Also Known as Elvis (7 page)

Thinking this gets me to singing “ ‘You ain't nothin' but a hound dog' ” nice and loud because the lawn mower drowns out everything, and this gets me to thinking about going with Becca to
the shelter next week to look at dogs. I'm going to admit something right now, and you've got to promise not to tell anybody, especially my friends, but since they're all out of town, I figure it's safe to say: I could hardly get to sleep last night thinking about going with Becca next week. At first, I figured it was about looking at dogs, but every time I tried picturing a dog's face, it was Becca's face that showed up instead.

And then I got to remembering what Becca was like before she and Addie started being friends again, how she could act snobby and mean a lot of the time, and it felt weird having girlfriend-type thoughts about her. It feels weird having girlfriend-type thoughts, period, but about Becca? Super weird.

But just wait. Later that afternoon at the Candy Kitchen things get
double
super weird. With a cherry on top.

It starts with this text I get from Becca. I'm not supposed to be texting while I'm at work, but I keep my phone under the counter and just check it
every once in a while, so it's not like I'm always on it. Still, I try to keep it hidden from Steffi, because I don't want her turning into a boss-type person and reminding me of the rules of employment and stuff like that. Not that I think she'd do that, but you never know.

Anyways, the joint is jumping, probably because it's so hot out and everybody wants cold drinks and ice cream, and we've only got me and Steffi and this dude named Henry working out front, with Donny back in the kitchen. Henry's a high school senior and he's a nice enough guy, but he's kind of a space cadet. Like, he'll write down every little detail of your order, repeat it to you twice, and then mess it up. Guaranteed. So Steffi's got me working the fountain. Sodas. Ice cream sundaes. Everything. It's a lot of pressure because, like I said, the joint is jumping, but it also feels way cool because it's the most responsibility I've ever been given and Steffi is trusting me not to mess up, Henry-style.

So anyways. The text. It reads:
Tues noon animal shelter ok?

I think fast. I don't work on Tuesdays, so as long as I don't have to take care of Megan and Jessie, I'm cool.

ok,
I text back, to which I get a fast
YAY!
in return.

YAY! All caps. Exclamation point.

So now I'm trying to make five kinds of sundaes and all I can think about is going to the shelter to look at
dogs
with this
girl
who might actually like me, and it's all I can do to keep the hot fudge from running all over the floor and making a gigantic Henry-size mess.

To make matters worse, Becca shows up about twenty minutes later with two of her non-Addie friends, Royal Wilkins and Sara Jakes. Royal and Sara were bffs with Becca until she started hanging out with Addie and then they dropped the
b
and one of the
f
s.

Okay, now we're starting to move into DSWWACOT (double-super-weird-with-a-cherry-on-top) territory.

So they walk in, all linky-arms and girly, with
Becca on the end farthest away from me. I notice there's something different about Becca right away. It's not just all the makeup she's wearing, which is back to what it was pre-Addie. It's the way she's moving across the room and giggling and saying
omigod
every other word. Mostly it's how she is
ignoring me
. If I didn't know better, I'd say we were right back in the hall at Paintbrush Falls Middle School between classes.

“Hey,” I say into the air.

Becca's half smile lets me know that she's in the same air as the
hey
, but the nonsmiling half makes me think she doesn't want anyone else to know it.

What's up with that?

Seriously.

The three of them move right past me and take the booth in the back—
our
booth, the one normally occupied by me (when I'm not working) and the gang (who, let me remind you, are all out of town as of a few hours ago)—as if,
as if
, they own it. I mean, fine, Becca has spent some time in that
booth, but Royal and Sara? They do
not
belong there, dude.

Okay, so I'm trying to live and let live and all that good stuff, but the whole deal is rubbing me the wrong way. Then my phone buzzes.

hi

It's from Becca.

I glance over and she's not even looking in my direction.

Are you with me here? There is some serious weirdness happening. But wait. The Cherry on Top arrives in about five minutes.

So do I text back or not?

