Crush du Jour (14 page)

By five fifteen I could procrastinate no longer: I was due in at Hype.

I really, really,
really
didn’t want to go. But given my performance record up until now, I didn’t think skipping my shift or calling in fake-sick would win me the title
of Employee of the Month. Especially seeing as how I was hardly a contender as it was.

I dug up my least wrinkled work uniform and dressed quickly, not having the energy for things like sheer lipstick or hair product today. Who cared if my bangs were flippy and shooting in two different directions? Lunatic bangs were the least of my problems right now.

Yeah, lunatic bangs or no, my goose was totally cooked.

Hype at six o’clock was a different beast from the monster that kicked my butt for hours on end. Busboys leaned quietly at the side-station, refilling the salt and pepper shakers, rolling cutlery into freshly laundered napkins, and making sure the pitchers of tap water were appropriately chilled. When the restaurant was like this—devoid of customers, blanketed in anticipation—you could almost imagine that it would be a fun, interesting place to work.

Almost
. I mean, come on—I knew better.

There was barely a murmur of notice as I walked through the front door; people who were involved with prep certainly
weren’t going to stop what they were doing for me. That was totally fine. I’d be more than happy to put off discussion of my mother and/or her views of Hype for as long as possible.

I kept my head down as I made my way to the break room. I guess I must have, at some point on my way in, applied my own set of mental blinders. This had seemed like a good enough idea at the time—head down, do your work, just turn each table mechanically until the shift is over—but it left me completely and utterly unprepared for what I was to come across next.

I opened the door to the break room and nearly passed out.

If I had opened the door to a room full of tap-dancing giraffes wearing bikinis, I couldn’t have been more surprised. Giraffes would have been a welcome distraction.
This
, however, took the tiny shred of objectivity to which I clung this evening and did a Mexican hat dance on it until it was buried and fossilized deep within the ground.

Damien. And Callie. Were fully groping. On the break room table.
Groping
.
With the frenzied intensity of two drowning victims, they grabbed at each other and made out like it was their job. On the break-room table, where I’d scarfed down countless tuna salad bagels between shifts.

For the second time that day, I felt dizzy. I was going to pass out. I was going to pass out on the floor of the break room. Meanwhile, Damien and Callie would go on making out, and when someone finally came to find me later (Who would it be? My mother? Anna?), they’d realize I’d been here all along. My legacy would be that I had totally stalked Damien and Callie’s makeout session. And I would be creepy. The creepy voyeur with the lunatic bangs who couldn’t even pour tap water without screwing it up.

This could not be my legacy. No freaking way. I’d rather just be known as the lousy waitress whose mom gave Hype the culinary kiss of death. Right now that was the best I could hope for.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled.

They both barely glanced up, but that was hardly the point. I rushed out of there like my lime green Pumas were on fire.

Pop Quiz:

You’ve just discovered that your not-ex, not-boyfriend, person-that-you-had-kind-of-decided-you-didn’t-want-to-date-anyway was making out with your number one archnemesis, right in the very break room where you hid from your bosses at your high-stress job that you were never much good at. Who is the worst possible person to run into at that moment of extreme emotional frailty?

A) Your crush, who probably hates you with the fire of a thousand blazing SunChips

B) Your crush’s father, who—bonus!— also happens to be your long-suffering boss.

Answer Key:

A and B!

Oh, that’s right. This is the lightning round, after all. If you guessed correctly, feel free to go swan dive into a vat of spray cheese, ’cause it’s only downhill from here.

I literally bumped directly into Seth (as you know I was ever so wont to do). He stepped backward and blinked at me, panic in his eyes, then mumbled something unintelligible and darted off.

Something told me he had read the review.

Worse than Seth’s maximum-overdrive avoidance of me, however, was the fact that when he was gone, I was left all alone with his father.

Who did not, it must be said, look pleased.

He squinted at me and sighed heavily. “Laine,” he began, almost sighing my name, “why don’t we have a chat in my office?”

Chatting in the owner’s office is never a good thing. In fact, in the month or so that I’d been working at Hype, I’d never been in the owner’s office. One was only called in there for times of extreme praise or times of extreme discipline.

It didn’t take a decoder ring to see which way this conversation would be swinging.

Mr. McFadden pushed the door open to his office and ushered me in.

Given the tone of the occasion, I guess I’d been expecting something more along the lines of the principal’s office at school: an orderly clutter, offset by various inspirational animal posters, a personalized mug, and a mouse pad or two.

Not so much. Mr. McFadden’s office was a cramped, dank, windowless cave covered from top to bottom in triplicate forms, order processing sheets, and schedules emblazoned with a rainbow of highlighter stripes. It looked like a war zone, and Mr. McFadden was the commanding officer of culinary affairs.

“Have a seat, Laine,” he said, his voice low and almost kindly. He gestured to the one extra chair in the room, a spindly rolling desk chair that had clearly seen better days.

I perched cautiously on the edge of the chair and folded my hands primly in my lap. I channeled every ounce of emotional energy that I had into looking contrite and responsible, from my scary bangs to my bangin’ sneakers, every bit the model employee.

Yeah, I don’t think he was buying it.

“I’m sure you’re not surprised to find that I’ve read this morning’s
Tribune”
he began, busting the newspaper out of a stack of papers four feet high and unfolding it with a flourish.

“Right,” I said, not daring to meet his eyes. “But—”

“Now, I know you didn’t write this review yourself, and you can hardly be held responsible for it, when your mother was just doing her job,” he continued.

