COOL BEANS

by Erynn Mangum

  Tail wag, so I take that as a yes.

  “You know what? We’ve been working out very well. Let’s get ice cream tonight, okay?”

  “Roo!” Calvin jumps off my lap in a happy dog dance. I know some people who argue that dogs can’t understand English. I figure their dogs are just a lot dumber than Calvin, because there is a definite understanding of the words ice cream.

  We decide on cookies ’n’ cream, with the added healthy benefits of vitamin C and antioxidants in the form of strawberries and chocolate on mine. I settle on the sofa in front of the TV, trying to be subtle about waiting up for Jen.

  Good grief. It’s like ten thirty now. And on a weeknight, for goodness’ sake!

  I flick the TV on and stare mindlessly at the persistent Home Shopping Network saleslady. “And if you buy this gorgeous fourteen-carat gold, unbelievably beautiful . . . isn’t it delectable?” she asks some invisible person off camera. “If you buy the limited-edition bracelet, we’ll also send you this pair of matching earrings.”

  The problem with jewelry on HSN is (a) I can’t afford a monthly plan of thirty-four easy payments of $67.99; and (b) it all looks like costume jewelry to me, despite the saliva-inducing adjectives the saleslady is using. Seriously, is she selling a bracelet or a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints?

  Calvin harrumphs, which means he want me to change the channel.

  I mash the remote. Gilmore Girls is on, and we both smile. This show is a favorite.

  12:07 p.m.

  No Jen.

  I squint through the peephole on our door for the twentieth time in five minutes. No Jen outside talking, no Jen inside sleeping, no Jen’s car parked in her parking spot.

  Worry gave way to panic long ago. I tried calling her cell phone at ten forty-five and got a quick voice-mail pickup, which means it’s off. “What is the point of having a cell phone if you won’t answer it?” I ask my dog, sounding exactly like my mother used to when Zach was first learning how to drive.

  I start pacing in front of the door.

  “Travis is a nice guy,” I reassure Calvin. He’s not showing it, curled up on the couch and all, but he’s worried sick. “She’s very safe with him.” Too safe with him.

  Calvin closes his eyes.

  I look through the peephole again.

  Finally!

  Jen’s little sedan pulls into her spot. I watch her headlights turn off, and she climbs out of the car, slinging her purse over her shoulder.

  I am now faced with yet another dilemma: Do I stand here like I’ve obviously been waiting? Or hightail it to bed?

  I decide to join Calvin on the couch instead and stare back at Lorelai and Rory having a famous Gilmore Girls debate. Something about vegetables.

  “Hi, Maya,” Jen says, tiredly. She pulls her key out of the doorknob and joins me on the couch.

  “Hey.” I look at her curiously.

  “Sorry. We decided to go get coffee. You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?” She smiles like she already knows the answer. I shrug and smile back. “That’s sweet, Maya, but Travis is the perfect gentleman.”

  Yeah, I know.

  “How was coffee?” I ask, turning off the TV. Jack’s voice drifts back to my brain about coming clean with Jen, but I silence it. Just like I’ve been doing with my conscience.

  “Well, I actually got tea.”

  “No way. You?”

  She rolls her eyes at my sarcasm. “And it was very nice.”

  “You guys have been spending a lot of time together.”

  “Too much?” she immediately asks, gnawing on her bottom lip. It’s an irritating habit people have. Makes me want to hand them a chew toy or something so they save their lips from tooth scarring. It’s a very real deformity, and I know this because I saw an infomercial once on some miracle formula to get rid of the buildup of scar tissue on your lips.

  I shrug off her question. “I don’t know.”

  “Huh.” She stands and sighs. “Well, I’m exhausted, and my alarm is going off at six o’clock tomorrow morning. We have a staff meeting. Sweet dreams, Maya.” She heads to her room.

  I look at Calvin, who is completely out, and lean my head back on the couch. I hate how tight my chest gets anytime I’m around Jen now.

  The truth will make you free.

  I sigh. “Time for bed, Cal.” Sometimes I don’t like that still small voice at all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Look, Mom, it’s a spiderweb!” I yell.

