get Tom fired, eh Wayne?”
Darren gasped out a little laugh.
Wayne didn’t even flinch. “Oh, so that’s your problem, is it?”
“Then it was you –”
“Nope. Tom was the one who got Tom fired,” Wayne said without any hesitation. “They were starting to let him work the cash register but every time they did his drawer was twenty dollars short by the end of the night. Sandy chalked it up to incompetence but Tom’s lucky they didn’t call the cops.”
I looked at Crystal. “It’s true,” she confirmed.
“Yep. And all the dirty looks in the world won’t change it.” Wayne was smirking at me.
I knew I deserved it. “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Who told you it was my fault?” Wayne sounded more amused than offended.
“Tom did.” I felt really stupid.
“Of course. Trying to save face always makes perfect sense. And I can’t say I blame him for not wanting to tell you what really happened. But don’t worry, Mack,” Wayne waved his hand toward the dish area where Sandy’s latest new hire was blasting the sinks with the rinse nozzle, “we got you a new guy to whisper with back here.”
“Huh?” New Guy bawled over the roar of the water. He was a big farm kid who looked like he could be Heather V.’s long lost brother. He didn’t look much like a dragon. He was more of a lion. And apparently, he didn’t like Wayne talking about him when he couldn’t hear him properly. I guess a guy who shoves around tonnes of live cattle every day is hard for even Wayne to intimidate.
“What’s your name again?” Wayne hollered back at him. “Norbert?”
New Guy tossed the nozzle away from himself and looked Wayne squarely in the face. “It’s Hubert.”
“Sure, whatever. Go clean the dining room, will ya,” he said to Hubert. “And you,” Wayne turned to me, “cheer up.”
And I realized I was no longer the main object of Wayne’s abuse. Maybe it was because Crystal had christened me her best friend. Or maybe it was just because I clearly was not Heather V.’s replacement anymore. She had quietly quit her job soon after I started work but she hadn’t broken up with Wayne as part of the package. He seemed satisfied.
When Hubert came back from cleaning the dining room he set the stack of greasy orange trays he’d collected to the counter beside my work station and stood wiping them with a clean cloth. The rest of the crew had gone back to the front counter of the restaurant.
“So do all your friends call you Hu instead of Hubert?” I asked, gingerly skimming blackened, broken French fries off the surface of the dark brown oil in the fryer.
“Most of the time,” he answered.
“Can I call you Bert instead?”
He laughed. “Sure, whatever you want.”
Wayne came around the corner, took a vigorous stir of the enormous pot of cooking taco meat, and started giving orders. Bert was supposed to take his dinner break.
“So how do you like your new buddy?” Wayne asked me after Bert had swaggered away.
“Just fine, I guess. He’s got great posture. And he’s a lot friendlier than some people around here,” I answered lightly.
“Less suspicious of innocent co-workers than some people around here too,” Wayne added. He suddenly took a giant step toward me. “Look, forget the Tom thing. I want you to know that I really appreciate what you’re doing for Crystal.”
I stepped back. “You mean being her friend? Believe me, the pleasure is all mine.”
He glanced around the kitchen to make sure no one would overhear the rest. “Yeah, well – she’s been kind of a magnet for mean girls ever since elementary school. I can’t explain it. She’s pretty enough and smart and athletic –”
“Just the kind of person insecure girls might want to keep down?” I suggested.
Wayne shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe that’s it. But her miserable social life makes me angrier than I ever let on to her or our mom. And – what I’m saying is, if you and I are both going to be Crystal boosters, we need to trust each other.” He was standing beside the fryer, talking just barely over the roar of the exhaust fans overhead. I shrank back a little as he turned the full power of his dark eyes on me. What was more compelling than anything about his looks was the sight of him standing there acting like the man of his family’s house, trying to protect Crystal in the place of his long gone, possibly dead dad.
Maybe I was wrong about hating him. I hoped I was.
“I have no intentions of ever messing with Crystal,” I promised Wayne.
He nodded. “That’s what I thought. But it’s good to hear it. Now you can go clean the dining room for Hubert while he’s taking his break.”
I took a spray bottle and stepped through the kitchen door and into a cloud of tobacco smoke. There was Hubert, dragging hard on a cigarette at the staff table. He was smoking even though I’d already decided he was not supposed to be a dragon. I did nothing to hide my grief. “Bert! No!” I squeaked.
“What?” he sprang to his feet and darted his eyes around the restaurant.
Crystal had heard me squeal and came pacing up
behind me, laughing. “Sorry, Hubert. Did we forget to tell you Mack’s a Mormon?” she said as she passed.
Bert’s alert posture slackened and he fell back into his chair. “Ya don’t say,” he said, his teeth closing over the orange filter of his cigarette.
“Why the heck are you smoking?” I said, still sounding betrayed.
“Because I have an addiction.” Bert’s answer was unapologetic.
“Do your parents know about it? Maybe they could help you,” I offered.
Bert plucked the cigarette out of his mouth long enough to laugh. “My parents? As if. My dad was the one who first gave me smokes – along with a giant thermos of black coffee. He was trying to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel of the combine during harvest.”
“Aw, I’m so sorry –” I began.
“Look, I know it’s gross. I’m going to quit but it takes time, okay? It’s not like I’m a kid who needs the nicotine rush to get my work done anymore,” he explained.
“Not a kid? But you’re just sixteen, right?”
“Whatever. I’m going to quit smoking soon and,” he crushed the stub of his cigarette into Sandy’s dusty ashtray. “And since you’re such a cute, caring little Mormon, the first thing I’m going to do once I’ve quit for good is kiss you – right on the mouth.”
I gave a little involuntary shriek and hopped backwards. Fortunately, there were no customers in the restaurant for me to startle. It was a brilliant strategy for Bert to play. From that point on, if I ever nagged him about quitting, it’d be as if I was asking him to hurry up and kiss me. It was a great way to make sure I didn’t pester him about smoking.
Still, Darren’s face appeared in the doorway at the words “kiss you” and instantly formed into a scowl he must have learned from Wayne.
“Mack,” Darren growled, “go clean the tables.”