The truth is, she’s not wrong. Usually I just skim the pages and Wikipedia the book summaries. I mean, you can find anything online. A lot of teachers aren’t Net-savvy enough to figure that out.
“You have some very…strong feelings,” she says.
That’s probably a reference to the two paragraph rant I did on how much I hate reading about dead puppies, and how much it sucks that the only female character in the book is, of course, a temptress who leads to the two main guys’ downfall. Sexist much, Mr. Steinbeck?
“But your criticism stems from an understanding of the material,” she goes on. “And it’s a marked improvement from your past work. So I have to concede that if this…vow of silence of yours is strengthening your focus as a student, it isn’t fair of me to punish you.”
Wow. No more detentions? As much as I’ll miss sitting in that tiny windowless room every day, I’ll find it in me to persevere. Somehow.
“Don’t think I’ll be letting you slack off from now on,” Mrs. Finch warns me. “I expect to see more work of this caliber. You understand?”
I nod fervently. I am so willing to let myself be blackmailed into doing my homework if it means I get my freedom back.
And there’s a definite novelty to knowing what my teachers are talking about instead of just zoning out as usual. Like, in geometry, I actually understood the equations Mr. Callihan wrote on the overhead projector. Okay, not all of them, but some. And I even took notes. Detailed ones! Asha is a saint. She really is.
This is what I tell—well, not tell, but write to—Sam while Ms. Kinsey pontificates on the technique behind charcoal shading. He looks at my sketchpad and laughs, and when he takes my pencil, his fingers cover mine for a moment.
yeah she’s pretty awesome
Awesome x awesome. Awesome2
awesome3
Awesome99999999
awesomeinfinity
What is the square root of awesome?
√awesome = asha
You should be the one tutoring me.
maybe in home ec
Sewing? I already know how to do that.
cooking
Asha said she’d teach me to knit.
tuna melts and scarves. you’d be set for life.
You’d really show me how to make a tuna melt?
if you want. coming to rosie’s tonite?
Depends. Am I welcome?
sure
What about Andy?
i talked to him
AND?????
& he’s cool
Liar.
o.k. you’re not gonna be best friends anytime soon. but he won’t punch you in the face or anything. promise. maybe you could talk to him?
…are you kidding?
nevermind
* * *
Sam’s suggestion for me to talk to Andy sticks with me for the rest of the day. I know he probably didn’t mean it literally, but it makes me wonder about what, exactly, it will take for me to talk again. I know I can’t stay silent forever, but the longer I don’t speak, the less inclined I am to start. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Sam is right. Andy deserves an explanation. An apology. Something.
I momentarily consider approaching him when I walk into Rosie’s, but the place is a madhouse. There’s a line of people waiting to be seated, and before I even get to the counter, Dex leans across it and yells, “Asha, we need you, stat!” Which strikes me as kind of funny, like we’re in a hospital emergency room or something. But Dex’s face is totally serious.
“Monday nights are always crazy,” Asha explains as she pops behind the counter. “The dinner menu’s half off.”
“Lou’s on section two. Need you to start seating,” Dex says.
Asha grabs a bunch of menus and hurries toward the greeter stand. “On it!”
“You.” Dex points a pair of tongs at me. “I need you on dish duty.”
I stare at him with wide eyes. Me? Seriously?
“Seriously,” he says. “Andy’ll show you what to do.”
Andy, in the middle of setting a plate of home fries on the counter, stops dead in his tracks. “What? Dex, I’m—”
“Whatever you’re doing, it can wait five minutes. Now go.”
Dex is really not kidding around. I shrug off my jacket and hang it with my messenger bag on the coatrack before I scoot into the kitchen, up to the big industrial sink. There are dirty pans and dishes and cups stacked all around it, waiting to be cleaned. Andy leans against the sink and irritably blows hair out of his face.
“This—” he starts, grabbing the hose “—is the power spray. It should get anything off of anything, and anything it somehow misses, you use that.” He points to a ratty scrub brush sitting on the sink’s edge. “Spray everything down until it gets all the crap off it. Set the nozzle to Light when you’re doing glass, ’cause this sucker’s strong. When you’re done, throw as much as you can in here.” He pauses to yank open the dishwasher. “It’s a sanitizer. Crank the dial back, and the cycle will last maybe a minute or so. Then you put all the clean dishes on the racks, and when they’re dry, stack ’em with the rest. If you don’t know where something goes, feel free to bother Sam. Not me. Got it?”
Spray, scrub, cycle, dry, stack, don’t bother Andy. I think I can remember that much.
I spend the next two hours on dish duty. Every time I clear the sink, Asha and Lou come by and unload a million more dirty bowls and pans and cups for me to handle, and whenever I do manage to get ahead, I go out and help them bus tables. It’s mindless work, but it keeps me busy, and it gives me a better vantage point from which to watch everyone else. Whenever I stack dishes on the drying rack, I get a glimpse of Sam at the grill, stirring and flipping and frying. He’s so into it.
