Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (22 page)

When the final bell rang, I couldn't wait to go to work at the café, where no one would inspect me like a precious stone, or avoid me like a poisonous plant. I took the bus there with my work clothes in a bag. Sun and Devin were behind the counter when I walked in.

“Winged creature of a tiny sun,” Devin greeted me, raising a spatula. Sun had both hands in a mixing bowl. He nodded.

I waved and walked through the beaded curtain to the office, where I found Felicia sitting at Ephraim's desk. She didn't look at me but held up one manicured pointer finger in my direction. “Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. V can't make it tonight, so I have to show you how to start your shift.”

“Um, okay.” Would this day ever stop getting worse?

“I counted the drawer for you, and now you need to recount it while I check on my tables. It should be two hundred.”

By the time she came back, I had counted it twice. “There was an extra dime.”

Her red lipstick exaggerated her frown. She took a brown bag with a zipper from the safe behind her. “Change the paperwork,” she said before leaving again.

The form inside the bag looked pretty clear. At the end of a shift, you count everything in the register by amount: pennies, nickels, dimes, etc., and add it together. Then you subtract the $200 you started with and the leftover amount should equal the Z report. Felicia's number was off by $6.37.

I changed Felicia's paperwork to account for the extra dime, and then put it back into the brown bag that also held the money from her shift and put both in the safe. When I went into the café, Felicia was leaning over the counter talking to Devin and laughing.

“I'm finished,” I said. She didn't look at me.

“Have fun tonight,” she said to Devin, and then turned to me and handed me her apron.

 
 

The evening shift at the restaurant was nothing like weekend brunch. A smattering of tables came, with no more than three filled at the same time. I tried to study in between taking and delivering orders, but it didn't go well. I had to keep returning to tables to ask things like, “Did you want lemon tahini dressing or tomato tamari?” or, “I'm sorry, did you say you wanted tempeh tacos or tofu tacos?”

“You'll be fine,” Devin said after remaking the second order I screwed up. “One more weekend and you'll be Venus.” I didn't tell him that I wasn't planning to be around one more weekend.

I barely squeezed my homework in by closing time when I went into the back to count out my register. Perfect to the cent. I put the money in the safe and let Devin drop me off at Beacon House.

 20 

T
he drawing I got back on my math homework from Ben on Friday morning was the most elaborate yet, and my score was the worst, six right out of ten. I had been so distracted trying to do math and take orders at the café, I made some dumb mistakes.

The top half of the margin had a sun, with rays poking through ominous clouds. The bottom was a night sky, shaded in with pencil with spots of white paper showing through to make the stars. A dove flew straight down between the scenes, from day into night with a banner held in its mouth. Written on the banner were ten numbers and two hyphens. It was a phone number. It was
Ben's
phone number. Also on the banner were the words,
If you need help with homework
.

Did Ben want to go out with me? Did Ben want to push me up against a tree and kiss me until my hair was sticky? I couldn't imagine anyone but Indus doing that. Still, this was a good sign. Maybe I wasn't too bad at flirting. Maybe my cool Seattle girl thing was working for me.

Ben didn't look at me much when the bell rang. He grabbed his backpack and hurried out the door.

 
 

I ate lunch with Cham and had a pretty good day until horticulture, when the same two girls from before stood whispering behind their hands and pointing at me as raindrops ran in lazy zigzags down the glass. I was trying to concentrate on germinating my seeds but kept noticing them poking around other students' chairs, talking. Our teacher, Ms. Frame, was at the far end of the greenhouse, working with a boy who never seemed to understand the lab work.

This is really the last day
, I thought
. Tomorrow I can go home.

“Can I have your spot?” Rory was standing behind the girl seated next to me. She was holding her bin full of tools, her seeds, and germinating containers.

“I'm sitting here,” the girl said.

Rory cocked her head to the side and smiled, showing all her teeth. It was creepy.

“What?” the girl said.

Rory smiled wider.

“Fine.” The girl next to me threw her bag of seeds into her own plastic bin and stood up.

“They're telling people your dad is Charles Manson.” Rory scooted her new stool closer to mine and stole a look at Ms. Frame, who was still in the corner of the room.

“Who?”

“Bethany and Rose.”

“I mean, who did they say was my dad?”

Rory leaned in and stared at me. “Charles Manson.”

I shook my head.

“Are you shitting me?”

“I don't think so.”

“Helter skelter, blood on the walls, swastika forehead?”

None of this was English.

“Are you from another country?” Rory asked.

“Bellingham,” I said.

“Summary: He's not a guy you want for your dad.” Rory peeled her eyes off me and started taking items out of her bin. “Flower seeds are boring,” she said. “I want to do herb lore.”

“Me, too,” I said, happy to finally hear something that made sense. I loved helping Adeona with the medicinal garden.

“You know about herb lore?” Rory started taking off her silver rings one by one and stacking them around her workstation.

“I've made salves and tinctures,” I said, “but I'm no healer.”

“My mom's got cancer, so I've been learning about herbalism. Have you heard of plant attunement?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry about your mom.” Neptune Fox's mother had come to live with us at the Farm after she got cancer. She got progressively thinner and weaker for three years, until she couldn't get out of bed and eventually went back Outside to a hospital. We all helped take care of her, especially once she was bedridden.

“Do you really have hippie parents?” Rory asked. Now that she had her rings off, she started spreading the soilless mixture into her germinating container.

“Yeah,” I said.
Don't tell her anything about the Family
.

“Did they really name you that, or did you make it up?”

“I wouldn't just make up my own name.” I thought about Lyra-Joan. My neck got warm.

“I did,” said Rory. “You want to know my real name?”

Not really
.

“Ashley.” She made a choking sound.

“All right.” Ms. Frame clapped twice from her corner of the room. “Less talk, more germination.”

 
 

After school, I took the bus to the café and found Devin behind the counter again, with Sun working the grill. When I went into the office, V had her head in her hands, sitting behind a stack of papers.

“I hate this!” She threw a pen down on the desk so hard it skidded across the surface and fell on the floor. “Of course the pen falls,” she said into her hands. It would have been comical if she wasn't so upset.

“What are you doing?” I asked, putting down my things.

“I hate numbers. Numbers aren't life.” She crumpled a pile of papers together in her fist.

Devin appeared at the door to the cramped office behind me and leaned against the frame. “She's trying to do the deposit.”

“I could help,” I said. “I like numbers.”

V turned to face me. “Really? Could you?”

“I can try.” I thought about my six out of ten on math homework.

“We need the totals for each shift entered here”—V pointed to the crumpled page as she got out of the chair to make room for me—“and the grand total here. But you have to count all the cash together to make sure it equals the total of all our deposit sheets. Then, fill out this slip for the bank and enter the amount in the ledger book here.” V pointed to a book almost lost under papers. “I'll do all your tables. Thank you!” She kissed my cheek.

“I'll keep the chai comin',” said Devin.