Jessica Martinez - The Vow

A horn blares behind me, two long, nasal beeps—my horn—and I turn around to see Mo leaning over the driver’s seat. He’s motioning for me to come back.

I scramble back down the steps.

“Weren’t you just yelling at me to get in there?” I ask, pretending to be annoyed.

“I forgot to tell you don’t be nervous,” he says. “You clam up and get all shifty-eyed when you’re nervous. It’s weird. You need to be, you know, bubbly.”

I nod. “Bubbly.”

“And for the record, I still don’t think this is a good idea. At all.”

“Let the record reflect that Mo thinks this is a bad idea.”

“Right. So good luck. I should have said that before.”

“Thanks.” I pause, bite my lip, wait for the flock of dive-bombing birds in my stomach to settle. They don’t. Mo’s right. This is a really bad idea. The nerves are a premonition, the universe’s way of warning me that I have no business trying to slip into Lena’s life. It’s been empty for eight years.

“Okay, go,” he says abruptly.

I push away from the car with both hands and spin around. I can feel Mo’s eyes on my back, forcing me up the steps.

This moment, this is why I love Mo, why he’s my best friend and always will be. He’s only nice when I need him to be. He doesn’t treat me like a china doll teetering on the edge of a shelf, just waiting to be knocked over by a puff of air. He doesn’t think I’ll hit the ground and explode into a thousand pieces.

He’s the only one.

Mo

I can’t be the only one. There have to be other people out there who see the Mr. Twister mascot for what he is: Hitler. A grinning, cartoon, twisty-cone version of the Führer himself, advertising to the world that this place is secretly Nazi central. There is no other logical reason to put one of those little black smudge mustaches on a custard mascot.

Of course, I’ve got Annie in my head—Chill out, Mo. It’s obviously supposed to be Charlie Chaplin—so fine, where’s the cane? And the hat? Exactly. Hitler.

This truck is an oven. I am pot roast.

I’d go in, but I’m already throwing up a little in my mouth just thinking about the assault of peachy-ness behind those doors. Peach walls, peach aprons, peach countertops, peach chalk on the blackboard menu. And of course, Annie is in there smiling and faking brain-dead. I’m better off as pot roast, and besides, the Spanish Inquisition isn’t going to learn itself.

I turn back to the previous page, the one that I’ve already read and forgotten three times this hour, and start over. The picture of Ferdinand II of Aragon is freakishly distracting. It’s the way he’s glaring. I close my right eye and glare back at him and his unapologetic scowl. I bet nobody told him to quit being cranky.

Laughter erupts from the porch and I look up.

She’s going to hate working here. The clientele is sprawled all over the veranda and grass, mostly kids from school, plus a few of the Saint James snots and some vaguely familiar faces from Bardstown. It’s a typical mix for this side of E-town: some privileged, some middle-class, some trailer park, all white.

Everyone is pretending that finals are already over, even though a good chunk of them have more exams tomorrow. But why study when you could be celebrating the near-completion of another substandard academic year? And why not be patriotic at the same time? Some girl I recognize from basketball games in Taylorsville is wearing an American flag bikini top. And right in front of the truck, that douchebag Chase Dunkirk is licking custard off Tia Kent’s palm, while Maya is five feet away.

Maya Lawless. I mouth her name, imaging what it would feel like to say it to her and have her turn her head and smile with those full lips. Lucky for Chase, she’s too busy doing some kind of cheerleading routine to notice that he’s licking sugar off someone else. Go team.

This. This is why Annie working here is such a bad idea. She’s better than all of this. She sees through it, like I do, and she’s going to be miserable in one of those frilly aprons, listening to bubble-gum pop, counting change for morons all day.

And at some point she’s going to realize Lena isn’t in there.

I’m not an idiot. I know that’s why Annie wants this job, and I don’t like it. It seems dangerous, thinking her sister’s essence is waiting to be unearthed in a bucket of Mr. Twister’s world-famous Strawberry Storm, but I can’t stop her. Or maybe I could if I wanted to, but I don’t want to stop her. People are always stopping her.

If she didn’t want the job so badly, and in that quiet, intense way she has where every cell in her body leans toward an idea, I’d have already talked her out of it, but she’s like an iron shaving being pulled by a magnet on the other side of the screen.

“Chase?” Maya’s voice from clear across the lawn pulls me from my thoughts.

