Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [36]
I loved it. I loved their jealousy.
Especially Alexis Bunker’s. The day before, we’d been stuck as partners in PE. She was supposed to hold my feet while I did sit-ups. Instead, she rested two dainty fingers on each of my sneakers, as if I had scabies or leprosy or some other ruthlessly contagious disease.
“Alexis,” I said when her fingers slipped off altogether.
“What?” she retorted.
Instead of snapping back, I felt sorry for her. My friendship with Alexis had been so lackluster; we’d spent it watching cartoons in her basement and painting Femme Fatale makeup on her decapitated doll heads. I didn’t doubt she and the other two-thirds of Alexis & Co. still did the same things. Now the most exciting thing in Alexis’s life was the Miss Teen Bighorn Pageant she kept squealing about in homeroom, just loudly enough for everyone to hear. All the other Washokey girls had given up pageants long before.
Meanwhile, my days were filled with excitement.
Or rather, they would be. Soon.
Because that entire week, my friendship with Mandarin had been confined inside the school grounds. Which wasn’t much of a friendship at all.
I swallowed my crunchy bite of peach, mustering up all my nerve before I turned toward her. “So,” I said. “Are you busy after school today?”
She paused. And paused some more.
My question hung in the air so long it began to wilt at the edges. I wanted to fling myself into the lilac planter, pull a banana peel over my head, and hide.
“It’s okay if you’re busy,” I said quickly. “I understand. I’ve got plenty to do anyway.…”
“How’s seven-thirty?”
“Oh—seven-thirty’s fine.” I stuffed another bite of peach into my mouth to prevent a wildwind-sized sigh of relief. It was like I’d endured some sort of covert friendship evaluation and, at long last, was cleared for advancement.
The A&W Root Beer Stand was a relic from the 1950s. Momma and Taffeta and I sometimes went through the drive-through for ice cream, but we never parked or sat at the tables. It was a rowdy place, where decades of students staked out benches as soon as the final school bell rang. I thought of it as haunted by the teenage versions of our parents and grandparents. Just not the teenage version of myself—until that night.
By the time I arrived, the sun had set. Crickets hummed in the vacant lot behind the brown building. Two of the six orange patio tables were occupied by kids from school, so I chose the table farthest away from them, arranging myself with my back against one of the cement pillars holding up the corrugated tin roof.
From time to time, I leaned forward to scan the dark street so everybody would know I was expecting someone.
I’d had to delay my meeting with Mandarin until eight to help Momma triple-check Taffeta’s pageant gear. Clothes tape and tulle—check. Glitter spray and body polish—check. When I left the house, Taffeta was sitting on the stairs, caged by the vertical bars of the banister, trying desperately not to slurp her polished fingernails.
I had jogged all the way to the A&W. Forty minutes later, I was still sitting alone.
By then, I’d memorized the place, from the ink-blot blobs of chewing gum splattered all over the ground to the little gray spider doing push-ups on the tabletop, to the insightful philosophies of the kids sitting around me.
Flannel boy: They’re thinking of outlawing smoking in the restaurants.
Girl with glasses: No way. That’s like outlawing drinking in bars!
Boy returning from piss in vacant lot: Hey, whose hands was on my burger?
Football boy: It was Ricky. You should cut his nuts off.
Ricky Fitch-Dixon, from homeroom: Innocent till proven guilty.
Football boy: It’s proved, all right. I saw you do it.
I also watched Sarah Cooper, the counter girl, as she stared off into space. Momma claimed that the A&W waitresses used to deliver orders in roller skates until one girl slipped on a puddle of milk shake melt and broke her tailbone. She had to wear a plaster cast over her butt like a diaper. After that, the owners adopted