But as we stood up and I gathered the Twister mat, I knew we were not close enough. Timmy had the inside track to the front door as he pumped his arms, the Twister box looking comically small in his meaty hand. JP was approaching from a slightly different angle, running his guts out through shin-deep powder. The Duke and I were running as fast as we could, but we were well behind. I held out hope for JP, though, until Timmy got a few strides from the door and I realized that he was plainly going to be first to the door. My stomach sank. JP had come so close. His immigrant parents had sacrificed so much. The Duke would be denied her hash browns, and I my cheesy waffles.
And then, as Timmy started to extend his hand for the door, JP pounced. He leaped into the air, his body stretched out like a receiver reaching for an overthrown pass, and he got so much air that it seemed as if he’d jumped from a trampoline. His shoulder nailed Timmy Reston in the chest, and together they fell into a row of snow-draped shrubs next to the door. JP came up first, dashed for the door, pulled it open, and locked it behind him. The Duke and I were within spitting distance now, close enough to hear the shout of jubilation through the glass. JP raised his hands above his head, fists clenched, and the joyful scream continued for what seemed like several minutes.
As JP stared out into the darkness toward us with his hands raised, I watched as Keun—wearing a black “WH” visor, a white-and-yellow-striped shirt, and a brown apron—mobbed JP from behind. Keun grabbed him by the waist and lifted him up, and JP just kept his arms raised. The cheerleaders, crowded together at a bank of booths, looked on. I glanced down at the Duke, who was looking not at the scene but at me, and I laughed, and she laughed.
Tommy and Timmy banged on the windows for a while, but Keun just raised his hands as if to say, What can I do? and eventually they walked back toward the Mustang. As we approached the Waffle House, we walked past them, and Timmy lunged menacingly at me, but that was it. When I turned to watch them go, I saw the three college guys trying to scoot down the exit ramp.
The Duke and I reached the door finally, and I pulled on it; Keun unlocked it, saying, “Technically, I shouldn’t let you in, since only JP beat the Restons. But you have the Twister.” We pushed past him, and the warm air rushed onto my face. I hadn’t even noticed until then how numb my body had gotten, but it tingled as it warmed, coming back to life. I threw the soaking-wet Twister mat and spinner down onto the tiled floor, and shouted, “The Twister has arrived!”
Keun shouted, “Hooray!” but the news barely even warranted a glance from the gaggle of green across the dining room.
I grabbed Keun and hugged him with one arm and with the other mussed up the hair sticking through his visor. “I need some cheesy waffles in the worst way,” I told him. The Duke asked for hash browns and then collapsed into a booth next to the jukebox. JP and I sidled up to the breakfast counter and talked to Keun while he cooked.
“I can’t help but notice that the cheerleaders are not, you know, hanging all over you.”
“Yeah,” he said, his back to us as he worked the waffle irons. “Yeah. I’m hoping Twister will change that. They did try to flirt with Mr. I-Have-a-Ponytail-but-I’m-Still-Macho,” Keun said, gesturing with his head toward a guy passed out at a booth, “but apparently he is obsessed with his girlfriend.”
“Yeah, the Twister seems to be working really well,” I said. The wet mat lay crumpled on the floor, utterly ignored by the cheerleaders.
JP leaned over me to look at the cheerleaders and then shook his head. “It only occurs to me now that I can awkwardly glance at cheerleaders while eating pretty much every day during lunch.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I mean, they obviously don’t want to talk.”
“Indeed,” I said. They were crowded around three booths in a kind of oblong huddle. They were talking very fast, and very intently, with one another. I could hear some of the words, but they made no sense to me—herkies and kewpies and extensions. They were talking about a cheerleading competition. There are discussion topics I find less interesting than cheerleading competitions. But not many.
“Hey, the sleepy guy awakes,” JP said.
I looked over at the booth and saw a guy with dark eyes and a ponytail squinting at me. I recognized him after a second. “That guy goes to Gracetown,” I said.
“Yeah,” Keun answered. “Jeb.”
“Right,” I said. Jeb was a junior. Didn’t know him well, but I’d seen him around. He apparently recognized me, too, because he rose from the booth and walked up to me.
“Tobin?” he said.
I nodded and shook his hand.
“Do you know Addie?” he asked.
I looked at him blankly.
“A junior? Beautiful?” he said.
I scrunched up my eyes. “Um, no?”
“Long blonde hair, kind of dramatic?” he said, sounding both desperate and also like he couldn’t get his head around the fact that I wouldn’t know this girl he was rambling on about.
“Um, sorry, dude. Not ringing any bells.”
His eyes closed. I saw his whole body deflate.
“We started dating on Christmas Eve,” he said, staring into the middle distance.
“Yesterday?” I said, thinking, You’ve been dating for a day and you’re this worked up? One more reason to avoid the happy middle.
“Not yesterday,” Jeb says wearily. “A year from yesterday.”
I turned to Keun. “Dude,” I said. “This guy is in bad shape.”
Keun nodded while scattering the Duke’s hash browns on the grill. “I’m gonna give him a ride into town in the morning,” Keun said. “Although what’s the rule, Jeb?”
Jeb said it like Keun had told him the rule a thousand times before. “We don’t leave until the last cheerleader leaves.”
“That’s right, buddy. Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“Just,” Jeb said, “just if you happen to see her or something, will you just tell her I got, um, delayed?”
“I guess,” I said. I must not have been convincing enough, because he turned around and made eye contact with the Duke.
“Tell her I’m coming,” he said, and what’s weird was that she got it. Or seemed to. Or anyway, she nodded in a way that said, Yeah, I’ll tell her, if for some reason I see this girl I don’t know out in a snowdrift at four A.M. And as she smiled sympathetically to him, again I had the untakebackable thought.