I see Steffi eyeing me with my phone in my hand. I decide on
not
and quickly put it back under the counter.

Next thing I know, I'm in the middle of making a black-and-white shake when I see Steffi walking over from Becca's table.

“One dish mint chocolate chip, one vanilla egg cream, and one Dr Pepper float,” she says, sliding the order across the counter at me.

“A Dr P float?” I go. “Really?”

Steffi winks at me. “I told you she likes you,” she says.

I shrug and look over at Becca, who's still not making eye contact. At least, not with me. She's got her eyes on Royal, across the table from her, and even from here I can see that she's saying, “Omigod!” Pretty soon they're all checking out each other's nail polish and probably all going
omigod.
Whatever. I'm still hoping Becca will look my way and say hi with her face and not just her phone.

I see her looking down under the table, and the next thing I know my phone buzzes.

It's Becca. Naturally. Or should I say: weirdly.

love this song

I listen to hear what's playing. Steffi must have just put on this playlist we put together for her iPod—half stuff she likes, half stuff I like. Right now, the King is crooning about being all shook up, a little mixed up, and feelin' fine. Except for the feelin' fine part, he could be singing about me.

I take a chance.

one of my faves,
I text her back.

I figured

u like elvis?

sometimes

but u love this song

totally

A hand taps my shoulder.

Steffi.

“Come on, Big E,” she says to me, giving me this look that says,
Give me a break.
“Don't turn me into the evil authority figure. Look around; I'm dying here. I can't keep up. Henry just screwed up two burger orders and Donnie's cursing
me
out in the kitchen like it's my fault. And I've got to pee. Bad. So here.”

She slides a tray at me, which means,
You take the food to the table
.

Only in this case it's not a table, it's a booth. I'm just finishing up the Dr Pepper float. Lucky me: I get to deliver the drinks and ice cream to Becca, Royal, and Sara.

As I start loading everything onto the tray, the door flies open, this time knocking over the umbrella stand, and who walks in but the Cherry on Top: the one and only Kevin Hennessey.

“Well, if it isn't my favorite soda
jerk
!” he goes, flashing a big smile at his own cleverness as if he had just come up with this line instead of repeating it for, like, the hundredth time this summer.

I do my best to ignore him, which isn't always the best strategy with Kevin, because it usually just encourages him to ramp it up. Which is what happens now.

“Looks like you're busy,” he says in this mock-friendly way. “Maybe I can help you out. Huh, Squeeze, can I help you out, huh?”

I'm coming around the end of the soda fountain holding a tray up in one hand, the way I've been taught to do, trying to balance a dish of mint chocolate chip ice cream, a vanilla egg cream, and a Dr Pepper float when Kevin lunges.

“Careful!” he goes, looking like he's going to
grab the tray but stopping just short of making contact.

I jump back and the tray goes flying. Nobody gets hurt, but there's ice cream and seltzer, Dr P, and broken glass everywhere.

Some people gasp.

Some people laugh.

One of
those
people is Becca Wrightsman. The sound of her laughter cuts right through Elvis's singing. All shook up. Oh yeah.

After the laughing dies down, I sweep up the broken glass, mop up the mess, go back behind the counter, and remake the order for Becca, Royal, and Sara. I wait for Steffi to get out of the john so she can take it to their booth. I don't say thanks when she does.

I don't respond when Kevin says, “It wasn't
my
fault, I was just tryin' to help.”

I don't look over when Becca calls out, “Awesome float!”

I don't speak or text or pick up my phone for the rest of the afternoon.

I get by on grunts and shrugs.

• • •

The Candy Kitchen doesn't stay open at night anymore. Not even on a Saturday. If anybody wants ice cream, they go out to the mall or to Stewart's. By five o'clock, the town is pretty much dead. So
from five to six, which is when we close, it's often just Steffi, Donny, and me cleaning up, with an occasional straggler coming in for a hand-packed pint or a box of chocolates.

