We Own the Night Read online

  My face hardens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She opens her mouth to respond, but then waves her nail file at me. “Whatever.”

  I dump the bag of Snickers into the allotted bucket. This conversation is not going how I imagined. Better just suck it up and get this stupid thing over with so I can go mess up her Twizzlers again. “So our boss wants to meet you at the diner for lunch. Says he’s got something to discuss.”

  She snaps her head up, and her face suddenly brightens. “Ohmygod, my promotion!”

  I falter. “Pro-promotion?”

  “Isn’t that what I said? I asked him for one because I’ve been working here for like nine months and minimum wage is so god-awful. Who can live on seven dollars an hour?”

  She’s been working here nine months. I’ve been here for four years. The bullshit radar must be quite evident on my face, because she rolls her eyes.

  “You never ask, Ingrid. Did he say when to meet him?”

  “Lunch,” I reply, still reeling from the verbal slap. I never ask? “He asked for lunch.”

  “That’s perfect!"

  Even though I know she isn’t meeting Bossman for a raise, the possibility that she might get one while I’m stuck at seven dollars an hour, unable to afford Jason Dallas tickets . . .

  Not that anyone can afford those tickets. They’re ridiculous.

  But just to be in the same arena as him, listening to his songs, hearing them. They—those songs . . .

  “Did you hear me? I asked what time today.”

  “Lunch,” I repeat for the third time and leave to go find a bag of Skittles in the stockroom. I stock the shelves until lunch, trying not to think too much about anything. I never ask.

  Should I have to ask? For a job well done?

  Shouldn't they see it?

  Shouldn't they know?

  Heather actually says good-bye to me when she clocks out. I let her go for all of three seconds before I clock out right behind her (something we’re not supposed to do) and hang a sign on the store door saying we’ve stepped out for a moment (another thing we aren’t supposed to do) to follow her to the diner. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t spy? And then swoop in like the best friend in shining armor when she hands Micah his heart back, skewered and half-eaten.

  How should I play it though? The thoughtful friend? The I-told-you-so friend? The sympathetic one? The pessimist?

  Bless, all the choices!

  Through the diner window I watch her practically prance in like the show pony she is, immaculate teeth spread pearly white, and looks around for our boss. He’s kind of hard to miss. Big guy. Always wears plaid. And fur boots. Like a misplaced lumberjack with a sweet tooth. But he isn’t in the diner.

  Her face begins to fall as she figures out that I lied my ass off, and there is a grain of satisfaction in that. Sweet, sweet satisfaction—

  Until Micah stands from his booth and calls her over. She doesn’t move for a moment, but her friends aren’t there and she looks stupid just standing in the doorway. So she goes, and she sits across from him.

  And . . . and she smiles. She smiles because he’s smiling and he can’t stop himself. It’s a smile I know too well. Slightly crooked. Broad. Buck teeth. Dimpled. A scattering of freckles over his tanned cheeks. It’s the smile he wears just after he blows out his birthday candles, the moment he hears his favorite song, the seconds just after his 1972 Harley purrs to life. Pure, complete happiness—

  I tear myself away from the window, my nails biting into the palms of my hands so hard that when I finally release my fists there are indention marks in my skin.

  No—this is just a fluke.

  He’ll see. She’s a bad idea. Has it written all over her face. My chest begins to constrict with panic. Begins to ache like it did that night at the Barn.

  I force myself to walk back to the store. I grab a Snickers on the way back into the break room and sink down into one of the chairs. Shredding the wrapper open, I take a bite. The Snickers tastes like salt in a wound, like peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. What was that Charlie Brown saying?

  Something about unrequited love.

  I can’t remember.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Heather comes back from lunch, I excuse myself for the day, stating that I don't feel well. She's in such a good mood she doesn’t complain, and that makes me feel worse. I want to text LD, but I don't know what to say. How terrible was I in hoping Heather would reject Micah? What kind of friend does that? And what kind of friend am I to hate that it didn’t happen?

