Cut Both Ways (21 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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THE WORST DAY
of school is not the first day in September. Or any of the days you have big tests. The worst day of school is after Christmas break. It's cold. It's fucking January. There's only maybe one day off in January. Even if sitting around the house being snowed in is boring, which it was, since it blizzarded like twelve times after actual Christmas, the idea of another half a year of school sounds like a death sentence.

After the first few weeks, the drive from Oak Prairie to Minneapolis was killing me. Not just in terms of gas, which my mom and Jay agreed to help with. But the roads would suck and I'd end up leaving at six thirty only to barely make it to class on time.

I didn't complain about living full time at my mom's, though; Brandy thought it was bad enough that she couldn't just hop on a bus to the Vances' and see me. We got in the habit of comparing schedules in Photography, mine with work and hers with the Vances, plus if her aunt was scheduled to work and whether her
nana would be taking her nap or possibly watching her afternoon shows or had a doctor appointment and if the bus would be there or if I could drop her off or what. I almost wanted to put everything in Excel and just map it out, since we were doing all that kind of thing in my Econ class anyway, forecasting and planning inventory for our fake businesses. But that was a little too nerdy for me to do. Even for sex.

When it worked out that I could drop her off or pick her up at the Vances', then I had an excuse to drive by my dad's house. She never said anything about it,. And I didn't drive slow or anything. I just wanted to see what he was doing. All the work he said he wanted to get done.

Some things had changed. That was for sure.

My dad no longer just had his truck. He had some creepy rapist van, too. White and rusty, with lettering from someone else's business painted over.

There was snow in five-foot-high drifts up and down the block, which all his neighbors had blown or shoveled into even higher piles. But the last time I'd driven past, the driveway just had more packed-down snow, two ruts of ice down the center. When I'd go down the alley, I couldn't see much but snow-covered piles. There'd been a lot of wood back there before. I doubted he'd used it yet, either.

Garrett puts me back on the schedule after Christmas. One Friday after school, I go into work and spend the first half of my shift prepping and filling in for the servers, delivering dish racks, clearing tables, taking out trash. After my dinner break, when I
punch back in, I go behind the line, where Carl's setting up a row of burgers. That's usually a Friday special—burger and fries and a shake for $6.99—because it keeps drunks from ordering complicated crap late at night. Plus it's cheap enough and easy to fire out for the servers.

“Can you get me some more pepperjack? And pull up those rings?” He nods at the fryer and I pull up the basket.

“You need regular fries?”

“Yep.”

I take care of the next round of fries and go grab another cambro of cheese portions, along with some extra cheddar and lettuce and tomato. As far as I know, Garrett didn't press any charges against my dad, and it doesn't seem like Carl holds a grudge about it. I don't understand why he doesn't. I mean, what in the hell? I'd be pissed as fuck if I were him. But he's his same, “making money, fucking bitches” self. Like getting clocked in a dining room full of customers isn't anything surprising.

Sierra appears at the window.

“Is there no more strawberry ice cream in the walk-in, Will?”

“Dunno.”

“Well, how the fuck can I offer strawberry shakes?” she asks while loading up the burgers Carl just pushed through the window onto her giant tray.

Carl's not looking at her, just flipping through the order wheel.

“Just add that strawberry syrup for the sundaes to the vanilla,” he says.

“Tastes like shit; people hate that,” Sierra says.

“Then tell 'em we only have the chocolate and vanilla,” he mumbles.

“But the menu says strawberry.” Carl's turned to get some more eggs out of the reach-in.

“I'll go check the walk-in again,” I tell her. Which is what Sierra wants, to start with. Carl always acts like he doesn't like to move from the line. But I know there might be a tub of strawberry ice cream back there; it's really popular for some reason and I know Garrett always orders extra.

“Need more pickles, while you're back there,” Carl adds.

I find the strawberry—it's the last tub—so I carry it up to the beverage station for Sierra and then grab the pickles, and give them to Carl. Then I pull up the fries, salt them, and dunk another load.