  “Mm-hmm. That’s nice, dear.” Mom is not listening.

  “The itsy-bitsy SPIIIIDER went up the waterspout. Down came the RAAAAIN and washed the spider out!”

  I dump a huge bucket of water on the spiderweb, watching as the spider floats down a little river, hugging its legs into itself.

  “AUUUGH!”Zach comes running around the corner. “Maya! NOO! Do you have any idea how long it took for that spider to make that web?”

  I stare at him. He’s white as a sheet and kind of transparent.

  “It took foreverrrrrr….”

  “Uh, Zach?”

  “Oooooooohhhh.” He covers his face. “Why did you doooooooooo this?”

  I jerk awake.

  “ROOOOOOOO!”

  It’s pitch black.

  I relax back into the pillow. “Shut up, Cal,” I moan.

  Thursday, 2:24 a.m.

  “Calvin!”

  Once again, Jen is not happy.

  I hear her door bang open, and in two and a half seconds flat, she’s whipped my door open and startled Calvin so much that he yelps and crashes into my dresser.

  “Be. Quiet. Calvin.”

  There’s no forgiveness in Jen’s tone. She sends my beagle a withering look, glares at me, and then marches out of my room, slamming my door behind her.

  Calvin sits up and shakes his head slightly. Huffing, he lies down by the side of my bed and droops back asleep.

  I shut my eyes again.

  “Maya, you have to do something about that dog,” Jen says not so kindly the next morning. She’s dressed in a jet-black pencil skirt, a powder blue silky blouse, and three-inch heels. I sleepily eye the heels.

  I would definitely kill myself in those heels. It would probably be the first death by footwear ever, so maybe the Hudson Journal would run something on it.

  WOMAN BREAKS NECK IN HIGH-HEELED HORROR.

  “Maya!”

  I blink and look back at her. “Sorry, Jen. What were you saying?”

  Hey, she’s the one who dragged me out of bed this morning so we could “talk.” I try never to have a conversation before ten on my days off if I can help it.

  So I slouch at the table, wearing pink-hearted pajama pants and a bright pink cami. My hair is scrunched around my head in slept-on frizzies. I have both feet crossed Indian style on the chair, and there’s sleep scum half-blocking my vision.

  “The dog, Maya. Calvin cannot keep barking every single week like this.”

  “He probably hears something, Jenny.” I rub my cheek. “I mean, wouldn’t you rather he barked when he heard strange noises instead of just ignoring them? Maybe we’re about to be murdered in our beds every week, and he scares them off.”

  “That is doubtful,” Jen says, legal persona in place.

  I sleepily trace a design on the table. The object of the conversation is still asleep in my room.

  Dumb dog.

  Jen sits at the table with a bowl of some kind of trail-mix cereal. It’s turning the milk a light greenish-brown color. I wrinkle my nose. “What is that?”

  “Granola, Maya. It’s got oats, wheat germ, sunflower seeds, raisins, cranberries, spelt, and flaxseed.”

  “The milk’s green.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s tan.”

  I point. “That’s green.”

  She sighs.

  I shut up.

  “You eat what you want to eat, and I’ll eat what I want to eat,” she says staccato-like.

  This means I’ll eat Cocoa Puffs like a norm
al healthy human, and she can keep gnawing on that bowl of something that Tom Hanks would’ve eaten in Castaway, dredged up from the forest floor.

  Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the box for that cereal anywhere.

  “Hey, you went shopping!” I accuse, pointing a finger across the table.

  She looks at me guiltily.

  “Aha!”

  “Okay. I did. I’m sorry.” She lets her breath out. “I went last night before Bible study.”

  “I can’t believe you went completely against The Code.” I put my hand over my heart in reverence for our Sacred Trust of Roommates. “And I quote, Rule #12: ‘Should anyone go to the grocery store, she must inform the other party so as to make only one combined trip per week.’”

  Miss Legal Assistant penned the wording of The Code, in case you were wondering.

  “I’m sorry! Gosh, Maya.”

  “We happen to be completely out of Bertolli frozen dinners. And Pop-Tarts. And those little microwavable pizzas.”