The other times I've worked up to closing I've liked it. Donny's back in the kitchen while Steffi and I wipe down the tables, fill up the napkin holders, and mop the floor. We shoot the breeze and make up stories about the stragglers, like this guy is buying chocolates for his wife because he spent the afternoon with his girlfriend and he feels guilty, or that guy is bringing ice cream home to his kid who's sick in bed. For some reason, it's usually guys who come in between five and six. When we know one of the stragglers, it's not as much fun. It's best when it's a stranger and you can make up anything you want.

But tonight nothing about it is fun. When somebody comes in and buys something, Steffi waits on them and we don't talk about them after they leave. Our playlist is still playing, but we don't talk about the songs like we usually do, and I don't
sing along to Elvis, even when it's a song I know by heart.

I just want to go home. But then I think about it and I don't want to go home, because I'm worried my dad will be there and I don't want to see him. I don't even want to see my mom or my sisters. If I want to see anybody, it's my friends, and they're not here. I can't even call or text Bobby (who's the best one to talk to because he actually listens and doesn't jump right in and tell you what to do), because he's at this stupid camp in the Adirondacks where there's no cell phone service or Internet. What kind of freakin' vacation is
that
?

I don't know what's worse, the way Becca acted like she didn't know me (except as a soda
jerk
who makes an
awesome
float), or how Kevin embarrassed me in front of everybody and made me mess up so bad even Henry called me out on it. Steffi tried telling me it was okay, that it happens to everybody, but I just grunted and shrugged. I'm not everybody. I'm me, total mess-up loser Schuyler Tookis—yeah, Schuyler's my real name;
you didn't seriously think my parents named me Skeezie, did you?—who can't even get a girl to like him or keep a bully like Kevin Hennessey from busting his chops.

Sometimes I get so mad I just want to punch Kevin's lights out. Or I picture myself picking up one of the heavy napkin holders sitting on the counter and smashing it down on my phone like it's Becca's heart until it's broken into a thousand pieces. But I don't, because I'm pretty sure that's what my dad would do.

It's quarter to six and Steffi says, “Why don't you get out of here, Elvis?”

I shrug.

“Tomorrow will be a better day,” she says.

I shake my head.

“You
are
working tomorrow, right?”

For the first time in hours, I speak. “If I don't quit first.”

“Come on, Big E,” she says. “You can't quit and leave me here with Henry. Get a good night's sleep and I'll see you at twelve. Okay?”

“Whatever,” I mumble.

I grab my phone from under the counter, shove it in my pocket, nod in Steffi's direction, and shuffle out the door.

It looks like maybe it's going to rain. I pull the phone out of my pocket, thinking I'll text Joe, see what's up, tell him about what happened. I see that there are a whole bunch of texts from Becca. Most of them say the same thing.

sorry

I delete them all.

I don't even remember what I was going to say to Joe. I look up and down Main Street. I think about all the different ways I can walk home and ask myself which way will take me the longest.

It starts raining hard the minute I step out from under the Candy Kitchen awning, and even though I'm feeling crummy, it isn't the kind of crummy where you want to walk around in the rain feeling sorry for yourself. It's more the kind where you want to get home in a hurry so you can yell at your sisters to make their
own
stinkin' supper and then grab a big bag of Doritos and hole up in your room and tell everybody to go away and leave you alone. Unless of course your stinkin' excuse for a father happens to be there, in which case you might reconsider walking around in the rain feeling sorry for yourself.

Turns out he isn't here.

Neither is my mom.

Jessie, wearing a Water Slide World T-shirt and matching visor, greets me with a big hug around the legs and shouts at me like I'm in the next county, “We had the
best
day ever!”

“
Except
for the fact that we couldn't go on
any
of the really
exciting
stuff because
Jessie
is too
little
!” Megan chimes in from the couch, where she's sprawled out watching some dumb show on TV. I notice she's wearing this sparkly
LOVE PINK
T-shirt that she's been begging our mom to get her for freakin' ever. It's entirely possible that
love pink
were her first words.