Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (2 page)

It’s easy for me to know what everyone wants. The guy walking up to the counter, he’ll want a refund on his $5.99 sandwich. Too soggy—I can see the mustard leaking into the white paper wrapper. The mother with her whining twins doesn’t know whether to complain to me about how small our ice cream portions are or deal with the fact that her kids are making a puddle of mint chocolate chip on the floor that someone—me, probably—will have to clean up.

“How can I help you?” I ask the sandwich guy even though I already know the answer.

I’ve always found it simple, really, to look in to someone’s eyes, study how they’re standing—shoulders up, chin-out angry, or hunched-over worried—and figure out
what they need. My parents pride themselves on the Five Steps of Customer Satisfaction, which is the backbone of both of their Giant Brookfield Markets. The name is sort of a joke if you’re at all familiar with Brookfield, Indiana, because we are
so
not a giant town. But my parents figured that a name is a selling point; if you call something giant, people will believe it. And it’s worked so far.

Giant Brooks, as the stores are affectionately known, is one of the biggest employers around here, and I count myself among the employees, my blue plastic name tag pinned to my regulation collared shirt. Then there are the khaki pants my mother always wants me to belt, but which I insist on wearing a little too low for her tastes.

“What’s the point of serving me a sandwich I can’t eat?” Sandwich Guy complains.

“I hear you,” I tell Sandwich Guy, because the first step in customer satisfaction is to listen. Then I go to step two, the apology: “I’m so sorry for your trouble!” Cue my bright smile and reassuring gaze.

“What’re you gonna do to help?” he asks, shoving the crinkled lunch bag in my face. From the corner of my eye I can see Lucas standing and waving from under the FRESH COFFEE ROASTERS sign near the baked goods section. I wonder why he’s here before my shift is over, but I grin and try to ignore him to focus on the task at hand. Step three always feels the best: solve the issue.

“How about we refund your money and give you a new country-ham-and-provolone on the house?” This seems to
satisfy the guy and he nods as though he’s won a huge battle instead of the six bucks he spent on our deli sandwich. “Thanks so much for your patience,” I say to him while Lucas does some jumping jacks to get my attention. Thanking is step four. The guy rehashes his sandwich trauma and I furrow my brow, nodding to acknowledge that there’s been a problem, even if it’s just a mustard-drenched double ham. Lots of times people don’t even want anything else—just someone to say they get it, to understand. I’d be more inclined to talk openly about my own sort-of secret if more people were trained in the fine art of customer satisfaction.

“Tessa Masterson, please report to Coffee!” I jerk up when the announcement comes on the loudspeaker. Over at the cash register, Josie gives me a sheepish look. It’s not her fault Lucas grabbed the overhead phone from her hands. “Tessa Masterson, emergency in the caffeine aisle.” He goes so far as to start singing a Miss Kaboom song, that one on radio repeat all this year: “Shake it like you know what you’re made of, shake it and you’ll see what you’re afraid of …”

I shake my head, caught between laughter and anger. If my parents see me horsing around at work I’m doomed. I hold up my finger for one second to tell Lucas to cool it with the coffee craziness, and then I finish the final step: record. You always want a record of everything, even if it’s just the slightest grievance. That way you can prove what happened, have a file on the discord and the solution, so
that you and anyone who wants to can see what really happened.

Outside, the late-afternoon light slants at an odd angle, glinting off the parked delivery trucks out back. Lucas holds the Employee Only door open for me and I notice how the sun lights up the red-gold hairs on his arm. When we were little, he was as smooth as the stones we chucked at each other in the river in back of his apartment house. He’d try to dunk me and I’d wriggle away, collapsing on the riverbank in my wet shorts and T-shirt. He’d be shirtless in his red swimsuit but I never liked wearing the bikinis everyone else did and my old shorts dried faster in the sun anyway. Summers seemed to last forever back then—just me and Lucas. This was before Giant Brooks became a chain, and we got to raid the one store for cold pop and a hunk of watermelon we took turns balancing on our knees as we rode our bikes back to the shaded swath of trees near the old county farm. We could hide in the tall cornstalks and make our own little world in the rustling green. I didn’t know then how much I’d end up hiding later.

“You still on planet Earth, Tessa?” Lucas asks now, still waiting for me to leave the artificial coldness of Giant Brooks and head out to the real world where despite it being only May, the heat radiates off the pavement and instantly makes perspiration appear on my upper lip.
Lucas reaches for my hand and I let my fingers grip his in a quick squeeze as we walk to our usual spot behind one of the delivery platforms.

“I’m here,” I tell him but I’m only sort-of here because I want so much to talk to him about what I’ve been keeping under wraps. Maybe he already knows. I like to think that he knows me well enough to have guessed. That’s what’s always so funny about newspaper reports or big revelations; most of the time the evidence was there all along. Only most people choose not to see what’s right in front of them if it doesn’t fit with what they want to be true.

Lucas’s brown eyes search mine but I don’t know how to explain it without just dropping the big bomb. If he were a customer, I’d know what he wants—maybe my reassurance that this summer will be like all the others. Except it won’t—not if I open my usually closed mouth.

“So,” he says, and instead of settling into his standard position against the brick wall, he starts to yank me around to the front of the store, which faces our main street. “I have a surprise!”

