All the Rage(43)

“You’re going to the search party on Monday?” Holly asks while I put on my apron. She fans her overheated face with her hands.

“How’d you know?”

“I’m picking up your shift.”

“Thanks.”

“Money for me.” She shrugs. “You think you’re going to find anything?”

My fingers fumble with the apron strings and I have to start the bow over. I fight with the question because I’ve barely thought about the searching, let alone any finding. It doesn’t really matter if I think we will but …

“We have to,” I say.

The night floats by, I float through it, trying to keep my head clear, trying not to think about things like Brock and GHB because I don’t want to think about it. I can’t.

I can’t think about it.

Leon not being here makes that hard.

I do a quick check on the pain-in-the-ass family I’ve been looking after for most of my shift. They’re on their way to something they think I should care about but they’re running late and it’s my fault. Their twin boy toddlers smile at me, making grabby hands at everything they can hold. Their parents don’t smile. They scowl when it takes me five minutes to bring out their drinks, even though it took them over twenty minutes to order them in the first place. The food doesn’t get cooked fast enough for their liking. When I clear their table and get the bill, they write MEAL TIME SENSITIVE, SERVICE TOO SLOW—NO AC!!!!!! on the tip line.

After they leave, the air conditioner rattles on. I turn my back on the diner a minute, enjoying the cool of it, and when I face the room again there’s someone familiar in one of my booths.

Caro.

“Third trimester sucks,” she declares when I reach her. Her hand rests on her stomach and I wonder why pregnant women do that. If it’s out of instinct. Or if it’s out of awe. If it’s out of some need for assurance that the baby is still there. Or maybe they do it because they think they’re supposed to. She smiles at me in the same nice way she did at her place and it puts that night in my head. I feel instantly stupid about it, as if it was happening all over again right now.

“What brings you here?” I ask.

“I used to come in all the time when I was in high school. Sit in a corner booth and be by myself. I got nostalgic.”

“Leon’s not here today.”

“I know. He’s not why I came,” she says. “I’m hungry.”

I take her order, a burger with extra cheese and bacon and caramelized onions on a toasted bun with a side order of fries. She wants to wash it down with a glass of ice covered in a splash of Coke and asks, “Is the air-conditioning on? I’m going to boil my baby.”

“It’s been on and off all day,” I say. “But it’s on now. I can make your order to go, if it’s going to be a problem for you and the…”

“It was a joke, Romy,” she says. “Except I can’t believe Tracey still hasn’t gotten around to fixing it. It’s been broken since I was in high school too.”

“Oh.” I am so awkward.

Her expression turns serious. “Leon said you knew the missing girl, Penny Young. How are you doing?”

There’s so much in everything she’s just said, I don’t know where to start. If Leon told Caro about it—that means they were talking about me. It’s so hard for me to wrap my head around that, them, together, talking about me, like I’m something worth talking about. It flusters me enough to say, “I’m fine. Are you?” Because I guess I’m destined to be stupid around Caro.

She gives me a puzzled look. “Yeah, besides starving.”

“Right.” I walk to the kitchen, my face burning. I put the order in and get the Coke, filling it with as much ice as the glass will hold and by the time I’ve walked it back out to her, she’s playing with her phone and I have another table waiting on me.

“I’ll be back out with your order soon,” I say.

“Thanks, Romy.” She glances out the window at the parched parking lot full of cars and a few semis. The heat turns the air above the pavement all wavy. “It needs to rain.”

“It’s never going to rain.”


She smiles but there’s something off about it. I don’t know Caro, not really, but when someone comes at you the way she did when I first met her, you can see when the spark has dulled, even a little. I look after my other table, then I go back to the kitchen and wait for her order. When I bring it out, I tell her to let me know if she needs anything else.

“I will,” she says.

She doesn’t touch her food, for someone who’s supposedly starving. Two girls come in from a run, panting and ravenous and I look after them. By the time they’re halfway through their meal, Caro still hasn’t eaten a bite of hers. She keeps picking up her phone and putting it back down. When I check on her, she sets the phone down quickly, like she’s done something wrong.

“Is the meal okay? You haven’t touched it…”

“What?” She looks at the food and it’s all so unappetizingly room temperature now. She picks up the burger and ventures a bite but that’s all she can manage. She pushes the plate away. “What a waste.”

“I can reheat it. Or I can pack it up and you could reheat it at home.”