I look up.

“What’s going on?” she asks, genuine confusion on her beautiful face. Cheer-fest over. She’s got her hands on her hips and those movie-star lips in a pout as she closes the distance between her and Tia with long bare-legged strides. Chick fight. I shut the textbook. Ferdinand can wait.

“Nothing, baby.” Douchebag has already taken several steps away from Tia and is pulling Maya to him, expertly spinning her around and away from Tia. “Should we go get you some custard?” he asks, and of course Maya follows, instantly tranquilized.

She deserves better. Also, a little hair pulling would’ve made this scene a lot less lame.

Honesty moment: Mr. Twister’s probably isn’t a white-supremacy hub. Despite the Hitler vibe I’m still getting from the mascot, I doubt anyone who hangs out at this place is capable of feeling strongly about anything more substantial than, I don’t know, The Bachelor.

Music, something twangy and grating, starts up from a few cars down, and several girls on the lawn start singing along. Then several more. Soon every girl on the lawn is belting lyrics about dying young and being buried in satin, like one big redneck choir. I’m considering trying to start the truck with my bike-lock key so I can roll up the windows, when a Frisbee collides with the windshield. It’s like a thousand volts straight to my heart. The clatter echoes in my ears, and after an eternity in that frozen state of shock, my heart resumes beating.

I look up to see who threw it, then reach my arm out the window and give a choice gesture to the deserving recipient. It’s just Bryce.

“What are you doing in there?” he calls, jogging over to retrieve the Frisbee. “Aren’t you dying?”

“Studying, and yes.”

“Sometimes I really wish I could beat the crap out of you, you know? It’s not right to be such a loser and not get punished. Put the books down and get out here.”

“I’ve gotta read this. Remember reading? The thing with the letters and the words?”

“Yeah, I remember,” he says with a grin. “Your mom’s been tutoring me. She’s incredible, by the way.”

Ah, yes. Bryce’s your mom shtick—not classy but comfortable. Like old sweatpants. Like Red Lobster. Like South Park reruns. I’d tell him how lame it is, but I’d hate to neuter his personality completely.

Plus, Bryce and I have a little something I call court synergy that can’t be screwed with. He’s Crick to my Watson, Jerry to my Ben, Diddy to my Donkey Kong. It’s this melding of rhythm and flow and intuition that I barely understand. We would have taken State this year if it weren’t for a team of seven-foot ’roid-ragers from Louisville.

All of this, as he said, is why he doesn’t beat the crap out of me and why I put up with a friend who is a barely functionally literate. That’s the beauty of basketball. I don’t know why it’s not being used to resolve global unrest.

Just the thought of pebbled leather under my fingertips pulls my muscles tight, and I force my eyes back down to Ferdinand. I won’t be benched by the venerable Dr. Hussein for one single A-minus.

“Come on, man,” Bryce says. “You gotta be roasting.”

“I’ve gotta be roasting?” Bryce’s skin is pink and glistening. Another ten minutes in the sun and he’ll be a walking blister. “I can practically hear your skin sizzling.”

“I’m fine.”

“You smell like bacon.”

“Where’s your girlfriend?” he asks.

“No clue. Probably back at your house, making your dad’s dinner.”

It takes him a second; then he grins appreciatively. “Your other girlfriend.”

Annie is not my girlfriend, and she never will be. Bryce knows this, I know this, and Annie knows this. As for the rest of the world, they’re all idiots. It’s not one of those faux-platonic friendships where one person is secretly obsessed with the other one. And it’s not one of those things where hanging out is peppered with random make-out sessions and periods of hating each other. We just are what we are.

Annie isn’t ugly. And over the years there’ve been a string of guys, mostly jerks, intrigued enough to pursue, date, and get dumped by her. But that waify, translucent-skinned thing doesn’t do it for me. I need a girl with something to hold on to. A girl with sway in her hips. Like maybe a certain cheerleader who’s temporarily distracted by a passing douchebag, but who will come to her senses any day now. For example.

The only sway Annie’s got is accidental. I love her and all, but she walks like a double-jointed robot, and she’s so skinny a gust of wind could level her.

Besides, if Annie and I ever got together like that, the inevitable breakup would kill us.

“Fine,” Bryce says. “Where is that chick you’re always with who isn’t your girlfriend?”