Authors: Cherry Cheva
“So why don’t we just shut down while you’re gone, and then you won’t have to worry about it?” I asked as I sorted silverware behind the bar. A little vacation sounded pretty damn good to me.
“We cannot afford to give up five days of revenue,” my mom snapped. “It is too bad, actually,” she added in a gentler tone. “It would be nice for you to see a real Thai engagement party and wedding, but with school for you and Nat . . .”
“We could go if we flew,” I suggested.
“We cannot afford that either,” my mom sighed. She then launched into what was to become a full evening of making sure that my head contained all the necessary knowledge for keeping a restaurant afloat, including the avoidance of burning, flooding, explosion, implosion, and disintegration. I was setting up the table candles when she started with the trivia questions.
“What’s item N4?” she asked, staring at me expectantly. I don’t know why she bothered; I’ve had the entire menu memorized since I was six.
“Drunken Noodles,” I answered.
She looked pleased that I’d answered so quickly. “Which of the soups can be made vegan?”
“Only the Gang Jeud Woon Sen,” I said.
“What do you do if somebody complains that their meal is not good?”
“Apologize and offer them some free green tea ice cream.”
“Wrong!” she exclaimed. “You
smile
and apologize and offer them ice cream!”
“Okay, Mom.”
“But only if they look like they might come back. If not, they can go to hell.”
“
Okay
, Mom.”
Satisfied for the time being, she went back to the kitchen to continue her last minute supply check. I looked around. The dining room was still empty and it was already six thirty. I crossed my fingers for an easy evening.
“Hey,” Nat whispered, appearing at my shoulder from out of nowhere. “When Mom and Dad are gone, can I drive?”
My parents barely let
me
drive. When they took me to get my license on my sixteenth birthday, they promptly told me that I could only use the car in dire emergencies, like if both of them suddenly got all their limbs amputated. “Not blind, though. If we go blind, we still drive. You just direct us where to go.”
“Yeah, you can drive,” I told Nat.
His eyes lit up. “Sweet!” He gleefully punched the air in front of his face.
“Although I guess I should ride with you.” He only had his learner’s permit and was supposed to drive with a parent in the car for it not to be illegal, so we’d be breaking some laws anyway.
“Sucks!” he said.
I shrugged. “Better than nothing.” He had to agree with that.
Finally, a few customers came in, and I took the ponytail elastic off my wrist and put my hair up as my mom sat them in my section. A few other groups followed during the next hour or so, but they were small—twos and threes—and nicely spaced out, so we never got the usual mid-evening rush. It was my easiest night of work in months, actually . . . or it was until Camden King and three of his friends walked through the door.
I stopped dead—I’d been on the way over with a water pitcher—turned around, and kneeled behind the bar, peeking out just in time to see Camden and his pals plunk themselves down at a table in my section before my mom even got a chance to seat them there. After a minute, Nat wandered by, and I reached out and tugged on his pant leg. He looked down at me.
“Dude, what the—?”
“Shhh,” I hissed.
“What are you doing on the floor?”
“See those guys over there? They’re from school.”
I watched as Nat took a look around the dining room. “Who?”
“They’re my year,” I said. “It’s Camden King and some other guys.”
Nat heard the name and spotted them at the exact same moment, and he recoiled. “Lemme guess. You want me to switch with you? No freakin’ way.”
“Please?” I begged. “It’s less embarrassing for you. You’ve never talked to him before.”
“What, like you have?” Nat asked.
“Yeah, I was tutoring him in Algebra earlier today, so—”
“So you know him. Good for you. Go deal. Besides, didn’t you used to like that one guy?”
I peeked out over the bar and saw Camden’s friend Derek Rowe, who was admittedly kind of rocking his slightly too small vintage tee. “That was the fifth grade!” I said defensively. “Plus, I stopped as soon as I found out he was beating you up every day for no rea—Oooh, that’s why you don’t want to switch with me.”
“Exactly.” Nat yanked me up from the floor and shoved me out in front of the bar, and I slowly started making my way toward the Table of Doom. Besides Camden and Derek, there were two lacrosse guys, Brad Slater and Dave Markley, which meant that the combined I.Q. of the table was probably . . . four.
