Angel’s mouth stops mid chew and then she puckers her lips and her eyes widen. “Sure,” she says, but it drags on longer than a normal one syllable word. “But, not today because I’ve got a thing to go to.”
“Yeah, uh, me too.” Blood rushes to my face. “Maybe another day.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The clock moves slowly. Tick. Three o’clock can’t get here any sooner. Tock. Only ten long minutes until Autumn graces Evan with her presence, until he sees her beautiful face again.
Tick. His hands haven’t stopped shaking, clammy, and his heart hasn’t rested since Friday night. She lingers in his dreams, day and night, tantalizing and surreal. Tock. It’s pretty bad when the pastor at church calls you out as being a space-case. Caleb won’t let that one go and Evan will probably hear about it until the end of days.
Evan taps the brake and the car comes to a stop one block from her house, the perfect vantage point to watch and wait without seeming stalker-like. Tick. It’s not necessarily being a stalker when they have a planned date. He’s just early—eagerly early. It’s not even a date. So really, he shouldn’t get his hopes up. Tock.
Such a hot girl probably has hundreds of guys waiting for the opportunity to ask her out. Tick. Maybe she’s humoring him, or just interested in helping the homeless. Evan can be persuasive when it comes to volunteer work, when recruiting people to help others. Tock. That’s probably the only reason she agreed to this—not to see him.
Evan’s not the only one early. Up ahead, a beautiful figure emerges from the fog walking alongside her bike. She walks with long strides through the gate to the yard and drops her bike against the pole on the front porch.
Evan’s pulse quickens and leaves him light-headed. If he pulls up to the house now, this early, it might seem like he’s too eager. He should wait. Maybe even wait ‘til a few minutes after three.
He holds his breath and releases the brake. A few minutes early won’t hurt.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OMG. He’s here. I sneak a peek out the window next to the door. His hands are stuffed into his front pockets and he shuffles his feet. Blond hair hangs in his eyes. A shiver races down my arm before I open the door. “Hey Evan.”
“You must be psychic.” His face glows.
“Nah, I saw you pull up. You ready to meet Grams?” I tug his arm into the house. “She’s waiting in the kitchen. Hope the smoke doesn’t bother you. I totally told her not to smoke in the house, but I think she did a little bit ago.” Thanks once again Grams for stinking up the house.
“Oh, it’s alright. We aren’t staying long, right?” He hesitates.
I laugh. “It’ll just take a sec. She wants to say hi.”
Grams steps into the hall before we make it to the kitchen. Her face scrunches into a smile, making it pucker up more than normal. With her raspy voice, she says, “Hello Evan.” And gives him a hug.
Flippin’ double embarrassing.
Then he hugs her back, so maybe not so embarrassing. “It’s so nice to meet you,” he says. “May I call you Grams?”
A laugh thick with phlegm escapes her. Complete mortification runs over me. Times like this, more than any, I wish she would quit smoking. “Of course, dear.” She holds him away from her and pats his shoulder—like they’ve known each other forever.
“Are you two for real? You make me want to gag.” I crinkle my nose.
Evan looks at me. “Why?”
“Uh, you two are being all mushy and stuff and you just met. Enough with the niceties. Can we go?”
Evan blushes and then smiles.
Grams touches his arm this time. “Don’t you listen to her, dear. Grandmas like hugs once in a while.” She sticks her tongue out at me.
“Whatever. Get your fill now then ‘cause you know you’re not getting any hugging from me.”
“This is true. So what do you say, Evan? Give this old lady another hug?”
“No problem.” And he does.
“Okay freaks. Break it up! Evan, let’s go.” I pull the two apart—which is very weird and creepy.
“Where are you going?” Grams asks.
“Evan volunteers at the Share Home. I said I would help.”
“You did?” She steps toward me and puts her hand on my forehead for the second time today. “Are you sure that you aren’t an imposter? Autumn doesn’t help when she doesn’t have to.”
Sigh. I grab my jacket off the chair. “Bye Grams. Have a nice evening.”
