See You at Harry's (8 page)

R
AN IS WAITING FOR ME
at my locker. Today his T-shirt says
BEHOLD
.

“Did you take the bus?” he asks.

“Nope,” I say.

He smiles. “I knew you’d figure it out!”

Cassie comes dashing over to join us.

“Behold,” Cassie says, staring at his chest.

“Yes,” Ran says.

Cassie glances at me. I shrug. What Cassie doesn’t understand is that Ran isn’t the kind of person you ask, “Why?” He wants you to figure things out for yourself.

I stuff my bag in my locker and grab my books. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

I spend the day at school rushing from class to class, hoping I won’t pass the Things in the halls and kicking myself for not realizing I’m still going to have to take the bus
home.
During last period, I have study hall. The class is packed. Our teacher’s name is Mrs. Drabble, but everyone calls her Mrs. Dribble because she’s old and has a reputation of falling asleep at her desk and drooling. Ran has vowed that if this happens, he will wake her up. Cassie thinks that is very heroic of him. Of course.

Today Mrs. Dribble has a thermos on her desk that she sips from almost exactly every two minutes. Mrs. Dribble is also known for screaming at you if you talk during study hall, so everyone is very quiet. You can practically hear the electric clock slowly buzzing the second hand forward. I count down the minutes until I will be sitting on the bus with the Things. Twenty-seven. I look over at Ran, who is writing something fast and furious in his tiny journal. He calls it his idea book. He must have a pretty good one.

Cassie sits behind him reading her social studies book and taking notes. Every so often she leans forward as if she’s trying to look over Ran’s shoulder and read from his journal. I’m sure Ran notices, which is another reason Cassie is doomed when it comes to her chances with him.

I try to concentrate on my geometry homework for a while, but the numbers blur together. I switch to English, but I keep reading the same paragraph over and over again. I stare at the clock. I swear the minute hand is moving backward. I watch Mrs. Dribble take a sip from her thermos and wonder what’s in there that makes her smile just a tiny bit after every sip.

Twelve minutes.

When the bell finally rings, I nearly get trampled as everyone makes a run for the door. The halls are so crowded, I can barely make my way to my locker.

“Are you taking the bus?” Ran asks as we move along in the sea of students toward the pickup area.

I nod.

“Be strong,” he says, and lets himself get pushed along to his own bus line. “All will be well!” he yells to me as he’s carried away.

I look around for Holden, but I don’t see him anywhere. The Things are at the front of the line, pushing each other.

Someone grabs my arm and pulls me out of the line.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Holden pulls me backward until we’re free from the crowd. A guy in a black Volkswagen Bug rolls down his window when we get to the parking lot.

“Hey,” he says.

“This is my little sister. Can we drop her off at my parents’ restaurant?”

“No problem,” the guy says.

Holden opens the door and tilts the seat up for me. The car smells like Sara’s bedroom. Like incense but like cigarettes, too. As we pull out of the parking lot, the guy turns around. He looks a lot older than Holden.

“I’m Gray,” he says.

“Fern.”

“Cool name. Like the plant?”

“Like the girl. In
Charlotte’s Web.
” My cheeks burn.

“The movie?”

“The book.”

“Dude,” he says to Holden. “Your parents are whacked. Did they name all of you after book characters?”

“They’re kind of eccentric,” Holden says quietly.

“That’s so cool. Too bad you got named after that depressed kid, though.”

“Yeah,” Holden says. “Tell me about it.”

“You got a good one, though,” he says to me. “A pig saver!”

Terrific.

I try to smile, but some things you can’t force.

“Although . . .” Gray says, “if I remember correctly, it’s really that spider who saves the pig. In the end, I mean.”

“Fern saves him first,” Holden says.

“Riiiight.” Gray turns up the volume and nods his head to the music. Holden copies him. I look out the window.

Fern.
What kind of a lame name is that? What were my parents thinking, naming me after a kid whose only friend was a pig marked for death?

