listening to one of our guests. Every time I inspect their faces, they look happy. My parents get so excited about helping people; I know this is one of the reasons they decided to attend this church.
A guy from the youth group stops by to say, “Jeesh, Grace. Your dad is hilarious. You’re so lucky.”
I nod and give a tight smile. “Yep, that’s me. Lucky Grace.”
A lump builds in my throat. I wish this feeling could extend to our family year-round. This happiness. This love. It’s confusing, mixed up, and it hurts.
“Grace. This good-looking young man needs a big scoop of mashed potatoes.” Sister Franks’ voice pulls me out of lala land.
I grin at a scruffy guy in his twenties. “Sorry about that.”
He smiles. “No problem. I know that look. Cheer up. Things can’t be that bad.” He moves on with his tray.
I look after him, startled. Am I that transparent? Surely not. If I was, people would have figured out my charade by now. No, this guy knows what it means to want something you can’t have. And here he is, encouraging me. I feel like the crumb that I am. So I paint a smile on my face, determined to love on folks like Sister Franks does.
twenty
Daaaamn: like a really emphasized wow;
can be use to express almost any
emotion including admiration
Transcribing affidavits is like working on those little puzzles in the kids magazines I got growing up. There were all these little blanks with symbols underneath, and you’d look up the symbol to figure out which letter went in the blank. Only affidavits are way crazy, and there aren’t any blanks. It’s frying my brain. All of these have to be translated from shorthand into English. Whoever created shorthand was nuts. I think it’d be way easier to just write things out.
I take a break to wipe my hands across my face and blink my eyes a few times. I run my hands through my hair and stare off at the ceiling.
“That bad, huh?” Brianna’s soft voice pulls me back to reality.
I grin, sheepishly. “On a scale of one to ten with ten being equal to being scraped over Grimace Rock? I’d give it a nine.” Then I bat my eyelashes at her. “I need a few minutes to space out. Don’t turn me in. Pretty pleeeeease?”
She throws her head back and laughs. Full-on belly laugh. Then she pushes at my shoulder. “That’s what works for little girls.”
“Sexist.”
“Never. In fact, would you like to go on a date tonight?” Brianna’s face remains calm, as if girls ask guys out all the time.
Daaaamn. That’s hot. I’m in. “Why yes I would, fair queen. Where?”
She pouts her lips. “A queen should not do all the work.”
I smile and bow.
As Brianna and I walk underneath the neon-lit awning and open the doors, a blast of stale popcorn and pizza hits us. The sounds of bowling balls thudding against wood lanes ricochet off the concrete walls.
I head straight to the counter where a Blue Hair waits to ring us up. She’s gotta be in her seventies. According to her nametag, she’s Gladys.
I say, “Hi ma’am. We’d like to rent a lane for the next couple of hours. We’ll need the works—shoes, balls, gutter blockers.” I shift my eyes back and forth before giving a loud stage-whisper. “She’s a total newb.”
“Well, I’ll be darned.” She winks at Brianna and doesn’t even acknowledge me. “You let old Gladys fix you up. The first experience is always important.”
Brianna laughs and thp. umps my elbow. “We don’t need gutter blockers.”
I give her a wide-eyed innocent look. “Are you sure?”
She puts her hands on those killer hips.
“She doesn’t need the blockers,” I say. “I guess we’ll only need the shoes and balls.”
Gladys laughs a raspy smoker’s laugh and rings me up. “Okay, sugar. You’re lane thirty. You let old Gladys know if you need anything else. You can pick out your shoes over there, and the balls are across from the lanes.”
We grab retro shoes that reek of disinfectant. Then we head to our lane. We’ve got the last one, by the wall. It’s been painted graffiti style with a mural of old famous
people like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Buddy Holly.
I turn around and fling my arm toward a rack of balls a few feet away. “Why don’t you step into my office?”
“I’d love to,” Brianna says.
Feeling like a king, I walk over and check out the goods. I grab a lime-green fifteen-pounder. Brianna hovers over a couple