“It was nice to meet you Grams,” Evan says all heartfelt.
“It was a pleasure. Come back anytime.” She waves.
We walk out the door. “I’m sorry about that,” I say.
“About what?”
“Never mind.” I climb through the passenger side door of his car.
“Have you ever been to the Share Home?” he says about halfway down the road.
“No. Oh! I was totally going to ask you, what exactly is it? I know it’s a place for bums and stuff, but what do they do there?”
Evan’s chest rises like an inflating balloon, and he clenches the steering wheel. Then the balloon deflates and he relaxes his grip. “I guess some think it’s a place for bums. A bum, in my mind, is a person who lives off of others because he doesn’t want to work. I’m sure the Share Home gets a few bums every so often, but for the most part, they house people who are misplaced or are in a difficult part of their lives. Homeless people.” He stops the car at a stop sign. All clear. He continues down the road. “Some of the people have worked hard their entire lives, yet, just had some bad luck, got laid-off, fired, in an accident, or whatever—”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. Truly, I thought that bum meant homeless person.”
“Oh, that’s okay. Sometimes I get a little defensive.” He glances over at me for a moment, letting me know it really is okay.
“So, what will we be doing there?”
We turn down C Street, which connects to Broadway. “Today, we’re helping with dinner.” He parks the car on the street and turns off the ignition. “Ready?”
“Is it hard?”
“Which part?” He turns his body to face me. “Yes and no. No in that it’s not hard work. Besides, the head coordinator will tell us what to do: filling food trays, opening cans, chopping vegetables. Those sorts of things.”
“So what’s the hard part?”
“It’s not easy to see people in such dire need. To see the sorrow on their faces is sometimes the most difficult.” He pulls the keys out of the ignition. “But know that things will get better for people if they want it to. God has a plan and it is a wonderful plan.” His face lights up. “It’s a great feeling to be able to help people. It feels even better when you can make them smile. Don’t be afraid to talk to them and be positive. They may grumble back, but eventually they will come around. And if they don’t, so what. At least you tried.”
I nod that I understand him, but am now freaked out of my mind that he totally just talked out loud to me about God. Nobody but Grams has ever done that. I’m also freaked out about seeing so many homeless people.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. The anxiety is building already and I’m not even out of the car yet. What do I say to people like this? Are they going to stink? Will they have their teeth? Will they be tweakers like my mom? Grumpy people might make me angry or maybe even cry, if they’re real mean. Will I be able to hold it in and be nice?
Side by side, we walk up the alley to the back of the three story building. To anyone who doesn’t know any better, it looks like a regular apartment building. Made of wood, painted beige, windows evenly placed every few feet across the front and side, and a giant outdoor courtyard makes it blend in with the surrounding buildings. But, the long line stretching out the front door of people wearing layers of clothing makes it stand out as a homeless shelter.
A delicious aroma of cooking meat and spices hits me when we enter the building. Evan leads me down a na
rrow hallway to a small room with lockers, a table and chairs. “We can leave our things in this locker.” He puts his jacket in the locker at the end of the row. I do the same.
“You haven’t said a word since the car. Are you feeling okay?” he asks.
“Just nervous I guess.”
“You’ll be just fine. The fact that you care about how you’ll do means a lot. That’s all that matters.”
“Really? Because I can probably screw things up.”
“Ha! I’ll tell you some stories later. I’m sure you can’t screw things up as much as some people have in the past. We’re just serving food, not performing brain surgery or anything.” He grabs my arm. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to Alice. She knows everything.”
Alice, a stout woman with rosy cheeks, shakes my hand. “If you’re nervous about meeting new people,” she tells me, “I’ll put you back here in the kitchen. You can help me wash dishes. How’s that sound?”
Fun, just what I want to do—wash dishes. It’s better than talking to people, though. So much for Rule Number Six. At least I can follow Rules One, Two and Three. “Sure. I can wash dishes.”
Alice’s bursting laughter makes me think I just told her the funniest joke ever. “Follow me then.”
