clusters of silverware.
“Yeah. Good guy. Drives truck twelve. Doesn’t talk much, but he’s not bad.”
Kim gasped. “Dude, he’s a garbage man?”
Hal frowned at her. “There somethin’ wrong with that?”
I looked up at him. “No. Not at all. I’m just…surprised.”
Hannah glanced back at us. “See? That’s Alicia Long. She was a year ahead of me in school. She got a few local modeling jobs during our senior year and decided to chase her big modeling dreams right out of town. She’s been doing local stuff in Seattle for the last few years, because nobody in L.A. or New York wanted her.”
My eyes were bugging out of my head. “What? Are you kidding?”
Hannah nodded and found our plates, which had been set under the heat lamp behind her. She placed them in front of each of us before moving on to collect the ketchup and mustard bottles. “I guess she got a rich old man to be her boyfriend a couple of years ago, and he paid to fly her to both cities for a few months so she could get signed. But there were no takers. Rumor has it, she cursed out an agent in one of the agencies, and they blacklisted her in a bunch of L.A. agencies. Alicia always was a real bitch.”
“Sounds like our girl.” Kim dug into her grilled cheese sandwich.
“Yeah, and I heard that when she went to New York, she told all of the agents that she wouldn’t work for less than what the big-time models earn.” Hannah laughed. “She said she was the next big face, and that they would regret it if they didn’t represent her. But from what I can tell, her modeling career hasn’t exactly taken off in Seattle, because my friend Tracy saw her in a restaurant there. She’s a waitress.”
“Hostess.” My voice came out hoarse.
“Right,” Hannah quipped. “Anyway, it won’t matter, eventually.”
“Why not?” Betsy dipped one of her fries into some ketchup.
“Because she just has to settle down with the right rich guy, and then her working days are over. That’s always been her plan.” Hannah refilled Hal’s coffee cup. “She’s never been shy about telling everyone around here that she was going to marry up.”
I nearly choked. “Who says shit like that?”
“Alicia Long does.” Hannah gave us a pointed look. “She was always very forthright with her plan. And she had the beauty to make some poor schmuck fall for it.”
“But what about the volunteering, and the soup kitchens, and the reading to the elderly in her grandma’s nursing home?” I put my head in my hands. It was confirmed. I was officially right about Alicia all along.
Hannah gave us a sideways glance. “I was the head of the humanitarian committee in school, and Alicia Long did not lower herself to do charity. And her grandma lives with her parents.”
Kim paused, her sandwich an inch from her mouth. “What made her so rotten?”
“Alicia always resented her folks for being poor. Well, they weren’t exactly poor, by my standards. My parents are poor. My dad hurt his back at work in the paper mill ten years ago, and he’s been unemployed ever since.” Hannah went back to wiping down the countertop. “Alicia’s parents have a house over on Dakota Avenue, and other than needing a new front porch, it’s a decent place. Alicia was always bent out of shape because they didn’t buy her a car when she turned sixteen. She had to borrow their minivan, just like we all had to do when we were kids. But Alicia punished her parents for it.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, she stopped letting them come to school functions. She called them ‘Joyce’ and ‘Roy’ for a while, too, and made them say they were her aunt and uncle. Her dad was injured in the Army way before he got married, so he walks with a limp. She used to make fun of him behind his back when he came to any school function.”
Betsy grimaced. “She was the exact type of girl I hated in high school.”
“I know, right?” Hannah topped off her coffee cup. “Alicia called him ‘gimpy.’ And she hated the fact that her dad was a garbage man. She used to say he stank like trash all the time, even after he showered.”
I felt a pang of sympathy for Roy Long. The poor guy was hauling trash every day, then had to come home to an ungrateful teenage Alicia. I pushed my plate away. “I can’t believe Gabe is marrying