“You don’t like it?”
She rolls her eyes. She actually rolls her eyes. “Loving ‘Hallelujah’ is such a cliché.”
I rip the next price sticker from the machine, but when she reaches up for it, I don’t hand it down to her. She wiggles her fingers, but when I still don’t hand her the sticker, she sighs and drops her hand.
“You dare blaspheme the work of Leonard Cohen?”
She shrugs. “Isn’t ‘Hallelujah’ everyone’s favorite song? It’s so unoriginal.”
I scoff at her. “No. That’s the problem. It should be everyone’s favorite song.”
Her eyes settle straight ahead on the hold shelf. “It’s so repetitive.”
“That’s where the beauty is, Amy.”
She blinks at me, and I think maybe it’s because I called her by her name. I can’t remember ever having done that before. “That’s where the flaw is,” she finally says.
She looks up at me, and I look down at her, and I feel a weird warmth flood into my stomach. I hand her the sticker. I’m watching her peel it off my index finger when I hear someone call my name. I recognize Mom’s voice before I even look up, but a part of me hopes it isn’t really her. Maybe just someone who sounds exactly like her.
But when I turn to look over my shoulder, I see her rushing through the shop, cutting through the line that’s forming at the register, and making her way toward me in her blue scrubs. She smiles big, her brown curly hair flowing behind her as she comes over.
“Hi, sweetie,” she says when she gets to me. She puts a brown paper sack down on the counter between us. “You forgot your dinner, and I didn’t want you to get hungry.” She smiles so big. Mom has impressively large gums, which in turn make her seem like she has big teeth, which in turn gives her the biggest smile you’ve ever seen.
I don’t look down at Amy to see if she’s looking at Mom. Of course, she is. I think everyone is looking at Mom, and she’s not even wearing weird shoes, just her orthopedic ones.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say quietly, taking my brown paper sack, which just has a peanut butter sandwich and a baggie full of sliced apples.
Mom opens her mouth to say something, but then her eyes travel over my shoulder, and I can only assume that Amy has stood up. “Oh,” Mom squeaks. “Hello. Are you new?” Her eyes shoot back to me, and then she gives that giant smile again.
“I’m Amy,” Amy says, stepping up to the counter. “I started a few weeks ago.”
Mom’s smile gets bigger, if that’s even possible. “Well, Amy, it’s wonderful to meet you.” Her eyes shoot back to me, and her smile loses some of its excellence. “Honey, I have to get to work, but I just wanted to make sure you got your application for MBU in? Because the deadline is coming up quick. Remember I told you that you needed to go ahead and get it in before the weekend. Don’t wait until the last minute.”
I can feel Amy’s eyes boring into me, can feel my skin going red the way it does when I’m even slightly compromised, can feel the lie rising up in my throat. “Yeah, Mom. I sent it this morning.”
Mom’s smile is blinding. “Oh good. Awesome. Well, I’m working until six. Call me if there’s an emergency.” Mom sends Amy a little wave. “Nice to meet you, Amy. Love you, Oli.”
I wait until Mom is firmly on the sidewalk before turning back to the computer. I don’t look at Amy, but I can feel her beside me. I can feel her eyes. She doesn’t take her seat again, but instead, presses her hip into the counter and looks up at me.
“You’re applying to Missouri Baptist?”
I shrug. That’s as good as an answer, right? She already knew I was touring the campus, thanks to Brooke and her big mouth.
“My boyfriend’s older brother goes there. Maybe you guys would get along.”
I keep my fingers moving on the keyboard, make sure I don’t give away that that word, boyfriend, makes my stomach feel twisty. God, what the hell do I even care if she has a boyfriend or not? It’s not like I didn’t see them together.
She sits back down at my feet, and once she’s settled, she smiles up at me.
It’s not like I like her or anything.
I clear my throat. “Where’s your boyfriend going, if you’re going to Stanford?”
She doesn’t reply for the amount of time it takes to scan three records into the system, and when I look down at her, she’s staring straight ahead, looking a little dazed.
“Amy?”
She jerks and looks up at me, her eyes glassy. “Yeah? Oh, um. He hasn’t decided yet.” She tilts her head back until it’s resting against the wood of the shelf behind her. “Who knows, maybe he’ll go to Missouri Baptist, and the two of you will be friends.”
Over my dead body.
AMY
I CRIED ALL the way to work, but it doesn’t really hit me until I get home. Almost everyone is already in bed, and the house is completely silent, which means that even though I can feel everything—all the stuff I’ve been forcing down all night at work—rising up inside me, I can’t just sit down on the couch and cry, because my mother, so accustomed to listening for the noises of her children getting up in the middle of the night, will hear me. And she’ll want to comfort me. She always does.
So, I do what I do when I want to cry. I get in the shower.
Our shower is really loud, and you can’t hear much over the sound of the water. So once it’s going, I curl up on the bottom of the tub, wrap my arms around myself, and cry. I can’t stop hearing all the words that Jackson said over and over in my head.
For so long, my drive was the thing that Jackson liked most about me. But now, it’s too much for him. And now we’re months from graduation, and he wants to change his mind. What does that even mean for us in the future? Are we completely done? By “take a break” does he mean “break up?”
Either way, it stings.
It stings because I thought Jackson loved me, the real me, the me that follows the rules and stays in on Friday to get ahead on homework and is working damn hard to have a real future that doesn’t involve this house and all my siblings and working full-time at J-Mart instead of going to the school of my dreams.
I cry until my fingers are wrinkled like prunes and the water has gone cold, and then I hiccup while I wrap a towel around myself.
But when I open the door, my mother is sitting on the little bench in the hallway, looking at me. She doesn’t say anything, just opens her arms, and I sigh as I walk to her and let her hold me.
OLIVER
AFTER WORK, I sit in front of my computer with the online application for Missouri Baptist University up on the screen. I’ve been staring at it for so long that I’m pretty sure I just saw the first rays of the sun outside my window.
I’ve typed my name, but that’s it. I couldn’t even bring myself to type in our apartment number, because I get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I bring myself to look back at the screen.
Because I don’t want to go to Missouri Baptist University.
And I don’t want to go to University of Missouri-Kansas City.