ask her.
“Yup.”
“Who do you think ends up there?”
“Why? You going to murder Hugh Tink?”
I look out to the main street and watch the cars pass. A couple walks down the slope of the sidewalk, the girl clipping along in purple suede platform boots and a dress that looks as if it’s made out of a hundred ripped kerchiefs. She stops and cups her hands around her mouth, trying to light a cigarette. Her long blond Barbie hair whips in the breeze.
The guy brushes it out of her face. “You’re going to set yourself on fire,” I hear him say, and he laughs.
His voice gives me a jolt. I lean forward to get a better look.
“They’re from the wedding party,” Jill says. “He’s okay. She’s a hippie-dippy pain-in-the-ass. She probably requested this shitty song.”
The wedding party? He’s been here the whole time? Maybe I sensed that he was here and that’s why he came into my mind. And who the hell is she?
I start to put one of my shoes back on but it hurts too much.
“How come you guys aren’t in there doing the chicken dance?” Jill yells to them.
Big mouth. Jill and Ruby have the biggest mouths on the planet.
“You first,” he calls back. He squints. Oh god. “Sammie?” He takes a couple of steps into the alley.
I give him a limp sort of wave. “Hey.” My voice echoes high and squawky inside my skull.
“Holy shit, that’s what’s-his-face, isn’t it—the guy who showed up at the door for you?” Jill hisses.
I nod, wish I could evaporate. Wish he’d come closer.
Drew looks back at the girl he’s with. She’s still on the corner, smoking. “It’s Sammie,” he says, and heads toward us.
“Who?” The blonde clomps down the alley after him.
“Hey, they’re playing your song,” he tells her.
“ ‘Peace Train’?” she screams. “I’m missing my song!”
Jill nudges me with her foot.
Drew grins back at the girl, his noggin joggling around on his skinny neck like he’s a bobble-head doll. His hands are like big bony puppy paws hanging out the sleeves of the jacket. Drew likes Cat Stevens. He played a mix tape he’d made when I was over at his house. There was Cat Stevens, Carole King and the Moody Blues and I loved all of it. Up in his bedroom, I watched Drew sing along to “Where Do the Children Play?” while we played checkers on his bed. His voice was so gentle and easy and I wanted to touch his hand so much. And then his mother came in to check on us again.
He stops at the bottom of the loading dock. “Hi,” he says to me, his voice soft.
“What are you doing here?” And then he stuffs his hands into his pockets as if he just remembered how uncomfortable the situation is. “Are you guys waitresses for the reception?”
I nod. “First night on the job.”
His blonde friend dances around in her purple platform heels and sings the last few notes of “Peace Train.”
Jill scowls at her for a second and then displays my sneaker with the bloody heel for them. “Super-Waitress, here, forgot to wear socks.”
“Sammie …” Drew looks as if it’s his blood he’s seeing.
The blonde stops swinging her flouncy kerchief dress and gawks at the shoe. “That’s harsh,” she says. “Man, I’d take the rest of the night off if I was you.”
She looks as if she’s our age. Maybe a year or two older.
“This is my cousin, Magnolia,” Drew explains. “The one I told you about with the horses.”
“Maggie,” she corrects him, and rolls her eyes. She’s hanging on to the strap of a purple suede purse with fringes that dangle to the pavement.
Maggie. I remember him talking about some cousin who lived on a farm in Langley and wore see-through hippie tops with no bra. “It’s hilarious when she’s on one of the horses,” he told me once. “Bouncing all over the place. And she’s not flat either!”
People kiss their cousins. They marry them sometimes. I wonder what he’s said to her about me. Sammie? Oh, she’s just some mixed-up jerk I used to hang around with.
“The groom’s my brother,” Maggie says, her face incredulous. “He’s the one who married that poor lady in the bridal gown. Did you catch her face? The entire experience has given her a rash.”
Jill hoots as if she knows the whole family from way back. I chew my lips.
“Didn’t you recognize him?” Drew asks me. “You met Shaye that time when we all went out on the