Paula Stokes - The Art of Lainey

The wind chimes clunk together like thunder as the door swings closed. I turn around slowly, praying no one in the shop heard our conversation. Bianca is holding a rag saturated with Madagascar spice tea. Her eyes are dark and her face is heavy. She looks like she’s the one who got dumped. Behind her, two tables of college kids, and Micah, the prep cook, are staring at me.

“Enjoy the show?” I ask, plastering a tight-lipped smile on my face. “I was getting tired of him anyway.” A couple of the college kids clap. Monochrome Girl looks at me with the same sad eyes as Bianca. Micah fiddles with the hem of his black T-shirt as he helps himself to a cup of Colombian drip.

“I’m going to take a short break, Ebony.” I turn toward the back without waiting for my manager’s response.

Ebony is sitting in a corner booth working on next month’s schedule. She looks up with a bored expression. “Have you actually done anything today?”

Bianca jumps in. “I can cover the front.”

“Thanks, Bee,” I say, my voice starting to waver.

I keep the fake smile cemented on my face as I make my way around the counter, but it breaks apart right as I hit the door to the kitchen. I need to hide, and quick, but the only bathrooms are out front, which means there’s no place I can safely be alone.

Unless . . .

I turn and find the door to the manager’s office cracked open. Ebony doesn’t like us loitering back there, but she won’t know. Besides, my parents own the place. What is she going to do? Fire me? Dare to dream.

I barely make it through the door before the tears come, hot and fast. I collapse into the rolling chair in front of Dad’s dinosaur of a computer. Sobs force their way out of my throat. I feel like I’m trapped in a disaster movie where everything is shriveling into darkness and ash. Sunflowers are being uprooted. Puppies are being trampled. Whole cities are crumbling to dust.

Pushing the keyboard to the side, I rest my head on the desktop, wishing I could turn off all the lights and sounds, and maybe the air too. I can still see the customers staring at me, snickering behind their eco-mugs. And Monochrome Girl with her sad eyes.

I haven’t felt like this since I got cut from my junior-high select soccer team. I warmed the bench as a seventh grader and hoped to get moved up to the starting line in eighth grade. Instead, I had the worst tryouts ever and was the only player not invited back. I felt like such a loser walking away from the list of who had made it, my former teammates either avoiding me completely or patting me awkwardly on the back. I swore I would do whatever it takes to never feel like that again.

Someone knocks softly on the door.

“Go away,” I say, hoping whoever it is will take the hint and come back later.

No such luck. I look up as the door squeaks open. Micah is peeking through a one-inch crack, looking like he’d rather be in a dentist’s office awaiting several root canals than anywhere near me.

“What do you want?” I mumble through my tears.

He slides into the little room and shuts the door behind him. “Sorry. Just need to get the recipe for Caribou Cookies.” He reaches above me to the binder where Dad keeps the dessert recipes. The scent of smoke lingers on his clothes, like maybe he just came back from a cigarette break. Flipping through the binder, he pulls out one of the laminated pages.

But then he doesn’t leave.

“Are you some kind of weirdo who gets off on girls crying?” I wipe my eyes on the collar of my shirt. The teal fabric comes away dark with eye makeup.

Micah laughs softly to himself as he slides the binder back onto the shelf. “I hope you don’t really think of me like that.”

Something in his expression stings like lemon juice poured directly on my broken heart. Pity. I hate pity.

“I don’t think of you at all,” I say.

Micah nods. “That figures.”

I know I’m being a bitch, but I can’t help it. Jay didn’t hang out long enough for me to tell him exactly what I thought of his breakup strategy, so the rage is seeping out of me bits at a time, targeting anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. Better Micah than Bianca. He can take it. He’s got a tattoos and a mohawk. Clearly he doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

“Hey,” I mutter, the closest I can manage to an apology. “Be cool and don’t tell my dad about this, okay?”

Micah runs a hand through his spiky hair. Dark brown roots are showing beneath the black dye. “Your dad doesn’t really talk to the kitchen people,” he says. He lowers his voice to a whisper. “I think he’s afraid of us.”

I pinch my lips together. It’s a little funny because it’s totally true. Dad thinks the cooks snort coke in the walk-in coolers and worship Satan in the parking lot. Sometimes I make up stories just to freak him out. That’s what he gets for letting a bald chick in a band do the majority of the hiring. Talk about unfair. I had to beg and plead to get Bianca hired on as a barista for the summer, but Ebony gets to staff the whole kitchen with dregs she fishes out of the gutter in front of The Devil’s Doorstep, Hazelton’s premier (and only) live music venue.

“I could have him killed if you want,” Micah says with exaggerated seriousness. “Jason, not your dad. I bet C-4 knows people who would make it look like an accident.”

C-4, also known as Cal. Another member of Denali’s crack-team kitchen staff. He’s always going on about his collection of homemade weapons and telling everyone his locker is booby-trapped with explosives. Now there’s a guy who makes Micah seem almost normal.

“I’ll pass,” I say, wondering why he’s being so nice to me. Eager to change the subject, I zero in on his hands as he brushes some loose flour from the bottom of his T-shirt. “Why don’t you wear an apron?”

“Because aprons are for losers?” Micah swipes at his shirt again. He’s got what looks like a coil of barbed wire wound around his left wrist. It’s also caked with flour.

“Apparently gloves are too.”

“Nobody wears gloves unless the customers can see them,” he says, heading toward the door. He pauses, looks back at me for a second. “My girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks ago. I know how bad it sucks.”

I bristle again. More pity. “Why are you trying to make me feel better? You haven’t said, like, five words to me since grade school.”

He shrugs. “Bee asked me to check on you. Also, Ebony said I have to work the counter if you can’t go back up there.” Micah inches toward the door. “You know how we kitchen people tend to scare away the customers.”

My breathing has finally returned to normal. I dry my eyes again and try to pretend nothing happened, that Jason didn’t just dump me like I was a total loser. I hate that a coworker saw me break down, but it could be worse. Micah and I knew each other when we were kids but we’ve never rolled in the same circles. He hangs out mostly with other guys at work and I’m not overly concerned about what the Denali kitchen weirdos think of me. “I don’t see why Bald Beauty couldn’t man the counter,” I grumble. “That schedule isn’t going anywhere.”

“Why are you such a bitch to her?” Micah asks.

“Because she’s lazy? And bald?”

Not to mention, she’s been a bitch to me since the day we met. Pretty sure she sees me as a threat to her management position, like I’m going to graduate high school and immediately use my family connections to steal her Denali power.

Micah rolls his eyes. “It’s just a style, Lainey.”

“It’s a lack of style.” I run the tips of my pinkie fingers along my lower lash lines in an attempt to remove some of my smudged mascara. “You’d think she could help out for five minutes. It’s not like my whole world ends every day.”