Crescendo

“Excuse me, I heard you’re hiring baristas,” I told the woman at the register. My voice sounded flat in my ears, but I didn’t have the energy to try to correct it. The woman, a middle-aged redhead with a name tag that read ROBERTA, looked up. “I’d like to fill out an application.” I managed a half smile, but somehow, I feared it wasn’t anywhere close to believable.

Roberta wiped her freckled hands on a rag and came around the counter. “Baristas? Not anymore.”

I stared at her, holding my breath, feeling all hope deflate inside me. My plan was everything. I hadn’t considered what I would do if even one step of it was yanked out from under me. I needed a plan. I needed this job. I needed a carefully controlled life where every minute was planned, and every emotion compartmentalized.

“But I’m still looking for a reliable counter attendant, night shift only, six to ten,” Roberta added.

I blinked, my lip quivering slightly in surprise. “Oh,” I said. “That’s … good.”

“At night we dim the lights, bring out the baristas, play a little jazz, and try for a more sophisticated feel. It used to be dead in here after five, but we’re hoping to lure crowds. Tough economy,” she explained. “You’d be in charge of greeting customers and writing down orders, then calling them in to the kitchen. When the food’s ready, you’d carry it out to the tables.”

I tried to nod eagerly, determined to show her how much I wanted this job, feeling all the tiny cracks in my lips split as I smiled. “That—sounds perfect,” I managed in a husky voice.

“Do you have any work experience?”

I didn’t. But Vee and I came to Enzo’s at least three times a week. “I know the menu by heart,” I said, beginning to feel more solid, more real. A job. Everything depended on it. I was going to build a new life.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Roberta said. “When can you start?”

“Tonight?” I could hardly believe she was offering me the job. Here I was, unable to summon up even a sincere smile, but she was overlooking it. She was giving me a chance. I put my hand forward to shake hers, then noticed a half beat too late that it was trembling.

She ignored my outstretched hand, eying me with her head cocked to one side in a way that only made me feel more exposed and self-conscious. “Is everything okay?”

I sucked in a silent breath and held it. “Yes—I’m fine.”

She gave a brisk nod. “Get here at a quarter to six and I’ll issue you a uniform before your shift.”

“Thank you so much—,” I began, my voice still in shock, but she was already scooting back behind the counter.

As I stepped outside to a blinding sun, I ran calculations in my head. Assuming I was going to make minimum wage, if I worked every night for the next two weeks, I just might be able to pay off my speeding ticket. And if I worked every night for two months, that was sixty nights that I’d be too drowned in work to dwell on Patch. Sixty nights closer to the end of summer vacation, when I could once again throw all my energy into school. I’d already decided to pack my schedule with demanding classes. I could handle homework in every shape and form, but heartbreak was entirely different.

“Well?” Vee asked, coasting up beside me in the Neon. “How’d it go?”

I climbed into the passenger seat. “I got the job.”

“Nice. You seemed really nervous going in, almost like you were going to lose it, but no reason to worry now. You’re officially a hard-working member of society. Proud of you, babe. When do you start?”

I checked the readout on the dash. “Four hours.”

“I’ll stop by tonight and request to be seated in your area.”

“Better leave a tip,” I said, my attempt at humor nearly bringing me to tears.

“I’m your chauffeur. That’s better than a tip.”

Six and a half hours later, Enzo’s was jammed to the walls. My work uniform consisted of a white pintuck shirt, gray tweed slacks with a matching vest, and a newsboy cap. The newsboy cap wasn’t doing a very good job of holding up my hair, which refused to stay tucked out of sight. At this moment, I could feel stray curls plastered to the sides of my face with sweat. Despite the fact that I was completely overwhelmed, it felt strangely relieving to be in over my head. There was no time to shift my thoughts, even fleetingly, to Patch.

“New girl!” One of the cooks—Fernando—was shouting at me. He stood behind a short wall that separated the ovens from the rest of the kitchen, flapping a spatula. “Your order is up!”

I grabbed the three sandwich plates, carefully stacked them up my arm in a row, and backed out of the swinging doors. On my way across the pit, I caught the eye of one of the hostesses. She jerked her chin at a newly seated table up on the balcony. I answered with a quick nod. Be there in a minute.

“One prime rib sandwich, one salami, and one roasted turkey,” I said, setting the plates down in front of a party of three businessmen in suits. “Enjoy your meal.”

I jogged up the steps leading out of the pit, pulling my meal order pad out of my back pocket. Halfway down the catwalk, my stride caught. Marcie Millar was directly ahead, seated at my newest table. I also recognized Addyson Hales, Oakley Williams, and Ethan Tyler, all from school. I thought about making an about-face and telling the hostess to give someone else—anyone else—my table, when Marcie glanced up and I knew I was trapped.

A granite-hard smile touched her mouth.

My breathing faltered. Was there any possible way she could know I’d taken her diary? It wasn’t until I’d walked home and crawled into bed last night that I remembered I still had it. I would have returned it right then, but it had been the last thing on my mind. The diary had seemed insignificant next to the raw turmoil scraping me both inside and out. As of this moment, it was sitting untouched on my bedroom floor, right beside last night’s discarded clothes.

“Isn’t your outfit the cutest thing ever?” Marcie said over the prerecorded jazz. “Ethan, didn’t you wear a vest just like that to prom last year? I think Nora raided your closet.”

While they laughed, I held my pen poised on the order pad. “Can I get you something to drink? The special tonight is our coconut lime smoothie.” Could everyone hear the scratch of guilt in my voice? I swallowed, hoping that when I spoke again, the jittery quality would be gone.

“Last time I was in here, it was my mom’s birthday,” Marcie said. “Our waitress sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.”

It took me a whole three seconds to catch on. “Oh. No. I mean— no. I’m not a waitress. I’m a counter attendant.”

“I don’t care what you are. I want you to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.”

I stood paralyzed, my mind frantically groping for an escape. I couldn’t believe Marcie was asking me to humiliate myself this way. Wait. Of course she was asking me to humiliate myself. For the past eleven years, I’d kept a secret scorecard between us, but now I was certain she was keeping her own scorecard. She lived for the chance to one-up me. Worse, she knew her score doubled mine and she was still running up the points. Which made her not only a bully, but a bad sport.

I held out my hand. “Let me see your ID.”

Marcie lifted an uncaring shoulder. “I forgot it.”

We both knew she hadn’t forgotten her driver’s license, and we both knew it wasn’t her birthday.

“We’re really busy tonight,” I said, feigning apology. “My manager wouldn’t want me to take time away from the other customers.”

“Your manager would want you to keep your customers happy. Now sing.”

“And while you’re at it,” Ethan chimed in, “bring out one of those free chocolate cakes.”

“We’re only supposed to give out one slice, not a whole cake,” I said.

“We’re only supposed to give out one slice,” Addyson mimicked, and the table erupted with laughter.

Marcie reached into her handbag and pulled out a Flip camera. The red power button blinked on, and she aimed the lens at me. “I can’t wait to spam this video to the entire school. Good thing I have access to everyone’s e-mail. Who would’ve thought being an office aide would be so useful?”

She knew about the diary. She had to. And this was payback. Fifty points to me for stealing her diary. Twice that many to her for sending a video of me singing “Happy Birthday, Marcie” to all of Coldwater High.

I pointed over my shoulder at the kitchen and slowly backed up. “Listen, my orders are piling up—”

“Ethan, go tell that lovely hostess over there that we demand to speak to the manager. Tell her our