Being at work, where the college students always got to choose the music (that day was a totally weird band called Ween) and the business was always steady, turned out not to be so bad. The rhythmic slap of meat on bread put me at ease, so much so that it took several times of Leo calling, “Alex!” for me to recognize someone was talking to me. I wiped my meaty hands on the rag tucked into my shorts and old t-shirt, rotated from my sleep-shirt collection, and walked out of the kitchen. The restaurant was organized with the front counter at the bottom of the entrance stairway (because, naturally, the restaurant was in a cellar). Above the counter was a menu sloppily written in chalk. When people ordered they were given a number, and their handwritten ticket was passed back to me and my cohort, Doug, a kind of cute, definitely annoying sculpture major with a minor in astronomy. After one of us made the subs, usually me unless we were busy enough to warrant Doug to stop sketching and start sandwich making, we placed it in a basket, left the small, narrow kitchen behind the counter, and yelled out the customer’s number. Sometimes I liked to do it in an accent. Today, I just did it as loudly as I could.
Leo waited by the counter, ready to pick up an order.
“Hey,” I greeted him with confusion. “How did you know I worked here?”
“I didn’t. I always come here on Wednesdays after my tuba lesson.”
“You play the tuba?”
“No. I just thought it sounded funny.”
“So you’re stalking me?” I checked.
“Sorry, no. I actually come here after I pick up my comic subscriptions.”
“For real this time?”
“For real.”
“The tuba was cooler.”
“Says you.”
I ignored the annoyed looks of the college students around me, pretending I was oblivious to the fact that they wanted to eat.
“What number are you?” I nodded toward Leo’s order ticket.
“Forty-two.”
“The meaning of life, no less. I’ll be right back.”
I went into the kitchen and fixed Leo’s order, a veggie deluxe with cheddar and Muenster cheeses heated up. I popped the sub into the microwave above my head and prepared myself the Alex Special: turkey and Muenster, topped with a pile of pickles. When the microwave beeped, most definitely emitting heaps of radiation so near my brain, I informed Doug, “I’m taking my dinner. You have orders to make.” I didn’t wait around to see if he heard me, tossed my rag onto an empty counter, and carried out the two baskets to Leo.
“Lead the way,” he directed. I took him to my favorite spot next to a fake fireplace. Cellar Subs’ walls were covered in graffiti, one of those places that encourages it. I left my mark one night after closing, high on the wall so as not to be written over, standing on a ladder from the back room: “Belial was here,” a nod to the Basket Case Trilogy.
When we began eating, Leo said, “My compliments to the chef.”
“Mine, too,” I agreed. “So you really didn’t know I worked here?” I asked.
“Did you know I played basketball over at Irving?”
“Nope.”
“Then I didn’t know you worked here.”
“That kind of makes it sound like you did know I worked here, but that I was lying about knowing you played basketball at Irving. Which I wasn’t.”
“Pickles?” he questioned.
“Want one?” I offered.
“I’m good.”
We ate our subs, not breaking for more confusing chat until Leo, wiping his mouth on a tiny, useless napkin, asked, “Should I try a conversation starter?”
I liked the way Leo talked. It wasn’t as matter of fact as the way I spoke, but it wasn’t as forced as most people would be when getting to know someone. “Do you have one?” I asked.
“That was pretty much it.”
“And look at the conversation it started.” He shrugged. “I’ve got one,” I said. “My dad made it up. It’s called half and half. Like, half empty, half full. You’re supposed to say something that happened today that was half empty, you know, shitty? And then something half full, the good.” I waited for him to make fun of the quaintness, but he took a thoughtful pause and asked, “Can you go first? I need a minute to think.”
“Don’t think while I’m talking because then you’re not listening.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I flipped him off pleasantly and said, “I’m getting drinks. You think about your half and half while I get us pop. What do you want?”
“Coke.”