It’s kind of hot.
I don’t know where that thought comes from, but before I let it go any further, I rush back to the sink just as Lou bursts through the swinging door with an armful of messy bowls.
“Chili, chili, chili.” She sighs as she dumps them next to the sink. “Everyone wants the goddamn chili tonight.”
Even all frazzled, Lou still looks as if she just stepped out of a pin-up calendar, like Bettie Page or something. If Bettie Page wore hot-pink sneakers, that is.
She brushes her thick bangs out of her eyes and looks at me. “You okay? Your face is kind of red.”
I just shrug in response. Not like I’m champing at the bit to explain that I don’t know if it’s the steam or Sam’s vaguely erotic cooking expertise causing my cheeks to feel like they’re on fire.
The worst of the dinner rush ends around nine o’clock. I start putting away the last of the dried dishes when I discover some kind of sifting bowl that I’m not sure where to put away, so I walk up to Sam, who is sponging down the counter, and tap him on the shoulder.
“Colander,” he says, pointing to the bowl. He opens up a cupboard over my head. “That goes here.”
I stand on my tiptoes, trying to shove it in to no avail. Sam gently takes it from me and slides it into the cupboard space. His whole body presses against my back for a moment, arm brushing mine, and my breath catches.
“There we go,” he says softly. He closes the cupboard but doesn’t move back right away.
“I need, like, eight million cigarettes,” Lou moans. The sound of her voice startles me, and I quickly duck under Sam’s arm and hurry out to the front. Dex and Andy refill and swap out the condiment bottles while Asha
sits on top of the counter, legs dangling. It would seem inappropriate, except there are no customers left except this old guy in the corner booth, eating a plate of scrambled eggs with coffee. Breakfast at night. People are weird.
“I thought you quit,” Dex says to Lou.
“It’s a process.” She comes up to him and links her arm through his, leans her cheek on his shoulder. “Besides, I deserve a relapse. Tonight was brutal.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be fun to count the drawer,” he points out. Lou rolls her eyes.
Asha kicks her heels lightly against the counter. “Chelsea really helped. It would have been way worse without her,” she says, and I shoot a surprised look her way, a little embarrassed.
“I noticed,” Dex says, and then to me, “Thanks for jumping in.”
“You pretty much saved my life,” agrees Lou. “Or at least my sanity, if nothing else. Too bad we can’t have you around all the time.”
Dex twirls the ketchup bottle around in his hand, considering. “Maybe we can.”
Wait—what?
“What do you say?” he asks me. “Want to be our new dish girl?”
The thing is, I do like this place and everyone who works here—well, okay, so maybe things are kind of complicated when it comes to Andy—and they all know about the no-speaking deal, so obviously it isn’t a concern. It really shouldn’t be, since as far as I can tell, the duties of a dish girl don’t require much verbal communication, anyway. And maybe it would convince my parents that I’m not only sane but responsible. That I’m displaying maturity. Something they’re always saying is oh so important and that I’m oh so lacking.
Not to mention, I could use the money. I just threw out most of the contents of my closet, and I’m pretty sure Mom will be in no hurry to fund an impulsive overhaul of my wardrobe.
I smile slowly at Dex and nod, and Asha’s and Sam’s returning smiles don’t escape my notice. Neither does the way Andy immediately walks out of the room.
“Okay then,” Dex says, and I guess that’s all there is to it.
I’m part of the team.
* * *
When I walk through the front door, I drop my messenger bag right there in the foyer, too tired to carry it any farther. I smell like dish soap and the grilled cheese sandwiches Sam made for me and Asha before I took her home (“A congratulatory gesture for your new employment,” he explained to me with one of his tilted smiles, and seriously, what is with the sudden somersaults my stomach does whenever that happens?).
I want a shower. I want a nap. Maybe a nap in the shower. But before that I want something to drink, so I head into the kitchen, and I have the refrigerator door halfway open before I realize Mom and Dad are seated at the table.
Whatever they’re discussing, it’s bad. I know it before either of them say a single word. For one, they always break bad news to me in the kitchen; like when I was nine and our old cat Whiskers was put down, and I came home from school to find Dad waiting in here with a glass of chocolate milk, or when Grandpa Murphy had a heart attack last year and Mom started crying over the sink as she told me.
Second, they always have the same look on their faces. Thinly veiled panic.
I shut the refrigerator and lean against it, unscrewing the top of my bottled water. They both stare at me. Do they expect me to say something? Did they forget already? Maybe they did, because after a minute Dad clears his throat, an awkward and delayed conversation starter.
“Hey, sweetness, why don’t you sit down for a minute?” he says without looking at me.
I obediently pull back a chair and sit at the table, watching them carefully. I wonder who died this time.
“I’ve got some bad news,” he tells me, his gaze still focused on the wooden tabletop. I wish he would look at me. But at the same time I’m sort of afraid of what I’d see. “I…I lost my job today.”
