I shrugged. “I guess that means I’m staying.” I actually didn’t mind, since working by myself would basically be the same as working with Lucy—just as silent, but less stressful.
“Don’t sweat the movie thing,” Elliot said as Lucy passed him, heading toward the row of hooks where we all kept our things. “I promise it’s no big deal.”
“I won’t,” I said. “It sounds doable. But, um, what happened last year?”
Elliot blushed again, and Lucy returned, looking at her phone as she said, “Fred put Elliot in charge of choosing the movies.” This was the most direct thing she’d said to me since our initial confrontation, and so I just nodded, not wanting to upset whatever delicate balance had brought this about.
“He said ‘summer movies,’” Elliot said, his voice becoming defensive again. “He said ‘beach-themed.’ So…”
“He picked Jaws,” Lucy said, still looking at her phone and not me, shaking her head. “To be shown at the beach, right near the water. One kid had to be carried out, he was crying so loud.”
Elliot cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said loudly, “the point is that—”
“And then,” Lucy continued, glancing at me only briefly before looking at her phone again, “he picks some horrible sci-fi that nobody’s ever heard of….”
“Dune is a classic,” Elliot said hotly, though I noticed that he was blushing more than ever. “And there are no sharks it in, which was all Fred specifically requested.”
“Sand monsters,” Lucy said flatly. “Again… we were on a beach. Again, children carried out crying.”
“But the lesson we can glean from this,” Elliot started. “Is that—”
“And movie number three?” Lucy said, shaking her head. “To show to an audience of kids and their parents?”
“Listen,” Elliot said, turning to me, as though pleading his case, “since my last two choices were apparently unacceptable, I went online, looking for the most popular summer movie. And still, apparently, it didn’t work.”
I turned to Lucy, who was shaking her head again. “Dirty Dancing,” she said. “It didn’t go over too well with the mothers of the six-year-olds.”
“So,” Elliot said, with the air of someone who very much wanted to change the subject, “when you have to pick, just check with Fred first. And keep your intro short, and you should be fine.”
“Intro?” I asked. I could feel my palms start to sweat. “What do you mean?”
“See you,” Lucy called, giving a backward wave to the snack bar in general as she slung her purse over her shoulder and headed out the door. Elliot watched her leave, and then continued watching the door for a moment after she’d gone.
“Elliot?” I prompted, and he turned back to me quickly, adjusting his glasses, something I’d noticed he did when he was flustered or embarrassed about something. “What intro?”
“Right,” he said. “I promise it’s no big deal. Just stand up before it starts, say a few things about the movie, tell people how long the snack bar is open. Easy.”
I nodded and tried to smile at him when he left, but my heart was pounding hard, and I wondered if this would finally give me the loophole I needed to quit. I hated public speaking for as long as I could remember. I was fine speaking to one or two people, but as soon as the numbers got big, I turned into a wreck—stammering, sweating, shaking. As a result, I tended to avoid it whenever possible. I really didn’t know how I was going to get up and talk in front of a group of people just three days from now.
The rest of the afternoon crawled by, with only two more customers, both of whom wanted hot beverages. When the hand on the clock above the microwave started hovering near five, I began the routine of shutting the snack bar down for the day—wiping down the counters, totaling the register and collecting the receipts, cleaning and turning off the coffeemaker. I was just about to pull down the grate and lock it when I heard, “Wait! Are you still open?”
A moment later, a red-faced (though not in Fred’s league) middle-aged man came running up to the counter, carrying a little boy piggyback. “Sorry about that,” he wheezed, as he set his son down and leaned on the counter for a moment, taking a breath. “We were trying to get here before five.” The kid, his head just clearing the top of the counter, regarded me solemnly. “Curtis is missing his shovel, and I think you keep the lost and found here?”
“Oh,” I said, a little surprised but nonetheless relieved that they didn’t want me to turn all the equipment back on and make a milk shake or some fries. “Sure.” I pulled the box out and set it on the counter.