  I walk straight home, to the small blue vinyl house I’ve lived in my entire life. The white porch needs painting, and the swing’s chains are rusted, but it’s home. Just seeing it makes me feel a little better. I rush up the steps and go inside.

  “Grams, what do you want for dinner?” I call into the house, rolling up my shirtsleeves as I make my way into the kitchen.

  Grams doesn’t answer me.

  “Yoo-hoo?” I call again, and open the refrigerator to see what I can cook. There’s milk, eggs, lunch meat, and my three-day-old vomit-inducing attempt at making curry. I sigh. “Is pizza okay with you? I’m starving but I’m too lazy to do the dishes. Unless you did them. Did you do them . . . ? Grams . . . ?”

  Still, no answer.

  “Grams . . . ?” Closing the refrigerator door, I grab the phone to order a pizza from Steady Pizza (seriously, that’s the name). “You like pepperoni, right? Or is that just me?”

  When Grams still doesn’t answer, I figure she must be in the back room sleeping, but I go to check anyway.

  The door to the back room is open, and the light is on. I breathe out a sigh of relief, and knock on the door.

  “If you’re sleeping again, or ignoring me because you found that thong that I definitely don’t own . . .”

  Grams looks up from a photo album in her lap. She’s sitting on the guest bed—what used to be Mom’s room before she up and left. “Oh, darling, I didn’t hear you. How was work today?”

  “Stupid as always,” I reply, sitting down beside her. I look down at the old photo album. The pictures are yellowing and curled at the edges, most of them with some variation of a young woman who looks like Grams and a tall and handsome young man in an air force uniform. Grandpa. It’s really quite spectacular how they met. She was a farmer’s girl from Hemingway, South Carolina, whose best friend cajoled her into going to the air show a few hours away. She didn’t—doesn’t—care about airplanes. She hates to fly. But she went anyway, and she watched the airmen do all these crazy inverted loops and then went out for drinks with her friend. Her ears were ringing. She was tired. She wanted to go home.

  But then a man came up to her at the bar. He asked her for her name. Then he outstretched his hand for a dance, and despite the fact that she hated flying and airplanes and things that did three-hundred-sixty-degree loops, she fell in love with a fighter pilot.

  She takes out one of the photos with her weathered fingers like it’s a thin piece of glass and hands it to me.

  “I like that one the best,” she says, and her eyes glitter with adoration. Grandpa is striking a Samuel Adams pose, one leg hiked up on a keg, grinning the hell out of the picture. He’s on the edge of a cliff against the backdrop of which is China. He and Grams traveled when they were young. Wherever the air force stationed him, she went, and even after he got out of the military they traveled. There are so many knickknacks and trinkets from so many different times and places, I can’t keep track of where the hell everything’s from. When Grams got pregnant with my mom, though, they settled down in Grandpa’s hometown, and built this house. They were here to see the construction of the radio tower, the paving of Main Street, and everything else that came and went in Steadfast.

  I take the picture, smoothing out the curling edges. “Looks like you guys partied hard.”

  She throws her head back in a willowy laugh. I love her laughs. “That was in China. We camp
ed out on the ledge that night . . . you could see Beijing just over those hills . . .” Then she bends in closer and adds, “That was the night your mother was conceived.”

  I drop the picture like it’s hot coals. “Grams! I didn’t need to know that.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, darling! Everyone needs to know where they’re from.”

  “Except for me.” I pick the photo up off the ground and hand it back to her. I lean my cheek against her shoulder. She’s been so many places over her life, left her trail across the world like a connect-the-dots game. Grams is from everywhere, made up of all the places she’s been. And I am made up of Steadfast. Of her. “I love you. You’re my home.”

  She wraps her arm around me in a side hug, and kisses my forehead, like she always did when I was little and alone. I was alone a lot before Micah, Billie, and LD. It was just me and her. That was something Heather would never understand—what it’s like to be abandoned. Everyone loves her.

  Including Micah now.

  “Oh, darling, I love you, too.”