  “We eat so healthy,” she notes dryly.

  “Hey, Pop-Tarts are fortified with vitamins, Jen. Plus, they’re like an American tradition. You can’t criticize Pop-Tarts. They’re right up there next to apple pie and partially hydrogenated corn syrup.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder what natural food tastes like?” She waves her spoon over her bowl.

  Uh-oh.

  Automatic rewind to six years ago. Travis was standing next to me at my all-time favorite ice-cream place in San Diego.

  “I’ll have the mocha mint cream in a chocolate-dipped cone, please,” I said.

  “Don’t you ever wonder what natural food tastes like?” Travis said to me.

  “No,” I tell Jen just like I had told Travis. “If God meant for us to eat only natural food, He would have stopped the creation of Krispy Kreme.”

  She sighs. “I’m just trying to be healthier.”

  “And I think that’s great. Why?”

  “Because, Maya. We’re not healthy. We live off instant meals and ice cream. That’s really bad for you.”

  There should be a law about bashing ice cream before eight in the morning.

  “Why now?” I rephrase the question.

  “I just …” she pauses and waves her spoon. “I just think it’s time. We’re twenty-four; we need to start protecting our metabolisms.”

  “I run,” I tell her. “And you’re skinny as a rail.”

  She sighs and finishes her all-natural sawdust. “I need to go. Wayne gets mad if I’m not early to staff meetings. Have a good day off, Maya.”

  Jen leaves.

  It’s one thirty, and I’ve been standing in this dressing room for the last thirty minutes staring at this exact same shirt. It’s blue and fitted and, if I were being completely unbiased, makes me look a lot more, um, curvy than I normally am.

  God didn’t endow me much, as my mother would say.

  “A good thing,” my father would retort. Dad wants boys to appreciate me for my character.

  I think if he’d known that most guys run the moment they find out about my daily caffeine intake, he wouldn’t have worried so much through my high school years.

  So, here I stand. Fuller on top and more confused in the head. The problem is, I don’t want people to think I’m trying too hard to get a boyfriend. At this point in the day, I don’t want a boyfriend Ever. With a capital E. Based on my excellent efforts at observation, boyfriends make you give up Cocoa Puffs, and you have to start eating dirt for cereal.

  I bet Jen never has ice cream the whole time she dates Travis.

  Seriously, is there a good life without Dreyer’s Thin Mint ice cream? I think not.

  Delight in a bowl.

  I sigh at the shirt. “Done.”

  After I change, I walk over to the cashier and pay a ridiculous amount for a synthetic top.

  I climb into my car and sigh at the clock. Days off are boring. Jen’s never home because her tightwad boss never lets her have any days off other than the weekend, and I always work all day on Saturday and drive to San Diego on Sunday.

  So, that means I have to entertain myself all day.

  Time for coffee.

  This is what solidifies me in American history as a complete and total dweeb: I go to work on my days off.

  It’s only to get my fix, but I still feel like a loser anytime I walk through the doors and my name is nowhere near the schedule.

  I park and walk in, inhaling. Yummy.

  Lisa, who works all the shifts I don’t have — so I never see her — is behind the counter. “Hi, Maya!” she greets me.

  Lisa is adorable. She’s twenty-two, about four foot eleven, with platinum-blond chin-length hair, huge gray eyes, and a perky personality. Lisa earns the most tips of anyone at Cool Beans.

  “Hey, Lisa, how’s it going?”

  “Great!”

  Tony the Tiger would be proud of her.

  “That’s good to hear.” I grin at her. It’s impossible not to smile around Lisa. She’s got more energy than Tigger on steroids. And while this could be due to the constant cup of espresso beside her, I think she has a lot of natural perk as well.

  “What can I make for you?”

  “Can I get an extra-large mocha with cinnamon and caramel?”

  “Give me two minutes.”

  Lisa rings up the total (minus my employee discount), and a couple of minutes later, I’m walking out the door cradling a to-go cup of cinnamony, sugary delight.

  Pink tulips meet me at the front door. Make that four bouquets. I pick up the etched-glass vase and walk into the apartment. A little card that matches the flowers is poking out of the bouquet.