“God, veggie burgers are just gross,” Carl says, digging out a pale peach-colored veggie burger from the freezer-burned stack in his reach-in.

“You probably get sick of salad all the time if you're a vegetarian, though,” I say, portioning out fries to his plated burgers and buffalo chicken breast.

“Whatever,” Carl says. “Those kinda vegetarians? First ones to slobber down french fries. They just avoid meat; they're not really into eating vegetables.”

“Potatoes are technically a vegetable,” I say, pulling up the next round of fries and sinking another.

“Potatoes being such a healthy vegetable,” Carl huffs. You wouldn't think Carl gives a shit about nutrition, given what he
serves up for a living. But he doesn't ever eat fries, actually. When he eats at work, it's always a club sandwich. I don't know if it's work that makes him like this—like he's had a reaction to all the grease and fat and can't bear it—or if he's always been that way.

I think about that until Carl and me punch out later that night. How I can't go anywhere anymore and just buy something or eat something without thinking about how all these people—workers, who used to be background people—have their own specific lives. Nothing to do with their jobs; but they're there, working, earning, waiting for the end of their shifts so they can punch out, take off their nametags and gross, dirty uniforms, and be themselves.

Like, Carl, who used to skateboard to work, now in winter gets a ride from his weed-dealing roommate. Carl used to live with his brother until his brother died from some weird cancer. Then Carl had to live in a group home until he turned eighteen. That's why he doesn't drive; he's never had the money to learn how, never mind a car. Not that he told me; Garrett did. What Carl doesn't have to tell anyone about, though, is his obvious crush on Sierra. You know because he never says one thing to Sierra that's gross. Never anything about bitches and making money. He can barely look at her without getting a little red faced.

Knowing stuff like that: it just makes the world seem even bigger. Or denser. More compact, more crammed full of stuff. A store like Target: it's not just a place I go sometimes when Brandy's in a weird mood. It's stuffed with things to buy and people who endure all sorts of checklists and strange little rules
and procedures, who deal with their coworkers' possibly dumb jokes. Who maybe like their bosses, like I like Garrett. Who have crushes on cute girls and never say anything about it. Who get fired for saying things about it, like the last night-shift cook Garrett hired, who couldn't shut the fuck up to the servers about how
fine
he thought they were.

“I knew that guy was a fucking drooler,” Carl says as we stand out in the cold waiting for his roommate. He's smoking a cigarette and stamping his feet. “Now I got extra nights coming. Fucking asshole.”

I wait with Carl until his roommate shows up, wave at them as I clean off the new snow from my windshield. It's after midnight and snow's blowing everywhere across the road, making it seem like it's still snowing.

I'm in that amped-up mood again. I always get it after work, even though that's stupid. I wish I got it
before
work. And what's weird is that my mom's the same way as me. She comes home from work and you'd think she'd be wanting to relax. But instead, she's in her yoga pants, in a tizzy with dinner and lists and driving the twins places and yelling for Jay to do this or that. Laying eyes on me and reporting a list of the graduation-party things she's got set up: “So, the tent, the menu, invitations are ordered, I need to set up your senior portraits, that reminds me!” And she's back to scribbling something on her list. Winding herself up like a fucking supernova about to blow.

I drive home from work in silence. I don't listen to music after work. Nothing. I just like thinking, I guess. About what
happened. Or didn't happen. I feel like I don't make sense, like if anyone knew how much I liked being at work, how I wished I had that to do all the time, they'd probably laugh. Carl's probably drinking a beer in the shower, then he'll rip a couple bong hits and watch TV until he falls asleep on the couch. Sierra's probably lighting some incense and reading some book about psychic shit, or walking around in her panties doing weird hot-girl witchy stuff, invoking the four elements or whatever. Counting her tips and doing money spells. Either way, their jobs are things to endure and live through.