At the restaurant, Gray pulls up near the front door, and Holden leans forward with the seat to let me out. “See you later,” he says. He has the glow again.

“Thanks for the ride,” I tell Gray.

“No prob.” He’s still tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, even though he turned off the music.

After they drive off, I stand in front of the restaurant and look up at the huge Harry’s sign towering over me. I never actually met the real Harry, my grandfather. My grandparents died just two months apart. My grandmother died first from cancer and then my grandfather from a heart attack. My mom says it was really a broken heart. We used to have a bunch of photos of them hanging in the restaurant, but that caused confusion once my dad started letting on that
he
was Harry. People wanted to know who the old couple was, and that meant my dad would have to admit he was a big fake. Sometimes I wonder if my mom sees my dad as a phony the way the Holden in her favorite book sees other people. I hope not.

I notice my reflection in the huge window in front of the restaurant. I look like a stranger standing here. I look small.

A tiny head pops up at the bottom of the window from inside. It has bushy brown hair. A little hand spreads across the glass and waves slowly.

I smile and wave back.

Inside, the restaurant’s familiar sweet and greasy smell wraps around me. Charlie is sitting at the table under the window with Doll. Doll’s hair has been twisted into dreadlocks and dyed green. Charlie must have fallen asleep with his face against her because the side of his cheek is green, too.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask, looking around at the empty dining room. The restaurant is still pretty dead during the lull between lunch and the rush of the early-bird special at dinner. I sit across from Charlie at the Formica table. My dad bought the tables from different diners that were going out of business. He thinks people like to be reminded of old-fashioned diners. He says things that make people nostalgic make them happy. The booth seats are red vinyl, and you have to be careful if you sit on them wearing shorts or you’ll leave a layer of skin when you get up. At least it feels that way.

Charlie wraps Doll in his blanket and sets her on the table. Then he holds his hands out and pinches his fingers as he closes his eyes and says, “Ommmm.” This is his way of telling me that my mom is upstairs meditating.

“Where’s Sara?”

He shrugs.

I look around again at the empty room. “Who’s supposed to be watching you?”

“Mona. But I a big boy.”

“Well, where is she?”

“Potty.”

The tiny bell on the door jingles, and an enormous woman and man walk in with a skinny kid. Since no one else is around, I go over and say hello and ask if they’re here for lunch or ice cream.

The couple looks at me closely. Then the lady gets this big grin on her face. “I recognize you!” she says. She looks around the room and spots Charlie kissing Doll. “And there’s that adorable little girl! The one who says ‘See you at Hawee’s!’ ”

Oh, brother.

“Look, Justina,” she says to the skinny kid. “Remember the commercial?” She turns to me. “We saw your commercial on the TV in our camper and thought it’d be a hoot to come here. We’re kind of ice-cream connoisseurs. We travel all over and try different kinds. We just went on the tour at Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont last week. Is your ice cream better than theirs?”

I stare at her. What is it with tourists watching TV in their RVs? Aren’t they supposed to be looking out the windows and enjoying nature or something?

“Um . . .”

“Does it matter where we sit?” she asks, sort of waddling around me.

I grab three menus and follow them. They take the booth next to Charlie, but before they sit down, the woman reaches into her gigantic purse and pulls out a cell phone. “You don’t mind if I take your picture, do you? Oh! Maybe your little sister could say her line for me. My phone has video.”

Charlie hugs Doll to his chest and eyes the lady suspiciously, which he often does when strangers say he’s cute.

The lady turns to him. “Do you know your line? From the commercial?”

Charlie looks at me.

“See you at Harry’s,” I mumble at him.

“I don’t talk to stwanjahs,” he tells the lady in a baby voice. Then he dashes across the dining room and hides behind the ice-cream counter.

“Oh, my, I scared her,” the lady says, as if Charlie is some wild animal.