I allowed myself a hopeful breath. Was it possible that everything was going to be okay?

“But, Laine, this is not about blame. It’s about facts,” he finished finally, after what felt like a lifetime.

No, it was not even remotely possible that everything was going to be okay.

The signs had been there all along, of course, bubbling away insistently on the back burner. But they couldn’t be ignored any longer.

I was a tempest in a teapot, albeit a quirky teapot that some people found attractive. And that teapot had reached its boiling point.

Was I steamed? Sure. But what did that matter? I was too hot to handle. And you know what they say: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the freaking kitchen.

Fifteen

Me
:
(sigh)

Anna
: You called me, sister. Are you just going to sit there on the line, taunting me with your heavy breathing?

Me
: That’s not heavy breathing, it’s abject despair. Jeez.

Anna
:
Abject
despair? Okay, back up. Let’s look at this more objectively.

Me
: Can we? Please?

Anna
: Kill the sarcasm.

Me
: Um, it’s just, you want objective? Here’s objective:
Objectively
, my boss—also known as the father of the boy with whom I’m dying to ’get cooking,’ if you know what I mean—

Anna
: I know what you mean. Now promise me you’ll never use that expression again. Seriously.

Me
:
(loudly)
My boss has decided that it would be best if I were to “pursue employment elsewhere.” His words, not mine. In other words, I’m fired.

Anna
: Which sucks, I know—but, Laine, you hated that job. And you were kinda bad at it.

Me
: I love when you point that part out.

Anna
: I am only working with what you told me. So the job sitch was not ideal. Now it’s over. And you know what? In a couple of weeks we’ll be back at school and you’ll be glad that you don’t have a job to worry about.

Me
: No, I won’t. I’ll need to come up with another job. This was supposed to be my thing. My way to earn money. For college. And sneakers.

Anna
: The job will come. For now, why don’t you concentrate on an aggressive campaign of window shopping. You weren’t making anything in tips, anyway. Right?

Me
: Again, thank you for your undying support.

Anna
: Let’s take what we can get right now.

Me
: Right. Because you know what I
can’t
get? A boyfriend. The boy I sort of liked decided to hook up with Superskank, like, five seconds after our date—

Anna
: Because you weren’t into him and she was! Besides, you knew that was the kind of guy he was. You know—a flirt. A kindred spirit. He’s like a shark that has to keep moving in order to survive. And you were just …

Me
: Just say it. I was just
his
crush of the day. Fine. Let’s all take a moment to savor the irony. Whatever. But does that mean I need a front-row seat to soft-core pornography?

Anna
:
(rolling her eyes so loudly that I can hear it through my cell phone)

Me
: So Bartender Boy and Bitchy McSpray-Tan are off in la la land, and meanwhile, I can’t even get my teaching partner to show up for our gig. Our gig!
Anna, he skipped class this week. I have driven him from class. I am beyond a pariah—I am a menace to the progress of preadolescent cooking students everywhere.

Anna
: Not everywhere. Just at the Miles Halliday Community Center. Miles Halliday was a strong man. He’ll bounce back.

Me
: Do you even know who Miles Halliday was?

Anna
: Excuse me, but aren’t we focusing on your trauma?

Me
: Right. So he skipped our class. No word, no note,
nada
. Just me and the kids.

Anna
: (
gasping in shock)
How was
that!

Me
: I’m hanging up.

Anna
: But I thought they loved you. I thought you were, like, the student whisperer.

Me
: Don’t try to change the subject. The end-of-the-summer Halliday carnival is here—

Anna
: Fun for the whole family!

Me
:
(forging ahead)—and
I had to come
up with what our booth would be, totally without Seth. What if he hates what we chose?

Anna
: What did you choose?

Me
: A pie-eating contest, but that’s not the point.

Anna
: That’s
totally
the point. Who doesn’t love a good pie-eating contest? Can you enter if you’re over the age of eleven?

Me
:
(tightly)
I will personally fill out your entry card if you will just admit that it’s bad, bad news that Seth wasn’t there.

Anna
: It’s probably not good news, that’s for sure.
(pauses to consider)
But, you know, maybe it’s got nothing to do with you. Maybe he was struck by, like, a flesh-eating virus or something.

Me
:
(sighing)
At this point, I can only hope.

The last thing I wanted to do was to set foot inside Hype again,
ever
, but unfortunately, thanks to Seth’s little disappearing act, I had to swing by and drop off the plans for our carnival booth. Halliday had people
who were in charge of setting things up, but we’d have to bring our own materials—namely, the pies and a digital stopwatch.

The class and I had collectively (sans Seth, of course) decided to use store-bought pies only because we were pressed for time. I’d spent my last class with them—solo—hashing out flavors, rules, personal preferences, and other assorted nitty-gritty details. (Such as allergies. I had more than learned my lesson.)

Shockingly, we’d gotten through all the planning stages without Seth. But I still felt an obligation to be responsible. I had to fill him in.

Stupid responsibilities.

I came by on Sunday around two, when I knew the brunch crowd would be dying down. A quick glance around the joint told me that Seth was nowhere to be found. Did that mean something was wrong, and he hadn’t been specifically avoiding me when he’d missed our class? Or did that mean he was going to incredibly extensive lengths to be sure he never ran into me again?

Maybe Seth was wasting away from avian flu or some other obscure disease I’d
read about online. In which case, I would be kind of self-absorbed for thinking his absence had anything to do with me.

That said, if he
didn’t
have bird flu,
he
was kind of immature for completely and totally hiding out on me.