I focus on chopping the potatoes into equally sized cubes. “I talked to your mom today,” Dad says. The butcher knife in my hand plunks onto the counter as fast as my jaw falls open. I’m lucky my index finger wasn’t under the blade. “She called you?” I ask. I can almost hear the crackling of ice as hell freezes over. Mom hasn’t talked to Dad since that Fourth of July two years ago.
“I called her. Just wanted her to know you were staying with me for a while.”
“What did she say?”
Dad eats another piece of potato, taking longer to chew it as he did last time and I can tell he’s wondering if he should tell me the truth or gloss over it. “She said that was fine. You can stay for the whole summer if you want.”
Somehow, I don’t think that’s what she said. “I would like that,” I say, ignoring the pain in my stomach that’s gnawing at me for obligating them to let me stay. “If that’s okay with you guys,” I add. “I just don’t want to go back there right now.”
“I have an idea,” Molly says, her voice muffled with an ovenmit in her mouth. She slips the mit over her hand and shoves a rack of meat into the oven. I wait for her to say something like maybe I should stay in a hotel instead of their guest bedroom. “Hana can be your replacement at the track. That way she can make friends and won’t have to stay in the house all day.”
Dad considers this a moment. “Can you lift fifty pounds?”
I shrug. “Probably not.”
He laughs. “Shit, Jason’s scrawny arms couldn’t either. You want the job? You could use a little sun.”
And a distraction. The motocross track is so so so terribly boring. But since it looks like I’ll be here all summer, I’d be stupid to say no. If anything, this can take my mind off my mother and give me some money to put gas in my truck so I can attempt to find something to do in this tiny town.
“Yeah,” I say, shoving my chopped potato pile toward Molly. “Totally.”
“Great!” Dad tries to steal another raw potato cube and Molly slaps his hand away from the pile. “You can start tomorrow. I’ll wake you up at five.”
“You’re totally shitting me!” Felicia’s squeal pierces through the air so loudly, I might have heard it even without a phone.
“Not shitting.” I arrange my clothes in the dresser drawers of the unused furniture in what is now my room. They smell like freshly cut wood inside. “I start work tomorrow.”
“Do you know how many insanely hot guys ride motocross?” she asks, but I can barely understand her through all the rabid foam filling up her mouth as she talks about delicious man candy.
“My dad still rides motocross. Are you calling him hot?”
She groans. “Haven’t you ever watched ESPN? Ugh, I would kill to be you right now.”
“Would you kill to wake up at five in the morning? Because that’s when I have to be at the track tomorrow.”
She sighs, all dreamy-like. “You’re going to be swimming in sexiness this summer and here I am stuck working at the Pizza Palace with greasy stoners who won’t stop hitting on me. So not fair.”
Yeah, I think. You’re stuck at home with your nice parents who are in love and still married, living in your happy house with no worries, stuck working a job you chose because you had a crush on those stoners a month ago. Totally not fair.
“Sorry,” I say aloud. “I’ll send you pictures.”
Chapter 3
Molly wakes me up at ten minutes after five in the morning and makes it seem like she did me a favor by letting me sleep in. I’m eager to get out of the house today, even if it is before the sun comes out, so I’m able to curb my usual morning bitchiness just for her.
I throw on the shabbiest outfit in my drawer – paint splattered cut off jean shorts and a Blood Donor T-shirt that’s three sizes too big that I usually use as a sleep shirt. I’m not stupid. I’ve been to the track before, and it’s basically a desert that smells like exhaust fumes in the hot Texas sun. My few good outfits would be ruined with sweaty armpit stains by the end of the day. Crappy clothes it is.
Molly hands me a basket of warm breakfast burritos wrapped in aluminum foil. There’s enough to feed a small army in here.
“Who are all of these for?”
“Your father eats three, Marty eats three, and I made two more for you,” she says, handing me the basket. She fills a large thermos with coffee and puts it in my other hand.
The burritos are the fattest I’ve ever seen. Though they smell delicious, I certainly don’t need two. For a woman who cooks just for men, I guess Molly doesn’t realize what a girl my age actually eats.
“Now that you’re working for Jim, you can take his breakfast to the track and I’ll get to go back to bed.” She squeezes my shoulders and smiles so big I can see her crooked front teeth. She tells me to have a great first day of work and promises to bring lunch to us at noon. Hopefully I survive until then.
The track isn’t far from our backyard but trudging through the thick grass carrying an armful of warm food on an already warm morning is not glamorous. I hate the way the morning dew sticks to my legs and face.