“Not quite,” Olivia called with a grin, going up to the counter to put in our order—chicken fingers and a chocolate milk shake for me, a small basket of fries and a Diet Coke for her—while I slid into the booth next to Sarah Jane, across from Becky and SJ’s sometimes-boyfriend, Keith.
“How was the road trip?” SJ asked, pushing her onion rings in my direction. I’d known her even longer than I’d known Olivia; she’d lived around the corner from me since we were little, the sound of her mom’s yelling echoing up and down the block. She was tall and blond and heavy, the kind of girl who took up space and didn’t care if you liked it or not.
“It was fine,” I said carefully, picking a bit of fried batter out of the bottom of the basket and crunching it between my teeth. “Liv did amazing.” I didn’t tell them what had happened with Guy, about getting picked to audition out of nowhere myself. I wasn’t sure exactly why. It would have been a good story, after all; it would have set everybody laughing. But some small secret part of me didn’t want to play it for comedy, wanted to keep it for myself. “She did awesome.”
“Of course she did,” Becky said as Olivia slid into the adjoining booth along with everyone else. “Should we go ahead and get your autograph now, or . . . ?”
“Shut up,” Olivia said, but she was laughing. “There were, like, a million other girls there.” She glanced over at me, seeming to understand by telepathy that I hadn’t said anything about my part in the whole proceedings, and thankfully not calling me out. “So what have you guys been up to?” she asked, turning to the others.
We fell into the easy rhythm of every Friday night, the boys rehashing some drunk fight a couple of football players had gotten into at a party while we were gone, and Sarah Jane filling me in quietly about her latest fight with Keith. “He’s being an asshole,” she reported when he got up to go to the bathroom, and I made sympathetic noises without entirely hearing what she was saying. The truth was, I felt oddly restless tonight, like I couldn’t settle back into how things usually were.
“Thanks, Linda,” I said distractedly as the waitress came and put our orders down on the table. She was always absurdly patient, considering how many years we’d been testing the limits of how little they’d let us get away with ordering and how long they’d let us stay. When she’d turned and gone, I looked around at the restaurant for a moment—the red vinyl booths held together with duct tape, the grimy fluorescent lights overhead. Usually they felt comforting, familiar. Tonight, they just made me feel bored.
When Sarah Jane got up to go to the bathroom, Tim slid into the booth beside me, smelling of cologne and, underneath that, of cigarettes. He was wearing an Atlanta Braves cap on backward, a tiny gold cross around his neck. “Hey, stranger,” he said, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
“Hey.” Tim had been trying to date me since middle school, when he’d slipped an actual paper valentine into my locker, a picture of purple grapes with the caption I LIKE YOU A BUNCH. We’d kissed a few times sophomore year, but I’d never let it get any further than that; still, it seemed to be taking Tim longer than average to get the memo that we weren’t about to live happily ever after.
“Any luck finding a job?” he asked, helping himself to one of my chicken fingers. I wasn’t finished eating, but it didn’t seem worth it to protest.
“Not yet.” I shook my head. “I’ve got a bunch of interviews, though.” That was a lie. In reality I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at the applications on my desk since we’d gotten back from Orlando a couple of days ago.
“Could come work with me,” Tim joked, throwing a casual arm around the top of the booth, just brushing my shoulders. I fixed him with a look like, come on, dude, and he hastily pulled it away.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, like nothing had happened. “You guys need help down at the garage?”
“Well, not fixing cars,” Tim said, like that much should have been obvious given my gender. “But in the office, maybe.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it,” I said, glancing around for somebody else to drag into the conversation, but Becky had gotten up to talk to Kerry-Ann and Olivia at the next table, and Keith was, as always, about as useless as a stump. I sighed. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Tim—not exactly. He was a nice guy; he had pretty brown eyes, and I knew that if anything real ever happened between us, he’d be sweet to me. The problem was that I could picture so clearly what our lives would be like together—a decrepit house not far from my mom’s place, a thirty rack of Budweiser cans in the fridge at all times, and three kids by the time I was twenty-five, both of us miserable and silent to varying degrees. It was true that I couldn’t see much of a future for myself, not really. But I could see enough to know I didn’t want that.
Once Sarah Jane came back, I extricated myself and wandered over to Olivia with my milk shake in hand, sliding into the booth beside her and snagging one of her fries, which—I saw with a frown—she’d barely touched. “Thanks for the assist there,” I said, bumping her shoulder with my own.
“What, with your future husband?” Olivia teased. “You seemed to be holding your own.”
“Mean!” I said, stung, feeling weird and sensitive tonight and not entirely sure what to do about it. It was like leaving town, even just for a couple of days, had unlocked something in me—had shown me a glimpse of this whole other world that left life in Jessell looking depressing and drab. I should have just stayed home and looked for waitressing jobs like I’d planned.
I took another fry, nodding down at her basket. “Are you gonna eat those?” I asked, and Olivia rolled her eyes at me.
“Yes, Mom.” She made a face, but she pulled the basket toward her, dipping a fry into the delicately mixed ketchup-mustard concoction she insisted was necessary for any kind of potato consumption.
“Thank you,” I said sweetly. I knew it sounded like a scold, but I didn’t particularly care. It was part of our tacit agreement, since middle school and possibly even longer. I didn’t tell anyone—didn’t tell her mom—when Olivia wasn’t eating. And in return I got to do whatever it took to make sure she was.
“Can I ask you something?” That was Sarah Jane leaning over from the booth behind us, speaking quietly into my ear. “Who exactly is gonna be the food police for her once she gets the hell out of Dodge?”
I turned to look at her, scowling; she held up both hands in surrender, and I shrugged, reaching for my milk shake. Sarah Jane had a point, I admitted to myself as I slurped noisily. After all, it wasn’t like I’d never thought of it before. Our arrangement worked as long as Olivia and I were joined at the hip, like we were here in Jessell. I had no idea what would happen once we were apart.
I was tired suddenly. I wanted to go home.