We walk into a large wash room in the back of the kitchen.
“Now, I don’t expect you to get all these done in this shift. So don’t worry your little heart out about it. Dishes are a never ending battle around here. We serve over a thousand meals every day.”
“Wow.” Stacks and stacks of serving trays, large steel mixing bowls, baking sheets, and weird metal contraptions that must have some important purpose litter the counter spaces surrounding the water basins.
Alice takes several minutes to go over the procedures of how to wash a dish. The homeless people eat off cleaner dishes than I do. That’s saying something because Grams loves a clean dish.
“Any questions?” she asks after bombarding me with enough dish cleaning tips to fill a basin.
“Nope. I don’t think so.”
“I’ll be right out front.” She points to the front of the kitchen and walks away, leaving me alone in dirty dish land.
Right. I brush the bangs off my forehead and exhale. This is more than I’m up to, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s not like I can just walk out. I may not be following my rules like I should be, but I can at least pretend to be nice. They don’t have tons of employees to do all these dishes. Someone has to do them eventually.
Not even a dent is made from the twenty-ish minutes of hard work I’ve put forth. Hot, way hot, moisture clings to me. I finish loading the tray with clean dishes to be sterilized, peel off the dish gloves, revealing soggy finger tips, and wipe the sweat off my face with a paper towel. Every time I get through one stack, two more are brought back by a scrawny boy who could use a bottle of shampoo and acne cream. At least the trays for the sterilizer thing are filled, giving me a break to go find Alice.
Voices from the dining room echo down the hallway, sounding like a packed house at a concert or an assembly in the gym at school. I zig and zag down the hall so not to disturb any of the busybodies running back and forth with hands full of stuff—food, dishes, napkins.
Alice hunches over the front of the counter. Volunteers stand at a buffet style table serving food onto plates held out by the hungry. The line still reaches out the door. The entire dining room is packed. Food items are spilled on the counter top, steam rises from trays being pulled out of the giant ovens, lettuce and bread are being chopped.
I make my way to the front, trying not to slip on the slick floors or walk in front of anyone that might be in a hurry. But they are all in a hurry.
“Alice?” I tap her on the shoulder.
She doesn’t hear me, slops a big spoonful of mashed potatoes onto a tray and says, “Hey there George. How ya doin today?”
The man holding the tray grunts and wipes his mouth hidden beneath a yellow beard, his long fingernails caked black. “I’ve had better days.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. There’s always tomorrow, ya know.”
George nods his head and continues down the buffet.
I tap Alice on the shoulder again. She doesn’t notice me before slapping another gob of potatoes onto a tray.
“Hi Alice,” a little girl holding the tray says. “Look. Today I lost this tooth.” Her grin widens to expose a gaping hole in the front of her teeth.
“Woah! Tamara, that’s great news, darlin. I didn’t even know you had a loose tooth. You know what that means don’t ya?”
Tamara nods her head so that her two pig-tails bounce back and forth. She puts her tray on the table and jumps up and down. “Yes! It means the tooth fairy is coming!”
“We’ll see.” A woman with dark circles under her eyes standing next to Tamara pushes the girl’s tray further down the line. “Now move along, baby. There’s people waiting.” She gives Alice a sorrowful glance.
When the girl is halfway down the line, Alice pulls a dollar bill out of her pocket, reaches over the potatoes and stuffs it into the woman’s hand.
“No. She doesn’t need the tooth fairy. Really, it’s a childish thing.” The woman shakes her head, pushing the dollar back.
“Tamara is a child. So, it’s a perfect situation hon.” Alice serves the woman mashed potatoes.
“Thank you so much—” Her voice cracks. She moves down the line.
I don’t know whether to cry or laugh. My eyes feel thick, yet the ache in my cheeks tell me that there must be a smile on my face. The tooth fairy never forgot a single tooth I ever lost. It was the most exciting time to wake in the morning to find a dollar next to my bed. Easiest money I ever made, too. To think, this little girl may not have had that kind of excitement for only one single dollar.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Evan watching me, and probably laughing at me, too.
