Bitter End

Little, Brown and Company

New York   Boston

For Scott and for Pranston

If I had to describe my best friend, Bethany, in one word, it would be
persistent
. Or maybe
unrelenting
. Or, if I were writing her into a poem, I might use
importunate
, because words like
importunate
impressed Mrs. Moody, and when I used them she told me I was a born poet, which was kind of cool.

Doesn’t matter; all of those words mean the same thing—
determined
—and Bethany was nothing if not determined.

It was one of the things I liked best about her. She always had a clear sense of where her life was going, or, more accurately,
where she was steering it. For all the ways we were totally alike, that was one of the ways we were different, and it was
part of why I liked hanging out with her. I think I kind of hoped her importunateness might rub off on me and someday I’d
find myself behind the steering wheel of my own life, certain where I was going to end up.

Sometimes Bethany’s persistence could be a little hard to ignore. It didn’t matter that we were just recovering from lunch
rush and that I was busy wiping a mountain of trays taller than myself, or that my manager, Georgia, was standing right next
to me. Bethany marched into The Bread Bowl in her untied high-tops, her giganto-purse bouncing against her hip, and sat down
at the dirtiest table in the dining room.

“
Psst!
” she hissed, pulling a handful of papers out of her purse and waving them at me. I ignored her, keeping my eyes glued on
the tray I was holding. So she did it again. “
Psst!
” And then she cleared her throat elaborately.

“I think someone sprang a leak over there,” Georgia said, pulling a wad of twenties out of the cash register drawer and then
shutting it with her hip. “Or a lung, from the sound of it.” Bethany’s persistence was no stranger to Georgia, either. Georgia
liked Bethany and often joked that Bethany would for sure be the first female president.

I stacked the tray I’d been wiping and dropped the wet rag on the counter. “I think I’ve got a table to clean,” I said.

“Looks like it,” Georgia mumbled. She headed toward the office, turning all of the twenties so they were facing the same direction.
“And with her spitting all over it like that, it’s getting dirtier every minute.” Then she added over her shoulder, “And get
that customer a drink. Might help her with that throat problem.”

“You’re all about the humanitarianism, Gee,” I responded, grabbing an empty cup on my way.

Cleaning the dining room was probably my least favorite duty at The Bread Bowl. People could leave some really disgusting
trash behind. Sometimes, though, if Bethany happened to be hanging out at The Bread Bowl, having cleanup detail wasn’t so
bad. That way she and I could talk while I picked up shredded pieces of napkin and half-eaten sandwiches, trying to look a
lot busier than I actually was.

“Look at this,” Bethany said as soon as I plunked a Diet Dr Pepper in front of her and got to work on her table. She bumped
my leg lightly with her knee. “Hot tub!”

I straightened and grabbed the stapled stack of papers out of her hand and scanned the top one, which included a grainy photo
of a twelve-person Jacuzzi.

“Oh, man,” I said, reading down the list of amenities: hot tub, indoor pool, fitness room with cardio machines. It sounded
like bliss. Expensive bliss. “This is amazing. No way we can afford it. You think we can actually afford it?”

I flipped the page over and started to read about nearby attractions. Across the room, Georgia cleared her throat. I glanced
up. She was stacking take-out menus next to the register. She shifted her eyes meaningfully to Dave, the owner of The Bread
Bowl, or Granite-Ass, as he was not-so-lovingly called by some of the line cooks. For some reason Dave had been hanging around
lately, which put a real damper on everyone’s mood, not to mention my ability to drool over hot tubs and hotel fitness rooms
with Bethany.

I thrust the papers back at her and resumed picking up crumpled sandwich wrappers and stuffing them into a cup.

“Oh, and look!” Bethany was saying, totally ignoring both my question and Georgia’s not-so-subtle warning. “It has a huge
fireplace in the lobby. I bet you could get hot cocoa and sit there celebrity-watching all day long. Just think, we could
end up making out in the snow with a star.” She gasped, slapping my shoulder with the papers. A handful of napkins fluttered
out of the cup and back onto the table. “We could end up in a tabloid!” She held her hands up in the air as if she was envisioning
a title. “Who Are the Mystery Beauties on the Slopes Breaking Boy Band Hearts?”

I giggled. “More like, ‘Who Are the Mystery Klutzes Who Broke Boy Band Legs by Falling into Them on a Ski Slope?’ ”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind breaking a leg if it meant a hottie broke my fall.”

“Uh-uh, I get dibs on the broken hottie,” I said.