But lately, work's really the only thing I like. School is boring and full of possible shittiness, like Brandy getting upset for something I didn't do but I still have to help her with (losing a camera bag one day, or getting yelled at by her gym teacher another) or getting called to guidance to talk about my living situation; since the county declared my dad's house unfit for habitation, minors cannot live there, never mind adults. That shit I can't get used to.

But work? Work makes sense.

Get me another cambro of mushroom sauce, can you?

Pull up those fries for me, please?

The wheel's pink, can I get a hand in plating these things?

I'm slammed out here; help me clear out some booths quick, Will?

All that shit, I know how to do. I can do it really quick, too. And the second it's done, there's the next thing, the next request, the next ticket on the order wheel, the next load of dishes to rack, the next orders up to fire through the window. The downtime where me and Carl'll go in the back and sharpen knives and bitch
about shit and I'll try to bring up Sierra but he won't crack. Just keeps scraping his blade down the honing steel and not biting on any of it.

When I get home, the house is quiet. The dishwasher's humming, the kitchen is all tidy. I take off my shoes and coat, head toward my room. But my mom is asleep on the couch in the TV room, a book over her chest.

“Where've you been?” my mom asks, sitting up.

“Work,” I say.

She marks the place in her book, pulls the sofa blanket off her. “I knew that,” she says. “It was on the calendar.”

Since everything with my dad, she's become a little more into me. Not strict or anything. Just interested in knowing where I am, when I have to work. She wants to make dinner for me when I'm around; she wants to make sure we all eat together on those nights when there's no snowboarding or dance lessons, when Jay's home, when she doesn't have yoga. There's this huge laminated calendar on the side of the fridge. It's color-coded, explains who is where and when. I don't know what to think about it, except that it's like a work schedule that Garrett makes. But with things like “pick up snowboarding” or “pizza night” or whatever. I'm supposed to fill in, too, for those times when she can't pick up Kinney and Taylor at their after-school care place, or whatever. Take Kinney to dance (Taylor hates dance and won't do it), take them both to the snowboarding practice, that kind of shit.

“Angus came by,” she says, folding the blanket into a square and setting it over the arm of the couch. “Did he call you?”

“I didn't check.”

“Well, I told him I'd tell you,” she says. “Listen, Jay and I are going out of town tomorrow. I'd like you to be in charge of the girls. Two nights. Take them to snowboarding on Saturday night; there's a party in the ski place with one of their friends.”

“What?”

“I know you're not scheduled to work. I checked with Garrett, in case. Your sisters don't know yet, because I wasn't sure, but I think they'll be very excited.”

“Mom.”

“It wasn't on the calendar,” she says quickly, like she's apologizing. “Jay wasn't sure if he was going to have to travel for work but he doesn't. So, we're going to Wisconsin for the long weekend. Just until Monday. The girls don't have school that day. Plus,Jay has to catch a flight out Monday night to New Jersey.”

“Okay.”

“Will, here's the thing.” She's all calm, her book on her lap. I feel weird, standing there, looking down at her. Like she's begging or something.

“I know you have a girlfriend,” she says. “And she's welcome here. Always. But not while we're gone. Not with your sisters here. You understand why, right?”

“Well, obviously, Mom.”

“I mean, I like her very much. It's just that, I can't take that responsibility. And neither can you. I know you can handle Taylor and Kinney. You know the drill when it comes to them. But
I think you need to just deal with them without your girlfriend. Focus on them.”

“But—”

“Listen to me. I've talked to the Everetts.”

“Mom!” The Everetts are the neighbors across the street, this old couple that are always into everyone's business. Taylor and Kinney suck up to Mrs. Everett like whoa; Mrs. Everett has a cookie and popsicle stash for them. They pretend to rake her yard or shovel snow with Mr. Everett. They're the kind of old people who don't just grow old and frail but who walk their little cocker spaniel three times a day, keeping themselves healthy and vital in their retirement.