  For the woman who has made this last week seem like a mere moment.

  I’m seriously considering pulling one of the tulips out and using it for a gagging device. Yuck!

  I set them on the counter instead.

  “Calvin!”

  I hear a frenzied yip from the bedroom, and my little beagle comes racing to meet me in the kitchen. “Napping?”

  Travis used to send tulips to me all the time, too. Since he went to Stanford, we spent our freshman year of college apart. Once a week, sometimes more, I’d open the door and find flowers with a sappy card attached to them. I used to find it romantic.

  Now I think it’s kind of gross. A muscle in my cheek starts to jump.

  I rub Calvin’s ears, frowning.

  Walking back into my bedroom, I open the closet door and pull out a big brown box from the top shelf.

  Calvin plops on the bed next to me, and I open the box, finding the little blue shoe box near the top. The first thing inside the shoe box is a white ruled sheet of paper dated my junior year of high school.

  My sweet Maya,

  I’m going to see you in two hours, but I just wanted to leave a note in your locker letting you know how much I love you! Have a great afternoon!

  Love,

  Travis

  “I know. Sappy, right?” I say to Calvin. He just looks at me.

  Underneath the piece of paper is a birthday card. A sunflower decorates the front and on the inside is printed, “Happy birthday, sunshine.”

  Travis’s handwriting is underneath.

  Maya,

  Happy eighteenth birthday! Well, you are finally legal, my love. Welcome to the world of voting and… well, voting. © I love you so much, and I’m so proud of you for choosing to do what you love this coming year in school. It will be hard being at Stanford without you, but we’ll definitely see each other at breaks. I can’t wait until we’re together forever — no separations coming!

  I love you, birthday girl!

  Travis

  I close the card, remembering. My birthday was not a happy occasion that year. Both of us knew we weren’t going to be living in the same town soon, but we just ignored it. Which was fine with me. But not with him. So he had to go and write it in a birthday card and ruin my whole day.

  In all, there are fifty-three notes,
letters, cards, and scraps of paper from Travis that I collected over the four years we dated. There are ticket stubs from movies and concerts and a couple of dead tulip remnants. Around three dozen pictures of the two of us are neatly stacked together and rubber-banded. About a year ago I got rid of the stuffed animals he’d bought me when my church was having a drive for our local Christian homeless shelter, but for some reason I couldn’t throw away the cards and pictures.

  I pull the rubber band off the pictures and rifle through them, frowning. Me as a blond. It wasn’t a good look. My hair fell down over my shoulders in blond waves like Jessica Simpson’s, but my skin looked ashy from the color difference. My skin is too red-toned for blond hair.

  My once-favorite picture of the two of us — I am wearing his high school football letterman jacket, standing in front of him; his arms are wrapped around my shoulders; both of us are full-out laughing — drops from the stack.

  Man, Travis hasn’t changed at all. Same blond hair, same blue eyes, same tall, athletic build. He led our high school football team to the California state championships our senior year.

  He used to tell me he was going to go to Stanford, play four years of college ball, get drafted into the NFL, marry me, and move wherever God led us.

  He did go to Stanford, but instead of getting drafted, he tore his ACL in his right knee right before Christmas freshman year. He tried out for the team as soon as the doctor let him the following spring, but he nearly tore it again in practice. He never played again.

  And as far as that Christmas went …

  I put the pictures back in a stack and wrap the rubber band around them, sighing. It felt so good, you know? That feeling of belonging to someone … almost.

  Calvin nudges my free hand, dropping his head on my knee. He looks up at me with his sad brown eyes, as if he’s asking, Aren’t I enough?

  “You’re not, bud.” I rub his ears and reach for my Bible.

  There’s no biblical evidence that Jesus ever had a girlfriend, but I’m counting on Him being sympathetic to this. Because as much as I hate to admit it, as much fun as I make of Jen being all starry eyed, as much as I get grossed out by Travis’s love notes to her …

  I think I miss it.

  I open the Bible and flip to Isaiah 40, but instead, chapter 41 catches my attention. “For I am the LORD your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you.’”