“It’s OK,” I say. I hand out the menus and hope she forgot about the photo. “Someone will be with you to take your order in just a minute.”

I head to the counter and grab Charlie’s hand. Together we go up to my dad’s office to find my mom. The door is closed, with my mom’s go-away sign flipped over. Nice.

Charlie presses his ear against the door. “I hear the singing bowl!” he whispers loudly.

I roll my eyes. “C’mon, then. Let’s find Sara.”

We go back downstairs and wander through the kitchen, but she’s not there, either. Patrick, the head cook, says she was just here but went somewhere with Gil, the busboy. “Try the walk-in,” he tells us.

Charlie stiffens beside me. He hates the walk-in. It’s cold and smells like rotting vegetables most of the time, so I don’t really blame him. “C’mon, I’ll protect you,” I say.

Just as I’m about to open the door, Sara pushes it open from the other side.

“Oh!” she says. “What are you doing here?”

Charlie reaches for her hand. “You cold,” he says, letting go.

“Well, yeah. It’s a refrigerator.”

Gil comes out behind her carrying a plastic bin full of sliced onions. Charlie points at his head and laughs.

“What?” he asks.

His hair is sticking straight up. Sara pats it down for him.

“We were just helping Patrick with dinner prep,” Sara says.

I look at her suspiciously. Since when does Sara ever help? “You’re supposed to be watching Charlie,” I say.

Sara picks him up, but he squirms to get down and hugs my legs. “Mona said she’d watch him for a bit.”

“Well she
wasn’t,
” I say.

“Oh, Fern, calm down. Everyone looks out for Charlie.”

“There are customers in the dining room waiting to order. They wanted to take our
picture.
”

She sighs. “All right, I’ll handle it.”

“Need help?” Gil asks her.

“No,” she says coldly. She leaves us standing there as she marches out to the dining room. Charlie runs after her.

As soon as Gil takes the cover off the onions, the smell is overpowering. I decide to escape through the back door before Sara can get me to take the ice-cream order. When I open the door, I nearly plow into my dad, who’s standing there talking to a tiny man wearing a Red Sox cap. He’s eating an ice-cream cone.

“Oh, hey, here’s my daughter Fern. One of the stars of the show,” my dad says, hugging me close to him.

The guy nods at me and licks his cone.

“So we could start with just the local stores,” my dad continues as if I’m not there. “And then we’ll move from there. We’ve got to start small. Make it hard to get. A specialty item. And maybe we could use a spot from the commercial on the label, you know? So people recognize it. Like I did with the truck. Did you see the truck out front?”

The guy looks bored. “Uh-huh.” He licks his cone again.

“It’ll be just like Ben and What’s-His-Name,” my dad continues. “And I’m thinking we should use an image from the ad, like I said. Only with the whole family, not just Charlie.”

I look up at him.

Say what?

“You know, with all of us standing under the sign. Wouldn’t that be great?”

He squeezes me tighter, clearly thinking I’m going to share his excitement about this latest brilliant idea. Sure, Dad. Our family photo on pints of ice cream at every store in town? Oh, yeah. That would be faaaaantastic.

A
T DINNER THAT NIGHT
, I pick at my garlic mashed potatoes while Sara tries to explain why my dad must not, under any circumstance, put our picture on an ice-cream label. I make a butter pond in my potatoes and slowly sacrifice overcooked lima beans into the butter water. Every time Sara raises her voice, Charlie bangs his feet against his high chair and chants, “See you at Hawee’s!”

My dad seems to think this is hysterical. “I can always count on you, bud, can’t I?” he says, looking around at the rest of us disappointedly. He reaches across the table to ruffle Charlie’s hair. He pulls his hand away and makes a face, then wipes mashed potato off his fingers. Sara catches my eye, and we share smirks.

“Where’s Holden, anyway?” my dad asks.

My mom looks at the clock, then at me. I shrug. I don’t think Holden was expecting my dad to be home for dinner two nights in a row.