  We sit there for a long moment, and then she kisses my forehead one more time and sits up straight. She pats my knee. “Darling! So, how was work today?”

  I strain a smile over my lips, and this time I say in earnest, “It sucked.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next day Micah and Heather go on their first date. It's a pity date—it has to be. Heather has a heart somewhere in that undead carcass of hers that feels sorry for my best friend. But then the next day they go on a second date.

  Then a third.

  A fourth last night.

  All week he visits the store; she meets him at the diner for lunch, leaving Billie, LD, and I scrounging up extra change to pick up more of the chili-fry bill than normal. I hear them talking on Micah’s front porch in the evenings, and I see their silhouettes through the curtains in his bedroom window. I try not to stare too long.

  Because if I do I’ll begin to realize that Heather isn’t pitying Micah any more than I pity her. She looks at him like I’ve always done in secret, between the folds our friendship where something warm grew.

  I try to ignore Heather and Micah. I try to tell myself that it’s only a few dates. Only a few kisses. Only a few . . . other things.

  If Heather talks about him at work, I ignore it, diving into rag mags and music as if they can save my soul. Or at least bandage my heart so it’ll quit aching every time his name slips from her cherry ChapStick lips.

  On Saturday, she’s talking to her friend, Clarissa, about a drive-in movie she went to see with Micah last night—the drive-in has Friday double features. Two dumb romantic comedies Micah wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Or at least not until today.

  I guess I didn’t know my best friend as well as I thought I did.

  “So, after Love All Night there was an intermission, right? Before the second movie because it was like this double-feature thing. And he actually wanted a pretzel. I know, right? Like you never know what they fry those in or for how long,” she was saying as I came in and went straight to the back room, where I stashed my book bag in my locker and put on my apron.

  She’s at the front counter, so I decide to hang back near the foreign chocolates for a while, restickering them with new price tags.

  “I mean, yeah I ate it. Yes; with the preprocessed cheese. Ugh, I had to go for like a three-mile run after we got home just to get all that poison out of my body,” Heather went on.

  I want to tell her that Micah loves the nacho cheese, and that if she ever decides to share chili cheese fries with him, then order extra cheese because he’s a cheese demon, but I don’t. Because it’s something I know because I’m his best friend. She wouldn't listen to what I have to say anyway.

  As I listen to Heather tell—in detail—what happened before, during, and after the movie (and spoiler, very little of it involved actually watching the movie), I finish the German chocolates and move on to Japan. The cookie pandas. I open a box and eat one, sticking the new price tag on my forehead instead.

  That’s when the bell above the front door chimes. Heather instantly quiets down. That means it’s either the Bossman or—

  “Oh, Mike,” she says. “Hi.”

  My blood runs cold.

  “Hey girl,” he replies. “What’s up?”

  “Talking to Clarissa—she says you owe her like ten bucks for lunch last week,” she relays from her conversation over the phone. I peek around the end of the aisle as Heather hangs up and leans against the counter toward Mike. “So what’s the occasion? Come to relieve me of my boredom?”

  “Yeah, lunch?”

  “Uh, please.”

  “Without the cowboy,” he adds.

  “Mike—”

  “Seriously, ditch him.”

  “Let me grab my purse, and I'm not ditching him.”

  “What do you see in him anyway?”

  With a roll of her eyes, she begins back toward the break room—which I’m standing right in front of, as luck would have it. She finds me at the end of the aisle with an unamused expression. “What’re you looking at?” she snaps. “I’m taking my lunch. You have the front.”

  My head’s reeling, remembering what I said to Mike at the Barn. Does she want to send me to my doom? “I gotta, um, finish these stickers first—”

  “Hey, girl, how much do these little pop things cost?” Mike yells to Heather from the front of the store.

  She gives me an impatient look. “Well? I'm off the clock.”

  “But—”

  She slams the door to the break room. Mike calls her again. I grip the price tag gun tighter. It’s just a customer, I have to repeat to myself. It's just a customer who wants to know how much the Baby Bottle Pops cost. Neanderthal.

