She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,47

made no comment at all. The door had been locked, yet somehow, someone still managed to get in and out unnoticed.

I spent a lot of time at the diner, more time than I probably spent at home. Auntie Jo continued to insist the job kept me off the streets and out of trouble, and Krendal had no trouble finding work for me. Back in January, when I turned sixteen, he even started showing me how to work the grill. He had taught me the deep frier the year before, and the year before that I had learned the proper way to prep fresh fruit and vegetables. I was grateful for anything that took me away from bussing tables and doing dishes, although I had yet to grill a burger remotely close to the quality Krendal churned out. “Too red, too thick, too flat, too brown,” he’d shout at me, his hearing long gone. Even with the two monstrous hearing aids he began wearing last year, he could make out nothing but the loudest sounds.

There were four people at the counter, six more in the booths, with Gerdy waiting and covering hostess duties.

Gerdy McCowen had moved to Pittsburgh last year with her folks. She was one year behind me at Brentwood High School, just a freshman. Outgoing and pretty, she had no trouble making friends and had taken a job at Krendal’s to save up for college—she wanted to go to Brown. Lurline talked about retiring on account of her bad knees. Gerdy was good, not as good as Lurline, and certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Auntie Jo in her prime. She had a pretty smile, though, and even prettier legs. Dunk called her a plain Jane, but that didn’t stop him from staring at her whenever he came in to harass me. Krendal caught me staring at her on more than one occasion, too. This usually earned me one of his smiles, followed by a grunt, then a thunderous, “Dishes! Dishes!” or some other push toward busywork.

Gerdy was waiting for me to ask her out, something I knew I probably should do, but the right moment had yet to present itself (although she would tell you the right moment had presented itself plenty, and I just went chicken shit). Maybe the homecoming dance. That was coming up.

I tried hard to forget Stella, I really did, but she was never far from my thoughts—particularly today, August 8.

“You’re wasting water! Turn that off!” Krendal shouted, passing through the kitchen to the small office in the back. He had put on a lot of weight in the past few years. I was standing in front of the large three-compartment aluminum sink washing the dishes from the first wave of the dinner rush. The clock above the prep station read 5:31 p.m.

I had to leave soon.

I picked up the last plate from the rack on my left and soaked it in the hot water. As I rinsed the suds away, Gerdy came in with a bus bin containing four more plates, six glasses, and assorted silverware. She shrugged, smiled, and set it down beside me before heading back out front. My eyes lingered on her backside as she strutted toward the swinging door, and I had to force myself to look away. I thought of Auntie Jo in that same uniform. That did the trick.

“Mr. Krendal! I gotta get out of here for a few minutes. I need to run home and check on Auntie Jo!” I shouted, dumping the contents of the bus bin into the water.

Krendal’s head appeared around the side of the office door. “How is Jo?”

I started to answer before I realized that he actually heard me. My eyes went to his left ear, and I noticed that the thick beige hearing aid on that side had been replaced with a smaller white one. When he caught me looking at it, he said, “New model. Doctor recommended. Not sure I like it, though. Most of the conversations I heard today were not worth hearing. Politics, war, hunger, and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Sometimes the world is better under a dull hum.”

I started pulling the dishes from the soapy water, dipping each in the rinse bin before placing it on the drying rack. “She’s getting worse, I think. She won’t talk about it, so it’s hard to tell. She’s moving so slow, though. The doctor said he increased the chemo on this round, so decreased energy is to be expected. She