“No way, I thought of it first.”

Georgia cleared her throat again. Now she was starting to sound like Bethany. Dave had moved into the dining room and was
standing with his hands on his hips, assessing it slowly with his eyes. The last thing I needed was to get on Dave’s bad list.
I most liked Dave when he pretended I didn’t exist, which was 99 percent of the time. He reminded me of my dad that way. I
was used to being ignored by the men in my life. “Listen, can we talk about broken boy bands and tabloids later? I’ve gotta
clean this up.”

Bethany sighed. “Work, work, work.”

“Yep. And if I get fired, you’ll be ordering cocoa for one, one, one.”

Bethany eyed Dave and gave a frustrated grunt. “Sure. Okay. Call me, though. I want to see what you think about restaurants.
Zack and I’ve been researching.”

Zack. Our other best friend. If I could describe him in one word, it would be… well, you just can’t sum up Zack in one word.
He was like an overprotective big brother, pervy uncle, and annoying little cousin all in one. He was a traveling comedy show.
A musical genius. An amazing friend. If I was being completely honest, Zack was probably the only reason Bethany and I weren’t
relegated to “too nerdy to notice” status at school. The enviro-nut and the poet—invisible and invisible. But it was impossible
not to notice Zack. Everybody adored him. However, we adored him best, and we adored him first, so we were okay by association.

If I were to write Zack into a poem, I’d definitely use the word
sanguine
.

Bethany stood up and tossed her empty cup in the trash before coming back for her things. I knew she was going to go home,
flop on the couch with her laptop, and scan every restaurant listing in the state of Colorado until I called. It’s all she’d
done since we came up with the idea for this trip.

“Oh!” She snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot. Guess what idea Zack had?”

“I can only imagine,” I said, patting the last of the trash
into the cup and straightening the salt and pepper shakers. Bethany picked a piece of lint off the bottom of her shirt.

“Tattoos,” she said.

“Tattoos?” I repeated.

She nodded, biting her lower lip as she smiled. “Yeah, he thinks we should get matching tatts while we’re there. Like a mountain
or… or I don’t know… something sexy.”

“You do know what Zack’s interpretation of ‘sexy’ is, don’t you?” I imagined us all leaving Colorado with half-dressed, big-boobed
women in stilettos permanently emblazoned on our bodies.

I picked up the cup and headed for the farthest trash bin—the one by the front door—nonchalantly tugging Bethany’s shirtsleeve
so she’d follow me.

“Well, yeah, but…” She paused as I leaned over to throw away the trash. “I don’t know. It could be fun.”

“And painful,” I reminded her. “And permanent.”

“And fun,” she repeated.

Dave’s voice cut through the restaurant. He was griping at someone in the kitchen, which reminded me that I needed to get
back to work before he turned on me, too.

“I’ll call you,” I said. “We can talk later.”

Bethany dug out her car keys. “You better,” she said, pushing through the glass doors.

Pressing my fingers lightly against the necklace under my shirt, I scurried back behind the counter and resumed wiping trays,
daydreaming a little about Colorado.

Bethany and Zack and I had been planning this trip
since we were eight years old, back when Zack’s mom still called us the Terrible Three. It started out as my idea—go to the
place my mom was headed when she died and see if I could figure out what was there that was so important to her that she would
leave her family the way she did.

But it wasn’t long before Bethany and Zack wanted in on the plan. Partly because they were my best friends and they knew how
important it was to me. But mainly they wanted in because the trip sounded fun. And glamorous, like something people do in
a movie. Best-friend cross-country mystery-solving road trip. Does it get more feature-film than that?

We decided that the trip was going to be our graduation gift to ourselves, and ever since the last day of junior year, Bethany
had been practically obsessed with planning it. She talked about it constantly and even instituted a standing Vacay Day, where
we’d get together to go over details every Saturday (Bethany’s idea). Rotating between our houses (my idea). Complete with
pizza and video games and lots of crude jokes featuring female body parts (Zack’s idea). We’d been meeting all summer, and
so far all we’d managed to accomplish was inhaling about fifteen large pepperoni pizzas and beating level nine of some zombie
video game Zack had gotten for his birthday.

Truth be told, I didn’t care about hot tubs and ski gear and restaurants. All I cared about was Mom and what happened to her.
Which Dad didn’t seem to care about at all. When I told him after our first Vacay Day meeting that I
was going to Colorado after graduation, he made a noncommittal noise but didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading
at the breakfast table.