“Hello!” I said as cheerfully as I could muster. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mom watching me.
“Oh,” Camden said, surprised. “It’s you.” He tilted his chair back for a moment to look at me, then let it settle back onto the floor.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. I wanted to add, “And now I will be kicking your sorry butts out,” but that would’ve been shoddy waitressing.
“Dude, you know her?” Brad asked. He inspected me from under his hoodie, then slid the hood off of his head and inspected me from out in the open.
“I guess, as of this afternoon,” Camden said, reaching lazily across the table toward the little metal stand that contained a Singha ad on one side and our recent menu additions on the other. He looked at the Singha side and suddenly perked up. “Hey, can you serve us beer?”
The other guys snickered. I smiled politely. “No.”
“Even if we have ID?” Dave asked with a smirk. He reached into his pocket and started pulling out his wallet.
“Well, here’s the thing,” I said. I could see my mom frowning as she arranged a pile of menus on the counter into a neat stack, and I knew I had about five seconds before she started barking at me not to leave my other tables hanging. “If you show me your fake IDs, I’m supposed to confiscate them. So you’re probably better off just ordering a Coke or something.”
“Aw, come on,” wheedled Camden. “Can’t you do us a favor?”
“Camden,” I said flatly, “why on earth would you think that I’d
ever
want to do
you
a favor?”
A chorus of “ooohs” and muffled snickers emanated from his friends. “Wow,” Dave said. “She’s like, sassy.”
“For now,” Camden said, and looked up at me. “But you’re here to service us, aren’t you?” He high-fived Brad, and I forced a smile.
“Yes, that’s what I’m here for. Service.” I struggled to keep smiling, knowing my mom was watching me intently. “How about I give you a few minutes to decide what you want, and I’ll come back?”
I practically sprinted away from them as my mom accosted me at the end of the bar. “Why are you chitchatting with boys when there are other customers who need your help?” she asked. Her tone of voice was so innocent that it basically veered right back around into sounding suspicious.
“Sorry, Mom,” I said. “Those guys go to my school, and I was just—”
“Don’t forget there are other tables.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “Okay. But remember, you cannot let this place get out of control, especially when we are gone.” She shot me a half warning, half sympathetic glance, and then turned on a dime to smile brilliantly at a customer who had come in to pick up his takeout order. I went behind the bar, where Nat was putting a sprig of mint into a glass of lime soda, and smacked him on the head with a menu.
“That’s professional,” he said dryly. He grabbed the menu out of my hand.
“Shut up,” I said. “The next hour—or however long it takes those guys to eat—is gonna be hell for me, and if you think I’m not going to take it out on my little brother, you’re stupider than
they
look.”
I braced myself for the nightmare of taking the guys’ orders and returned to their table, where I was greeted by the sight of Derek and Brad shooting spitballs at each other. I cleared my throat. “Ready to order?”
“Absolutely, serving wench,” Dave said. He was still wearing his letter jacket, even though his face was slightly pink, and he kept tugging at the collar of the sweatshirt he was wearing underneath.
“Oh, dude,” Derek said. “Serving wench! That’s hilarious, man.” He was talking really loudly, and our other customers were beginning to glance over at their table. If this kept up, it was going to progress to extended hostile stares, and then to complaining to management. My mom seemed to sense this and waved me over.
“Yeah?” I asked her. “I was just about to take their order.”
“Your friends are disturbing other customers,” she pointed out flatly.
“They’re not my friends, and I know,” I said. “I’m trying to make them stop.”
“Try harder.”
Sigh
. I went back over, bracing myself for another round of “Hey, serving wench!” or worse.
“So,” Camden asked conversationally, “do you ever get naked and let people eat sushi off of your body?”
“Sushi, Japanese. This restaurant, Thai,” I said, taking out a pen. “Are you and the Three Muske
queers
ready to order?”
Camden raised an eyebrow and choked back a laugh as the other guys glared, but they managed to fire off a list of seven dishes and three appetizers, in between discreet swigs of the flask they kept “hidden” under the table.
