Stay Sweet(32)

She looks up to share a prideful smile with him, but Grady is staring into his phone. “Fifteen hundred dollars,” he says, typing it out. “Don’t wait too long. Pizza will get cold.”

Glumly, she puts the calculator away and stands up. “I’m going to empty the trash cans first.”

Hearing this, Grady rushes to finish his text and then darts over, deftly putting his body between Amelia’s and the door. She finds herself suddenly standing so close to him, she can almost feel the vibrations of his cell phone buzzing with a text back, now that it’s tucked inside his blazer pocket. “No,” he insists, almost parentally. “You haven’t taken a break yet. Eat first. What kind do you want?”

“Plain.”

He opens the box and surveys. “Okay, you want your slice more on the saucy side? Bigger crust? Those burnt cheese bubbles?”

“Saucy and big crust, no burnt cheese bubbles.”

He selects her slice and delivers it to her, then starts ripping off sheets of paper towels and folding them up. “Enjoy.”

Cate walks in and grabs a piece of pizza. Between bites, she says, “Grady. We have napkins. This is an ice cream stand, remember?”

“Right.” Grady seems to sense the coldness. To Amelia, he says, “Hey . . . So, you’re going to stay through to closing?”

Amelia checks the face on the punch clock. By the time the first shift ends, she will have worked eleven hours. She’s already planned to stay a little later. But the way Grady asks, it feels less like a question and more like an expectation.

“Yes.”

“And can you text me more frequent updates on the registers? Hourly, if you can?” He takes out his cell phone. “I should have asked you for your number yesterday. What is it?”

Amelia tells him and she feels embarrassed, even though it is clearly a work ask.

Once he’s gone, Cate says, “Don’t let him guilt you into staying until closing. The juniors can handle it. They closed plenty of times last summer.”

“Yeah, but I figure I can knock out the schedule for the rest of the week and that sort of thing. You should totally go home, though.”

“I’m not in any rush. I’ll stick around for a while,” Cate says. “But before we do anything”—she comes to sit next to Amelia—“we’re eating more pizza.”

*

Second shifts feel different from first shifts for a few reasons. Things get quiet around the dinner hour, between four thirty and about seven, but then it’ll be busy until closing.

And once the sun goes down, the stand turns into a stage, and it’s impossible to see past the floodlights mounted under the awning. You can’t tell who’s next in line until they reach the window. It’s less families and more couples. For the last hour, ten until eleven, it’s nearly all teens.

Amelia texts Grady the hourly register updates he asked for, and he doesn’t show his face again. She fills out time cards for all the girls and then gets to work on the weekly schedule while Cate lies on the love seat. She stayed a lot longer than Amelia thought she would, though mostly she’s been hanging out here in the office. Not that Amelia minds. She likes having Cate’s company.

“Don’t you dare put either of us on first shift tomorrow,” Cate says with a yawn. “We deserve to sleep in. Otherwise, our seniority is worthless.”

“Cosigned.” Amelia opens the top desk drawer and takes out three keys that open the stand. These copies are hers to divvy out to the most senior girls, who’ll also be opening and closing. She tosses one to Cate. “Catch!”

“Why do I need one? Won’t I be working every shift with you?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I just thought you might want one anyway.”

Cate shrugs, and Amelia thinks back to last summer. It’s not the key Cate wanted. This one doesn’t come with the Head Girl pin.

“Give it to Mansi or Liz,” Cate says, tossing it back.

“Oh. Okay. Sure.” Amelia decides to make the girls flip a coin for it. So it’ll be fair.

At eleven on the nose, they lock the service windows and flip off the outside lights, releasing the moths that have been trapped in their glow. The girls cover the open ice cream drums in plastic wrap and move them from the scooping cabinet back into the walk-in freezer.

There are other chores that everyone is expected to do at closing time. Windex the service windows so they aren’t smudgy with fingerprints, restock the toppings, empty the trash cans. The whole circuit, with four girls on, can take as little as fifteen minutes.

Amelia’s about to get started, but Cate tells her and the other girls, who look like zombies, “Let’s not even worry about it.”

Amelia hesitates for a second, but everyone’s so beat, and already walking out past her. Anyway, it’s not like the place is trashed. She follows the girls out and flips off the lights.

That they didn’t have any newbies on changed the feeling of the first day. There was no impromptu little ceremony when new pink polos were passed out, no going over the rules, no challenging the newbies to try and do a dip-top and let them think they’ll be fired when their scoop of ice cream inevitably falls into the vat. Which it always, always does. These rituals aren’t just for newbies. They make all the girls feel like they’re part of something bigger than just a summer job.