Mom reaches across the table and grabs his hand. It’s weird. My parents have never been very lovey-dovey with each other. Maybe they’re different behind closed doors—not that I have ever thought about that, or would ever want to—but the most they ever do in front of me is cuddle on the couch while watching television. So I know this must be really bad.
I want to ask what this means. For him. For us. How did this happen? He’s worked for his company ever since I was born. He’s never late, hardly ever takes a sick day. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to take his vacation. How could he lose his job, just like that? With no warning? Or was there warning, and they just didn’t say anything so I wouldn’t worry?
“It’s going to be okay,” Mom assures me. I can’t understand how she can be so calm, but I’m grateful for it. “It’ll be tight for a while, but we’ll get through it. We can get by for now with me at the shop, and your father will find another job, and…” She trails off, swallowing hard, like she’s lost the energy to remain so optimistic.
Dad meets my eyes, his own rimmed red. I’ve never seen him cry before. Not ever.
“I’m sorry,” he says, so soft I barely hear him, and covers his face with one hand.
It kills me to see him act like this. Like he’s let us both down. It makes me feel sick inside. I go stand behind him, wrapping my arms around his neck, holding as tight as I can at the awkward angle. He breathes out and rubs his thumb across the outside of my wrist. Mom pushes off her chair with a huff, leans hard against the sink, and I can tell she’s barely holding it together by the way she clenches her fists.
“Roger was just looking for any excuse to get rid of you,” she spits. Roger is—or, was—my dad’s boss. “You should sue. You really should.”
“Irene,” Dad says tiredly. Clearly they’ve already gone over this.
She whirls around, wringing a dishcloth in her hands. “It’s a conflict of interest! He’s that Snyder boy’s uncle, for Christ’s sake!”
I let go of Dad and look at her. I’d forgotten that Warren is his boss’s nephew. It’s not something that ever came up, really, only in passing mention. It never mattered before. Does it matter now? Would his uncle really fire my father because of what I did? Yours hurt mine, so I hurt you—that’s really what it breaks down to?
I never thought—I mean, my family wasn’t supposed to be hurt by this. So many people have been hurt already. It’s like a ripple effect. I thought the aftershocks were over, the casualty list limited to Warren, Joey, Noah, Andy. Me. But it keeps growing. And it’s my fault.
I want to crawl under a rock and die.
I settle for slipping upstairs into my room. Mom and Dad are too busy launching into another argument to notice my exit. I should take a shower and get the diner smell off, but I’m too tired and too sad, and it’s kind of comforting, somehow. To curl up in a ball in the middle of my bed and breathe in Rosie’s. To pretend I’m back at the diner, with Sam and Asha and Dex and Lou, where I clicked into their little system like a missing puzzle piece. Where people looked glad to see me. People like Sam.
And that’s what I’m thinking about as I fall asleep—Sam, smiling, Sam, standing at the grill, Sam, trading notes with me in art, adjusting his glasses and giving me his default look, skeptical but amused, Sam, his body pressed against my back, Sam, pressed against my front instead, Sam, his mouth near mine, not touching, just breathing, Sam, his hand warm and steady on my hip, Sam, Sam, Sam Sam SamSamSamsamsamsam—
day nine
In the morning, I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock five times before rolling out of bed, ex
hausted and sore all over, and then I stand under the shower for way too long, take too much time finding something to wear in my meager closet and burn my bagel on the first try and have to start all over again. As a result, I’m almost ten minutes late for first-period geometry. Mr. Callihan is writing something on the board when I slink in.
“Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Chelsea,” he says without turning around.
I drop into my seat and lay my head down on my desk. I’m too tired to be embarrassed.
I’m dragging all day, totally out of it, preoccupied with feeling guilty about Dad. And with thinking about Sam, and how much I’m looking forward to working at the diner again tonight, and then I feel even guiltier, because—hello!—this horrible, awful thing has happened to my father, something I am at least partially to blame for. I should not be happy about anything right now.
Asha notices. At lunch in the library, she pokes me in the elbow with her pencil and says, “Hey, did you even hear what I said? About finding the axis of symmetry?”
I definitely did not. And I definitely do not care. I’m too busy zoning out. A much more productive use of my time than geometry.
She sighs and rolls the pencil between her fingers. “We can work on it later,” she says. She pulls out her knitting—the yarn is a mix of green and silver, this shiny, glinting material, and I remember the scarf she told Sam she’d make for him.
I write Sam? on my whiteboard and slide it over to her.
She nods and says, “I finished Noah’s a few days ago,” and then looks at me from underneath her eyelashes. “I’m visiting him this weekend.”
I scratch Sam’s name off the board with my thumbnail. I don’t want to think about Noah in the hospital. What are people like after they wake up from comas? Even I’m not naive enough to believe it’s like the movies, where the person just opens their eyes and is perfectly functional. I wonder if he can talk. If the police have interviewed him yet like they interviewed me. If he even remembers that night at all.