“Thanks,” I said, putting my pen back in my pocket. “I’ll get that started for you, and is there anything else I can get you?”
Dave purposefully knocked over his water glass. “Yeah. Can I get some more water?”
I watched as the water cascaded across the table, drenched a menu, then spilled onto the floor, soaking rapidly into the carpet. Derek and Brad, who were in the water’s path, scooched their chairs back so quickly that they jostled the people at the next table.
“Sorry,” they both said, laughing. The people gave them dirty looks, and then turned the looks toward me, too. Way to shoot the non-messenger.
“Let me get something to clean that up, and I’ll be right back with more water,” I said through gritted teeth. I grabbed a few napkins off an empty table and threw them over the puddle to try and stem the tide. As I walked away, I could still hear them yelling.
“Thanks, serving wench!” Dave said in a singsong voice.
“You should smile more, wench!” Brad echoed.
“Yeah, or else we might have to stiff you on the tip!” Derek called.
“Dude, did you just say
stiff
?” Dave asked.
“Or we might have to drop a negative comment in your suggestion box!” Derek added.
“Did you just say suggestion box?”
“I bet her box loves suggestions,” Brad snickered. More high fives all around. For Chrissakes. I cleaned up the spill, refilled everyone’s water, and assured my mom, who was now looking genuinely worried instead of just irritated, that I had the situation under control.
Until Derek grabbed a menu, ripped out a page, rolled it up, and put the end into one of the table candles to make a torch.
Oh,
hell
no.
I ran over and reached out to grab the now flaming page, but Camden’s hand got there first. He yanked the burning paper out of the candle and dunked it in Derek’s water glass.
“Hey, what the—I was drinking that!” Derek shoved Camden’s shoulder.
“You still can,” Camden pointed out calmly. He jerked his head toward the cash register, indicating my mom, who had her hand threateningly poised over the phone. “Quit being a jerk.”
Derek paused, visibly straining to think of something clever to say. He eventually came out with the always reliable “Screw you, man!”
Camden ignored him and handed me the mutilated menu. “Sorry about that,” he said, looking up at me. He must’ve seen the stricken look on my face because he added, “Uh, can I pay for it or something?”
“It’s pretty much just made of paper,” I said, inhaling deeply to try and calm down. I started walking toward the bar so I could throw the menu in the trash.
“You sure?” Camden called. He got up and followed me.
“It’s fine, whatever. Forget it,” I said, my panic dissipating now that the restaurant no longer appeared to be in danger of burning down. “We have extras.” I chucked the sodden, blackened mass of former menu in the garbage. “If you really want to do me a favor, go sit down and get your stupid friends to chill.”
Camden studied me for a second. “Okay,” he said. And the next time I looked over, they’d stopped.
Huh
.
“I might be crazy,” I said to Nat as I went back to the kitchen to put in their orders, “but I think Camden was being marginally less of a jerk than his friends were just now.”
“Really?” Nat said. “Didn’t know that was possible.”
“Yeah. And I was gonna spit in his food, but now I’m thinking I shouldn’t.” I paused to ponder it—it’s not something I’ve ever actually done—as I stuck their order slip into the metal rack above the prep table. “Eh, I can still spit in Derek’s.”
Nat grinned and theatrically cleared his throat. “Holler when it’s ready, because I want to help.”
And that was the last I ever saw of Camden King.
Well, until the next day, when he hunted me down at my locker after school. The hallway was crowded with people rushing to catch the bus, and I got jostled several times as I finished packing my grungy backpack that I’ve had since like, fourth grade. I slammed my locker door and practically had a heart attack when I saw Camden on the other side of it.
“Hi,” he said. He was wearing a brightly striped polo shirt under a gray fleece, and was standing so close to me that all I could see was alternating orange and blue.
“’Bye,” I answered, as I scooched away and attempted to walk past him. He blocked my dramatic exit by stepping into my path, causing me to sort of run into him and bounce off his chest. Graceful.
“Sorry again about last night,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at me, stepping a little bit closer as someone came barreling down the hallway with a library cart full of books.