“Do you have money for something to eat?”
“Nothing. Not a penny.”
“What will you do, then?”
To Bea’s alarm, the girl dissolved into tears.
“I have no idea,” she sobbed.
For an extended moment, they only considered each other. The girl raised one arm as if to wipe her runny nose on her sleeve. To Bea’s relief, she thought better of it and just sniffed instead.
“All right, all right. We’ll go get some breakfast. I’ll pick up the check. But after that you’re on your own.”
Chapter Eighteen
More Fortified Refined Carbohydrates, Please
While the girl stared at her menu, reading about each and every dish as though she hadn’t yet found anything resembling food, Bea stared out the window at her van. She could see just a few inches of the rear bumper from the window of this nondescript coffee shop, or diner, or whatever one wanted to call the place.
She could still feel a jangle of nerves from her morning fright, and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off the vehicle.
It had never occurred to Bea before this stranger jumped into her van—which was now also her home—what it would mean to lose it. It’s one thing when somebody steals your car. You get a ride home and you figure it out. But if someone stole Bea’s van they would get her vehicle, her home, her cat, and everything she owned in the world. Except those cartons she had stored at Opal’s. Still, those boxes were full of belongings that held sentimental value but were not especially useful. That’s why she’d left them behind.
“Something interesting going on out there?” the girl asked.
Bea had been lost in thought, and the words startled her. She looked around to see the girl craning her neck to discover what Bea was watching.
“No. Not at all. I was just thinking.” She turned her full attention to the girl. Pulled her thoughts back into the diner. “I can still feel my nerves from that big scare.”
The girl laughed. A rueful sort of laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Bea asked.
“I know all about nerves. If you could have seen the trouble I was in right before I met you . . .”
“Why don’t you try telling me about that, except slowly this time so I can understand?”
So for the next five minutes or so, while they bided their time until the busy waitress could arrive, the girl held court and told her unlikely story. It was like something straight out of a movie. Or maybe there was no “like” about it. Maybe the girl was borrowing from fiction and calling it her life. There were parents who seemed so honest and normal until the moment they were put in handcuffs. There were hardened delinquent girls in group homes who might come after her with knives for no logical reason. Ladies of the night who tried to lure an innocent young girl, and then, when she proved too virtuous, men who kidnapped her against her will.
And of course the crowning touch was that absolutely none of this was the young girl’s fault. All she’d been doing was trying to live a right life.
Bea wasn’t buying a word of it.
You can’t scam a scammer, she thought. As a brand new entry to the world of scammers, she felt like something of an authority.
She almost said it out loud, but just then the harried waitress arrived to take their orders.
Bea ordered fried eggs with bacon, pancakes, and hash browns. The girl only asked for a fruit cup and plain oatmeal.
“No butter, no sugar, no milk,” she said, sounding very much her young age. Unlike someone who had lived through the dangerous hell she claimed. “But if you have raisins I’ll take some.”
The waitress nodded, still jotting on her order pad. Then she peeled away.
“I have to say I’m a bit surprised,” Bea said.
“About what?”
“When I said I’d buy you breakfast, frankly I thought you’d order everything on the menu.”
“This is all they had that I could eat.”
“What on earth are you talking about? They have everything here.”
The girl only grunted.
Bea almost asked her name, but stopped herself. It’s like a stray cat, she thought. Never name them if you don’t intend to keep them.
Bea’s plan had been to let the strange comment about food drop. But she was feeling out of sorts after her upsetting morning, all agitated and restless. So she worried at it out loud, like a dog who can’t bring himself to stop tugging on your pant leg.
“What do you eat and what don’t you eat that you can look at a menu like that and not be able to choose a dozen things?”
“I don’t eat anything that comes from animals,” she said, torturing her paper napkin into tight twists. “So breakfast is hard. Because everybody eats eggs and meat for breakfast.”
“You’re a vegetarian?”
“Vegan.”
“I don’t know what the difference is.”
“You don’t need to,” the girl said with a sigh. “It doesn’t matter. If we were about to keep knowing each other . . . if I was riding somewhere with you, I’d tell you. But you’re going to dump me right after breakfast. You already said so. And I know it’s true. Know how I know? Because you haven’t even asked me my name.”
They fell into an awkward silence. Bea felt as though she’d been caught in some kind of wrongdoing, but she shook the feeling away again because she didn’t like it and didn’t feel she deserved it.
“And you haven’t told me yours,” the girl continued.
“You could have done the same. You could have introduced yourself and asked my name. That would have been a polite thing to do after a carjacking like the one you just put me through.”
The girl opened her mouth to speak, but in that moment the waitress hurried up to their table with a pot of coffee. They fell into silence while she turned Bea’s mug upright and poured.
“My name is Allie,” the girl said as she watched the waitress retreat. “What’s yours?”
“Bea. What’s the difference between vegetarian and vegan?”
“A vegan doesn’t eat any animal products. No eggs, no dairy. A lot of vegans don’t even eat honey. You know. Because of the bees that have to make it. They keep them captive, you know. The bees. To make that honey.”
Bea paused from her current activity of stirring a great deal of half-and-half and three sugars into her coffee. “My goodness. Why on earth would anybody want to be that?”
The girl—Allie—leveled Bea with a look that seemed surprisingly mature and thoughtful for her age. “You sure you want me to get started on that right before she brings your breakfast?”
“Good point. I guess I don’t. But here’s what I don’t understand, Allie. There are tons of things you can eat for breakfast that aren’t from an animal. Waffles, pancakes. French toast. Regular toast.”
“Waffles and French toast have eggs in them. And besides, that’s all just refined white flour.”