Tell Me Three Things(18)

I think back to before, before before before, and they all seem like perfect days. Who cares about a stubbed toe or the hint of a booger in my nose? I had a mother, and not just insert generic mother here, but my mother, who I loved in a way that not everyone gets to love their mom. I mean, I know on some level, everyone loves their mother because of the whole she is your mother thing, but I didn’t love my mom just because she was my mother. I loved my mom because she was cool and interesting and warm and listened to me and continued to make me pancakes in the shape of my initials because somehow, even though I didn’t, she always understood that I’d never be too old for that sort of thing. I loved my mom because she read the entire Harry Potter series out loud to me, and when we were finished, she too wanted to start all over again.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last two years, it’s that memory is fickle. When I read Harry, I can no longer hear my mother’s voice, but I picture her next to me, and when even that fails, I imagine the weight of someone against me, an arm against my arm, and pretend that’s enough.

I loved my mom because she was mine.

And I was hers.

And that belonging-to-each-other thing will never happen for me again.

Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they’re only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.





CHAPTER 10


“Sorry, we only hire Starbucks-experienced baristas,” the guy at Starbucks tells me when I inquire about an after-school job. He looks like he’s in his early twenties and spends most of his milk-steaming money on hair-modeling clay. “This is a serious job. We take it very seriously.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, because now he mouths words I can’t quite make out.

“Sorry, just practicing my lines.” He shows me a script he has hidden under the counter. “Have an audition later. I’m really an actor.”

Coffee Guy, whose name—if his tag is to be believed—is actually Guy, smiles, but it’s an insincere smile, the kind that looks like it’s doing you a favor.

“I just did a guest bit on that new show Filthy Meter Maids.”

“Cool,” I say, wondering if the polite thing would be to say he looks familiar. He doesn’t look familiar. “So how did you become a Starbucks-experienced barista if they only hire Starbucks-experienced baristas? Chicken, egg, right?”

“Huh?”

“I just mean, how’d you get the job?”

“Oh, right. I lied.”

“You lied?”

“I said I’d worked at Starbucks before. For years.”

“And they believed you?” I think about going home, editing my résumé, adding a line—Starbucks Oak Park, 2013–2014—and coming back tomorrow. But then I picture my first day as a faux-experienced Starbucks employee. No doubt I’d scald myself or get yelled at by frustrated customers. People are nasty before they’ve had their coffee.

“I guess I’m a very good actor.” Coffee Guy smiles again, and now it seems he’s saying three things all at once. The words he’s speaking out loud, the ones he’s practicing from under the counter, and the unspoken ones his smile can’t help but say, which is You’re welcome.

After Starbucks, I get shot down at the Gap, the pressed juicery, a gluten-free vegan bakery, and Namaste Yoga. I am almost ready to give up hope when I notice a tiny bookstore called Book Out Below! tucked next to a designer kids’ clothing store. No help wanted sign, but still worth a shot.

Immediately, the smell of books greets me, and I feel at home. This is what my house in Chicago used to smell like: paper. I cross my fingers in my pocket and say a quick prayer as I make my way through the stacks to the desk in the back. Normally, I would take my time, run my hands along the spines, see if there’s anything that catches my eye to possibly borrow from the library later. But what I need right now is a job, not more reading material. As it is, even without any semblance of a social life, I’m up late every night trying to keep up with homework and PSAT studying. And though I desperately needed the caffeine today, I couldn’t even buy a Diet Coke from the stupid Wood Valley caf. (SN was right. The credit card machines have a ten-dollar minimum. I have $8.76 to my name. I was going to ask my dad for money this morning, but Rachel was there, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her reaching into her wallet and handing me a twenty.)

“Can I help you, dear?” the saleswoman asks me, and seeing her face makes me realize that since moving here, I haven’t seen a single person with wrinkles until now. The women in LA all have taut skin, the kind pumped full of injectables that render them ageless, just as believably forty as seventy. This woman, on the other hand, has bobbed gray hair and crisscrossed lines at her lips and wears the sort of linen tunic they sell in expensive hippie stores. She’s probably the same age as Rachel, though they could be different species. Where Rachel is hard, she’s soft.

“Hi, do you happen to be hiring?” I ask, and hear Scar in my head: Channel your inner goddess. Be confident, strong, undeniable. Scar’s favorite word is “undeniable,” actually, which tells you everything you need to know about her. My favorite word, on the other hand, is “waffle.” Both a delicious breakfast food and a verb.