Lucas’s enthusiasm is infectious. He’s been able to get me to agree to drop water balloons from the top of the church tower, sneak beers from Giant Brooks to drink tepid on the golf course at midnight, and swim stark naked in the river by his house during the Indian summer we had this past fall. “It’s our senior year,” he’d said, persuading me with his perfect smile and his crooked eyebrows that hinted at the trouble we might get into in the dark. Everyone used
to think Lucas and I had a thing going on but whenever anyone would ask I’d always crack up. So not happening. In Bio in freshman year the first thing we learned was how to collect evidence—how to read the meaning of animal prints in the mud, or sallow skin, or whatever. But since then I’ve noticed that people don’t want to see the evidence, even when you put it right in front of their eyes. My brother, Danny, only asked me that one time and now that he knows the truth, he’s never questioned me again.

“I swear you should be in sales,” I tell Lucas. “You could make a blind man buy a watch.”

Lucas bites his lip, nervous, and wraps his arms around my waist. My stomach clenches. Now I know what he wants but I’m torn in two. One half of me stands here, relishing the familiar feel of his strong hands, the heat, the knowledge that if my parents walked out and caught me taking an extended break when I’m on the clock they’d give me a wink and a mere shake of their heads before taking over my job for me. After all, they are the ones who taught me, trained me for customer service. And Giant Brooks excels at it. Each year for the past decade we’ve won awards, continued to improve, known how to please the customer. And I know that to make Lucas happy—and probably our parents and his teammates—I’d just have to make myself feel the same way he does.

I look up at Lucas and remember the brief and shining month and a half in seventh grade when I was taller than him. We didn’t even slow dance with each other
then. It felt too weird, like dancing with myself. Now we dance sometimes but we’re both in jeans and sneakers since I hate any shoes that qualify as flats or heels. And I don’t dance with his friends because I don’t want them to get the wrong idea. So much evidence. But people don’t want to use their inner reporter. Don’t want to dig. Surface stuff is much easier—for me, too.

Now Lucas takes my face in his hands. “The surprise—” He interrupts himself and puts his lips onto mine.

I pull back, shocked. We hug and lean on each other when we watch movies and stuff but no way have we kissed. In fact, Lucas is one of the reasons I sort of knew. Knew about me not being like every other girl I know: boy crazy. I mean, if I wasn’t interested in Lucas that way, who would I like? The guy’s gorgeous in that unsure way and makes me laugh and knows how to throw a curveball. And holding hands with him or punching his shoulder or brushing the hair out of his face always felt normal. Close. But right now it’s anything but normal. A curveball.

I stammer and blush, which probably makes it look like I’m thrilled but I’m not and I’m sort of stunned that Lucas actually thinks we’re taking it—our relationship—a step further. “Wait—”

I back away more than I have to, especially once I notice Josie at the employee door. “Hey,” she says, her sandy blond hair covering one eye. I give her a grin. “The eagle has landed.” This is our code for my parents coming to check on the store.

I tell Josie, “I’ll just be a second.” She lingers there a moment more, her eyes questioning mine, before ducking back inside the cool dark hallway. I have to tell him.

Lucas turns my face back toward his. In another universe, Lucas is either a star salesman or a movie star. He’s that good-looking, all toned and sprinkled lightly with freckles that play off his red-gold hair. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious about my surprise?” He takes my backing away from the kiss in stride, as though it were just a question of timing.

“I am, I am,” I tell him, but again that little itch inside becomes massive and lets me know I have to pull myself out from the giant cornstalks I’ve been hiding in. Tell him my own surprise. I glance over my shoulder at the door.

But Lucas isn’t waiting for me to talk because even though he knows me, he has his own plan. “First things first,” he says, and dashes around the corner and grabs a paper bag. He thrusts it at me, his chest rising from the run and from what I can tell are his nerves.

I reach into the bag and pull out the
Brooks-Mason Beaver
, which is a ridiculous name for a school yearbook and has gone through just about as many jokes as you would expect. “Don’t you think it’s silly?” I tell him, and I laugh. “I mean, when have we ever had a beaver anywhere remotely close to here?”

Lucas raises his eyebrows as though he sees some cleavage on screen. “Okay … How about you put aside the wildlife issues and flip to page one-fifteen.” He motions with his hand. When Mrs. Gumble told us to work on our
senior pages I thought it would be easy. Pick a quotation, a few lines from that song they played over and over again this fall, the one that sums up senior year, or list some private jokes. But the truth is, senior pages aren’t just you summing up who you are. They are summing up what the school needs you to be.

“Remember how you couldn’t come up with anything?” he asks, his voice high and excited.

“Of course I remember,” I tell him as I hold the closed book against my chest. I tuck a curl back into the messy knot of coils at the back of my head and sigh. “I totally choked. That’s why I didn’t even order one.” It was so unlike me and I couldn’t figure out why at first. Then when I talked to Josie about it, I knew. She totally got it. When you’re keeping half of yourself under wraps, it’s pretty impossible to fill an empty senior page. But that’s what I’ve been feeling this whole year, like a page with no words on it, like a vacant shelf before we stock it. Only what product will be displayed? Real Tessa or the one everyone’s been looking at but not really seeing?

“Well, I took care of it!” He grabs the book from me and hurries through the pages to display for me my senior page. Our senior page. Eight-year-old Lucas on his bike, me on mine. He’s scanned the photos in to make it look like we’re colliding, which we did in real life but no one was there to capture the moment on film. There’re no words, just our little-kid selves grinning at each other. “Awesome, right?”