I walked behind the counter to the drink fountain. Ila, a gorgeous women’s studies major with waist-length strawberry-blond hair, worked the register. “Who’s that?” She waggled her eyebrows at me. I could’ve been jealous at the thought of not only a college girl, but a beautiful one at that, ogling Leo, but Ila was a lesbian with the cutest girlfriend who, when not going to school full-time, worked as a carpenter.
“That’s Leo. From my school.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” she asked, completely ignoring the backup of customers. Part of the charm of Cellar.
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know what he is. I barely know him, really.” I pumped the pop out of the fountain into two worn, plastic tumblers.
“But you want to know him, right?” Ila was overdoing the innuendo, but I liked the big-sisterly vibe.
“Yes. But I don’t know. We’ll see. Shit doesn’t seem to work out very well for me lately. Or ever.”
“Hopefully this isn’t shit then.” Ila started taking orders again, and I delivered our drinks.
“Thanks,” Leo said. “I thought of my halves, unless you want to go first.”
“After you.”
“My half empty is that my brother is still in Sangin, and my parents are constantly terrified. We don’t know when he’s coming home. And my mom has these screaming nightmares about it.”
“That is half empty. Are you close with your brother?”
“Yeah. I mean, he’s kind of the favorite in the family. My parents worship him. He’s annoyingly perfect. And I’m the family fuckup.”
“You don’t seem like such a fuckup.” I sipped my Coke through the straw.
“You must have heard some things.”
“Yeah, but not from you.”
“Probably everything you heard was true.”
“So you slept with Mrs. Johansen, the chorus teacher with the lazy eye?” I asked agape.
“No,” he blurted.
“You’ve been to jail?”
“No.”
“You have a tattoo on your ass that reads, ‘Kiss this’?”
“Are you kidding me? Who said that?”
“I just made that up. But that would’ve been awesome if you did.”
“Maybe you can give it to me.”
“What do you mean?” I smiled over the straw at the insinuation that I could give him a tattoo.
“Don’t you have a homemade one?”
“How did you know that?” I could barely contain the rush of Leo Dietz knowing a private factoid about me.
“I saw it once during gym class.”
The fact that Leo had watched my thigh at some point during gym class almost made me blush. “Anyway, so what rumors about you are true? Have you really been suspended?”
“I was suspended last year for busting out Daniel Lum’s teeth. Even though I didn’t really mean to do it. Whatever, the guy’s dad’s a dentist,” Leo mumbled.
“What else?” I pulsed the Coke through the straw in anticipation.
“I was also suspended for having a ‘weapon’”—he finger-quoted—“in my locker, which was bullshit because it was a pocketknife. Boy Scouts are allowed to have them.”
“Are you a Boy Scout?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“How old are you?” I prodded. The rumor was that he was really twenty after being held back twice.
“Twenty-six,” he answered. I coughed on my Coke, until he said, “Real
ly? You believed that?”
“What? I don’t know you. I mean, for all you know about me, I could be a serial killer.”
“I’m counting on it.” He smirked. Melt. “And I’m only seventeen.”
“So you weren’t held back?”
“I was, actually, after we moved. Behavior crap. But I had skipped kindergarten because I was so ahead of everyone. So it all balanced out.” We both nodded, and he said, “What about you?”
“I’m seventeen. No skipping or going back.”
“I meant your half empty.”
“Oh yeah.” I wasn’t sure what to say, if I wanted to get into Becca’s cancer. But he was honest with me, and I didn’t have to go into great detail. Not that I had many details. “My half empty is that my best friend has cancer. And she started treatment today, and I don’t know what’s going to happen or if she’ll live or die or when I get to see her or talk to her or if she’ll live or die and I know I just said that—” I nervously lifted my straw in and out of my cup, willing myself to hold it together.
“Jesus, Alex, I had no idea. That sucks. That’s like glass almost completely empty. Shit. I thought you were going to say something about your dad, but, damn. I don’t really know what to say. Sorry is such a loaded word.”
“Thank you for not saying that.”
“Alex!” Doug yelled from the kitchen. “Get your ass back in here! I have to take a piss!”
“Fine dining, it is not,” I noted to Leo.
We stood up and took our baskets to the garbage. “I guess it’s just half empty today.” I frowned.