I swallow the knot in my throat and snap my head in his direction, fully prepared with a smart-ass remark that would come to me instantaneously if I were witty like that. He isn’t laughing at all, but just watching me. A red glow flushes over his face. He blinks, then turns back to the person waiting for a dinner roll standing in front of him.
“Alice?” This time she hears me.
“Oh, yes, hon. Are you finished with all those trays?”
I nod.
“Okay. I’ll show you how to turn that sucker on.” She turns toward the scrawny kid standing a few feet away, wiping down a counter. “Hey Jerod. Come slop the taters. I’ll be right back.”
***
Sweaty face and hair. Not an attractive look for me, but what I’m dealing with. The steam from the dishwasher kills me. It’s so hot back here that I can hardly breathe. I need to get some fresh air. Maybe Alice has a better job for me.
I step into the restroom to freshen up before seeking her out. The reflection in the mirror isn’t as horrid as I imagined. Nothing a bit of powder on the nose and a brush through the hair can’t fix. Thank God.
I squeeze through the wall of odorific people waiting in line for their dinner. “Hey Alice.” I approach her in the dining room.
“Oh good. Here, help me with these, will ya?” She hands me a dish bucket full of cups and dinner trays covered in food particles.
“Sure. Uh, do you have any other jobs for me? I mean, I can help out front now if you want.”
“Dishes are getting to ya, huh?”
I nod.
“Most people don’t last as long as you did. Sure, hon, you can help Evan over there. He’s serving up food.” She wipes off the table with a damp cloth reeking of bleach. “Just give that bucket to Jerod, would ya?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“No, thank you. We really do appreciate your help, darlin’.”
The greasy-hair kid takes the bucket from me when I walk behind the food buffet.
“Thanks, Jerod.”
“Yup.” That’s the most I’ve heard the kid say al
l day. At the end of the buffet, Evan carves a big hunk of ham under the heat lamps.
“Evan.”
“Oh, hey there Autumn. How you holding up? Are you tired yet?” He stops carving and turns toward me. The heat seems to be getting to him too. A film of moisture covers his skin.
“Nah, I’m not tired. Well, I’m tired of dishes, but not tired in general.” He’s not saying anything and he’s smiling so I’m probably not making any sense. This must be his polite expression that’s glued to his face when he doesn’t know what to say. “Uh, Alice said to come help you.”
“Oh.” He laughs and stops staring at me to look at the ham and the knife in his hand and the floor and then back at me. “Okay. Sorry. I was just daydreaming or something. Did she say what she wanted you to do?”
“Nope. She just said that you would find me something to help you with.”
He looks around. The line waits on him to serve the ham. He goes back to carving again and meticulously places a slice on a plate that is being held out for him. “Sorry about the wait,” he murmurs to the man with the plate.
The old man winks at me. “No problem.”
“Why don’t you take over the rolls right there.” He points with the knife to a tray full of dinner rolls. “Wash your hands first and use the tongs to put a roll on each plate.”
“I think I can handle that.” I turn to wash my hands in the back. Before I get two steps a woman’s voice calls my name. “Autumn. You-hoo, Autumn.”
Oh God. Please no. Not now, not here. I take another step to get away from the voice. Maybe I’m just hearing things.
“Fuck gurrl. Aren’t you missy goody-goody helping us poor folk out an all.”
I turn, slowly. Jacinda, of all the people in the entire world, stands with a plate in her hand. Her clothes are covered in filth, her hair is in mats, her face covered with dirt. I wave and turn back to wash my hands. Please go away, please, please.
“Is that any ways to tweet ya mudder?”
I move my head the other way to glance at Evan. He looks at me, large eyes of pure good, with the most non-judging expression on his face—blank. He’s got to be thinking something. It’s probably something terrible. He probably thinks my mother is a crazy freak and I’m a horrible daughter for ignoring her right now. She’s going to make a scene no matter what I do.
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