“Okay,” I said, still waiting for an explanation of how I fit into all this.
“So I put in a request with Jillian for one more employee,” he said. “Someone here who can do what needs doing. Mostly the snack bar, but I also need someone to help figure out the movie-on-the-beach nights. Last year, they were…” He paused for a moment. “Not a success,” he finally concluded. “Basically, I need to be able to be away from this place and know that everything is going to be covered. So that’ll be you. Sound good?”
“Well,” I said, turning over my job description in my head. It wasn’t that it sounded bad—it was only that I wasn’t sure I was qualified to do any of it. “It’s just—”
“Good!” Fred said, standing up, this meeting apparently now over as far as he was concerned. “Let’s say four days a week. I’ll let you work out the schedule with the others, figuring out where the holes are.”
I stood up as well, out of instinct, since he was looming over me and clearly wanted me to leave his fish-bedecked office. “But—”
“The job’s very easy, Taylor,” he said, coming around to join me on the other side of his desk, and then opening the door for me, in case I still wasn’t getting the hint that I was supposed to leave. “Just make my life simple. I want to fish. And I want to fish undisturbed. So if you can help me make that happen, you’ll be doing great work. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, taking a step out of his office, then another one, as he began to ease the door shut. “But where should I—”
“Start at the snack bar,” he said. “See what needs doing. Welcome aboard!” With that, he shut the door firmly in my face.
I looked around, and seeing no other options, headed to the snack bar. I had only ever approached it from the front, after scrounging quarters and pennies, or finding a crumpled, sandy dollar bill in my beach bag, usually to get a Cherry Coke or a frozen Milky Way to split with Lucy. But down the hall from Fred’s office there was a door clearly marked SNACK BAR EMPLOYEES ONLY, so I took a breath and pushed it open, hoping someone in there could tell me exactly what I was supposed to be doing, preferably without fish anecdotes.
From the other side of the counter, the snack bar was fairly small and cramped. The soda fountain lined the one wall, along with a large silver refrigerator and two freezer cases. Behind that was a grill and fry station. There were shelves displaying the chip options and posters showing the ice-cream bars available, and there were individually wrapped pieces of candy, on sale for a quarter, on the counter.
“Don’t. Move,” a voice from behind me said. I whirled around and saw a guy sitting on the counter, perfectly still, a rolled-up newspaper raised above his head.
I had thought I’d been alone in the snack bar, and my heart was beating hard from the shock that I wasn’t. “Hi,” I stammered when I’d gotten some of my composure back. “I’m—”
“Shh,” he hissed, his voice low and steady, still not looking at me. “Don’t scare it away.”
I froze, and tried to see to what he was raising his newspaper at, but could only see the empty counter. I suddenly had a horrible fear that made me not only want to move—and fast—but also jump up on the counter with him. “Is it a mouse?” I whispered, feeling my skin begin to crawl. If it was, I didn’t care about what he said, I was getting out of there as soon as possible.
“No,” the guy murmured, concentration still on the counter. “It’s a fly. He’s been taunting me all morning. But I will have my victory.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. I shifted from foot to foot, wondering how long this was going to go on—and also what we were supposed to do if any customers came. In the silence that soon fell between us, all his concentration focused on the fly, I took the opportunity to look at the guy. Something about him was ringing long-ago bells of recognition. It was hard to tell because he was sitting, but he looked short and somewhat stocky. He was wearing nerdy-cool glasses and had close-cropped brown hair. “I’ve almost got him,” the guy suddenly whispered, leaning forward, newspaper poised. “Just don’t move, and—”
“Oh, my God!” The door to the employee entrance was flung open with a bang, causing both me and the guy to jump, and the fly presumably to make his escape. A girl breezed past me and the guy, hanging her purse on a hook around the corner, talking loud and fast. I caught a glimpse of long dark hair and a purple T-shirt, and a feeling of dread crept into my stomach. “You are not going to believe what happened to me this morning. I was just riding into work, minding my own business, when this absolute idiot—” The girl came back around the corner to face us, and froze when she saw me.
I did the same. Standing in front of me was the girl in the purple shirt, the one whom I’d almost run off the road this morning, the one who’d given me the finger.
Who also happened to be Lucy Marino, my former best friend.
chapter ten