“I’ll do my half full really quickly. I got to have dinner with you. And I got a free drink, too.”
“You can pay me when I give you your ass tattoo,” I told him dryly. I dumped the contents of my basket into the garbage and gave a little wave to Leo. “Have a good night,” I said, feeling awkward that I didn’t know quite how to say good-bye. I didn’t have to know. Leo held my face in his oversize hands and pressed his lips to mine. He was such a good, powerful kisser, I involuntarily hummed with pleasure as I kissed him back, standing on tiptoes as he leaned down to meet me. I gripped the front of his t-shirt with a tight fist to steady myself. The kiss wasn’t long, but it was enough to make me wobble back to my spot in the kitchen after Leo uttered, “Good-bye, pickle breath.”
I think I found my half full.
CHAPTER
12
I ARRIVED HOME from work around nine thirty. Cellar Subs closed at nine, and it was my job to mop the floor with a seventy-five-year-old mop that weighed 600 pounds. I don’t know if the floor ever actually got clean because the lighting was so bad at the restaurant, and the mop was so decrepit. Strings of meat and vegetables slid between the dreadlocks of the mop, long past the expiration of the five-second rule. It was also my job to clean the bathrooms, but nobody actually did that. Cellar had infamously nasty bathrooms, which somehow made the place cooler. Unless you had to use them.
When I walked into my house, AJ and CJ were watching Wipeout and laughing uncontrollably at the big balls. I wished I had the ability to be as ridiculously airheady as they did. Not that they were stupid, but as seventh-grade boys they didn’t yet feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. Or in my case, my pocket. The only thing I had to show for Becca’s list was self-pleasuring before breakfast, and I didn’t even know if she knew about that yet. We hadn’t talked about due dates or expectations of numbers. The list was as vague and overwhelming as the cancer itself.
“You smell like a sandwich,” AJ told me without looking away from the watery carnage on the TV screen.
“OOOH!” AJ and CJ practiced synchronized cringing at the TV.
“Here.” I threw a bag containing two subs to CJ, who dexterously caught it without turning his head.
“Thanks, sis.”
“No prob, bros.”
I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. I did smell very sandwichy. It wasn’t so bad compared to my first job as an ice-cream scooper. Ice cream may be delicious when you eat it, but it rots when stuck to your shirt. Washing it never got the rank smell out either. The sandwich smell did come out of my clothes, but sometimes it took forever to excrete from my nose.
I pulled the blue Brita pitcher out of the fridge and poured myself a tall glass of water. I placed the pitcher back, and my eyes focused on a jar that I never paid much attention to: jalapeño peppers, which my brothers ate for sport. They never appealed to me. Food and pain together seemed like a weird combo.
“AJ. CJ. Come here,” I called into the other room. I pulled out the Fuck-It List from my pocket, and as I remembered, number 7, an early one, read: Eat a hot pepper. Great. Couldn’t I just have sex with a member of the chess team or something?
“We’re watching Wipeout!” they chimed in unison.
“Pause your big balls and get in here!” I demanded.
The clumsy shuffling of my twin brothers arrived in the kitchen. “What?” CJ held his sandwich in the brown paper bag like some drunk on the street. He took a sandwich swig and chewed lazily.
“What’s it like to eat a hot pepper?”
“What do you mean? You just stick it in your mouth and bite it,” AJ explained helpfully.
“That’s what she said,” CJ chuckled.
“Are you guys really this corroded?” I glared.
“No, sorry. You did bring us sandwiches,” AJ conceded.
“I wanted to try an experiment.” There was no way I’d tell my brothers about the Fuck-It List. “But I’m a little scared.”
“You can watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but you can’t eat a pepper?” CJ asked. He couldn’t stand horror films, especially after Dad died. It was kind of sad and sweet at the same time. One of the traits that made him slightly human. Plus, it was fun watching him run away from the TV when I had a movie on in the family room.
“Those movies aren’t real. Well, actually, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story,” I explained.