  I turn toward the front and, steeling my loins, march to the counter.

  “How do you get the powder to stick—shit, you.” He gives a start when he notices me at the register. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I work here,” I intone.

  “That your price at auction?” He motions to the sticker still stuck to my forehead. I’d forgotten I stuck it there and embarrassingly peel it off.

  “Are you here to buy something, Mike?” I ask, trying to keep myself civil. Bossman has cameras set up on the register (but nowhere else in the store, surprisingly enough) so for all I know he could be monitoring me right now. And I really don’t want to lose this job. It’s all I have, as pathetic as that sounds. “Lollipops? A heart?”

  “Ooh, aren’t you snarky,” he comments, putting the Baby Bottle Pop back. “You had some balls at the Barn. Tell me, which one of you’s the man in the relationship?”

  I breathe out through my nose. Calm. Peace. Try to imagine myself somewhere else—anywhere else. On a safari, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, walking the streets of London, standing in Times Square in New York City—

  If I could be anywhere right now, just wish myself to some other place, it’d be there. Surrounded by people, blending in, never being seen, never being noticed. Wouldn’t it be heaven, to be somewhere and have no one care you’re there.

  “Would you like to buy anything?” I ask again, forcing the words out between my clenched teeth.

  He grins and takes a jar of gumdrops from the end shelf and holds it up. “How much does this cost?”

  “Seven dollars and eighty-f—”

  He drops it, and the jar shatters on the ground. Gumdrops go rolling everywhere. “Oh, whoops.”

  “Seriously?” I snap before I can bite my tongue. “What’ve I done to piss you off?”

  “What’ve you done?” he echoes.

  I swallow. Oh, Bless, what have I gotten myself into? He stalks to the counter, and I instinctively stand up a little straighter. Is it too late to retract my statement?

  “What have you done?” he repeats again, leaning over the counter to me. He smells like Axe body spray—the douchey kind.

  “Yeah, Mike,” I find myself sayin
g, “what have I done?”

  “Nothing,” he responds and grins. “You’ve done nothing, Iggy North. That’s what’s so pathetic about you. Following around in Bleaker’s shadow, but guess what? Bleaker isn’t here right now. So you’re nothing, like that stupid girly friend of yours, and you’ll always be nothing.”

  I can see my own reflection in his green eyes. And that’s scary—seeing yourself reflected in glass marbles. I see how small I am, and realize how easy it is for him to call me nothing. Am I nothing? Is that how everyone in this town sees me? Me and LD? In Billie’s shadow? I fist my hands, nails cutting into my palms, torn between punching the smug look off his face and hiding myself underneath the table, but all I can do is stare at him, trapped between mortification and the sinking feeling that . . . that he’s right.

  I am nothing.

  His grin only grows wider because the look on my face is telling. We both know he’s right, and he loves it. “And you—”

  “What broke?” Heather’s voice cuts in, coming back from the break room with her purse slung over her shoulder. She looks down at the shattered jar of gumdrops, then at us. When neither of us say anything, she adds impatiently, “Um, hello?”

  I snap out of it. “I’ll clean it up,” I say, tearing myself away from the counter to go retrieve the broom and dustpan from the break room.

  I hear Heather ask Mike, “What happened?”

  “Dunno. It just fell. Lunch?”

  “Yeah, Micah’s meeting us—”

  “Jesus, again? Get rid of that oil stain, girl,” he says before the door closes behind them and the bell rings, echoing in the empty candy shop. I don’t even get the broom and dustpan out of the break room before I catch my reflection in the mirror—the white uniform that makes me look outrageously marshmallow, the white-blonde hair, the forgettable face—nothing.

  I’m looking at nothing.

  RADIO NITEOWL

  SHOW #159

  JUNE 18th

  DARK AND BROODING: I have a question for you, Niteowl.

  NITEOWL: Why am I even agreeing to this? Fine. Shoot.