Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
He’s just as doomed to be a prick for the rest of his life, same as I’m doomed to never catch more than an hour’s sleep a night. I am a walking, talking example of every damned thing the kids at Spruce High should never aspire to be. And he’s a walking, talking example that some lucky people are given everything in life. Good looks. Successful careers. Promise and fortune and every damned thing they desire. And nothing changes.
God, I wish I could fucking sleep.
Just an hour would do.
Hell, I’d settle for half of one.
“Just close your eyes and picture yourself on a raft counting stars,” says Juni suddenly, reading my mind. “I’ll set a timer on my phone for six o’clock so you wake up in time for your shift. If I can find my phone,” she then adds, fishing for it off the mess on the coffee table, tossing things left and right. I lean back with my head cradled in Juni’s horny Roger cat pillow. All the while, the people keep being idiots on TV. Eventually Juni gets up from the couch to hunt for her phone around the whole place, for some reason still wearing her pumps. I listen to their loud, clumsy thumping with her every footstep while my eyes are shut. I’m on a raft. Counting stars. And not a single fucking wink of sleep finds me.
I wish I knew that guy’s name.
If I bottled up my manager’s sighs of disappointment, they’d power a windmill. “I swear I thought the alarm was set for six,” I start, “but it must’ve been AM and not—”
“You and your excuses,” the manager drones, a woman in her seventies who looks in her forties, athletic, slender, hair dyed a strawberry-blonde color, tall and authoritative. “Anthony, you are on thinner-than-thin ice with me.”
I put on my charm. It always works. “Can’t be blamed for thin ice in this record heat. Isn’t that a tad unfair?” I give her my best smile. “I’ll work hard tonight and remind you why you hired me.”
“A lapse in judgment is why,” she fires back dryly, “and ‘cause I owed one to your sweet dad for dealin’ with a pesky ant problem in my garden. Also for givin’ my dead car a jump on the Strongs’ driveway last Fourth a’ July. Good man.” She lowers her clipboard to the break room table and eyes me over her readers. “A single slip-up, one more, and we’re callin’ this social experiment quits.”
“What happened to three strikes and I’m out?”
“You’re already on strike nine. I’m bein’ generous.”
“You used to be nicer to me,” I tease her, grabbing an apron.
“Sometimes you forget I’m the Gran in Gran’s Home Kitchen. I don’t need to be nice. I just need to be here.” She rights her readers and lifts her clipboard. “Go clock in, and—are you even in the right shoes?—grab yourself an order pad. Walt’s barfin’ in the bathroom and I need someone to take his table.”
I stop tying my apron. “You need what now?”
“Believe it, kid, you ain’t my first choice, either. Short-staffed tonight. Busy.” She takes a look at my frozen face. “Oh, snap out of it, you know how to do the job. Just greet ‘em, find out what they want, and bring the order to the kitchen, simple as that.”
“I know what to do,” I insist, reach for a pad and pen off the small desk by the door, fumble, drop the pen, pick it up, then stuff both into my apron. “You can count on me, Gran.”
“Table 8.” She leaves the break room.
I trip over a cable running along the floor on my way to the employee terminal, nearly crashing my face into the wall next to it. Someone taking his break stifles laughter nearby. “Lick a dick, Larry,” I grumble, which only causes him to laugh even harder as I clock in.
Table 8, I think over and over after leaving the break room, as I take quick breaths and get ready to take an order. I sure hope this table’s an easy one. If I get one of those fussy Sunday night people, I don’t know if I got the strength in me to deal with it. Table 8, table 8, table 8. I pull my order pad right back out of my apron and start drumming my fingers on it as I push through the swinging door into the main restaurant. Loud conversation blasts over my face the second I’m in the room. Exploding laughter. The tinkling and scraping of utensils. Just greet them, find out what they want, and take their order to the kitchen. It’s the easiest thing. I’ve watched others do it a hundred times.
It’s halfway down the aisle between tables 10 and 12 that my exhausted ass comes to a stop.