“Don’t tell me that!” CJ covered his ears, one with a hand and the other with the sandwich in a bag.
“Dudes, help me here. I have to eat one, and I just want to prepare myself.”
AJ walked over to the jar I pulled from the fridge. “This one’s for pussies. You have to try ghost chiles instead. They’ll burn your butthole for days.”
“I don’t eat with my butthole.” I eyed them.
“Yeah, but they have to come out after you digest them. They’re the gift that keeps on giving. Burn you in, burn you out.” AJ nodded in a sick way.
“You guys are freaks,” I told them.
“We’ll eat one if you do,” CJ volunteered. “For twenty bucks,” he added.
“You’ll do it because I’m your sister and you love me, and if you don’t I’ll put my Chuckie doll in your bed in the middle of the night.” Chuckie was an evilly-stitched doll from the movie Child’s Play. Not the best movie, but I found the doll at a horror con in great condition and couldn’t pass it up. “Plus: sandwiches.”
“Fine. But you get to apologize to my butthole in the morning.”
“I’ll notarize a letter and everything. Let’s do this.”
CJ unscrewed the jar lid and a tangy smell tickled my nose. “You don’t have any cuts on your fingers, do you?” I examined my hands and shook my head no. “Good.” He carefully pinched his thumb and forefinger around a bright green pepper and pulled it out of the jar. He slid the jar over to me, and I did the same. Juice dripped off the pepper onto the kitchen table, and I half expected a hole to sizzle into the wood.
“On the count of three?” I asked. CJ nodded. “One. Two. Three.” I closed my eyes and bit the pepper from its stem. It didn’t immediately hurt, but a slow sting emanated throughout my mouth. My eyes watered, and so did my nose. My lips felt about six sizes bigger than usual. When I finally managed to swallow, I coughed and sneezed simultaneously.
“Water!” I choked and chugged my entire glass. That didn
’t help. AJ and CJ were in hysterics, leaning on each other for support. “You didn’t eat it, did you?” I guessed.
“No. But thanks for the kind offer,” CJ said.
I rubbed tears from my eyes. “No problem. And Chuckie can’t wait to see you.”
“No! I’ll eat it! Watch!” He stuffed it into his gaping mouth.
“Too late.” I poured myself a second glass of water, not waiting to see CJ’s reaction before I walked up the stairs to my room.
“I ate it! Al, I ate it!” He sputtered after me.
“Chuckie can’t hear you anymore,” I cackled, and shut my bedroom door.
While my computer revved up, I crossed off number 7. “Only for you, Becca,” I said to the paper. A hot pepper, as painful as it was, was still an easy item. If I were to accomplish any of the big-ticket numbers, like Take a bath in someone else’s house, that would take some planning. Same with number 10: Hop a train like a hobo. I laughed out loud at that one, not only because the word “hobo” was hilarious, but that Becca would consider such an act worthy of a life-defining list. And what about the last item on the list, number 23: Have sex with someone I’m in love with and who’s in love with me. It’s not something I’d ever accomplished before, so how easy could it be now that it was with a time limit? I’d only actually had sex with one person, but I didn’t even believe I was in love with him at the time. His name was Aleks, pronounced the same as my name and short for Aleksander, an exchange student from Norway who stayed with our next-door neighbors. It was last fall, after Thanksgiving but before winter break. There were fifteen Norwegians in total imported to our school, and Aleks didn’t look much different from the rest of them: tall, sandy blond hair, solid, round head. They traveled in packs, laughed loudly, and spoke a language that sounded both fluid and funny. Before I had a car, I took the bus to school. So did Aleks, along with Katie Cartwright, the neighbor he stayed with who was a grade younger and a zombie cheerleader. Katie and Aleks never sat near each other on the bus, nor did I ever see them exchange words. Aleks sat by himself near the front, until the other Norwegians boarded a few stops later. Then he lit up and became animated. I liked to watch them, imagining someday that I might become an exchange student or live in another country. It was a dream that I tried not to hang on to anymore for fear that an unrealized dream would make me realize just how stranded I was now that my dad was dead.