Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender

by Lisa Greenwald

  “There’s someone good in our high school?” Justine mocked. “I never knew.”

  “Jalen Davis has gotten really hot,” Laurel said. “Honestly.”

  “Well, it’s worth a try.” I smiled.

  Anjali, Lindsay, Laurel, and Caitlin all ordered the Lucky Lemon.

  “I’m so excited,” Caitlin said to the others, passing out the cups. “I feel like this is going to change our lives, you guys.”

  Justine and I looked at each other and turned away from them, laughing to ourselves.

  “Is this real life?” I asked her.

  “I think so,” she said, high-fiving me.

  MIA

  “You look really nice today,” Dennis said a few mornings later.

  Justine and I were loyal to the routine we’d developed over the past few weeks. She’d drop me at the shop, I’d make my smoothie, she’d get an iced coffee, and then we’d take the truck to the spot between the beach and the baseball fields.

  “I do?” I looked down at my outfit—a black tank top and cutoffs.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like more awake. Did you get more sleep last night or something?”

  “I don’t know, Doctor Dennis.” I laughed, putting all the ingredients into the blender. I thought about how I’d weighed myself that morning, how I’d lost four pounds. It wasn’t a crazy amount, but I was proud of the progress. I liked how I didn’t need to lie down on my bed to get these cutoffs to zip. “How do you notice this stuff?”

  He typed something on the computer. “I just do.”

  He looked over at me and smiled.

  “Well, um, thanks.” I pushed the Blend button and felt my phone vibrating in my pocket.

  Alexis: You guys! Just saw Anjali’s Insta of herself with your smoothie and the truck! What is happening? You guys are like famous!

  I finished making the smoothie and responded to her text.

  Mia: I don’t even know! People like our smoothies. Text later. Miss u. xox

  “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together,” Dennis said, staring at the computer. “Marilyn Monroe.”

  “What?” I asked with my back to him, about to pour the smoothie into a cup.

  “Let’s just say I’ve also taken an interest in your inspirational love quotes,” he said. “The Mobile Cones Instagram has been following a bunch of those accounts.”

  I poured the smoothie into a cup and some of it dripped down my hand.

  “Dennis!” I screeched, and ran over to him to look at the computer. “For real? Everyone usually makes fun of me for liking this stuff.”

  He nodded, all sure of himself. “I like it.” He looked up at me. “Interesting perspectives.”

  I hugged him like it was a totally normal thing, something we did all the time. He didn’t hug back; he sort of just sat there and let me hug him.

  “If you’re taking an interest in my losing vice-presidential candidates, I have to take an interest in your, um, interests,” he said, pulling away. “As eclectic as they may be.”

  “Eclectic?” I laughed. “Look how many followers those accounts have! I’m not the only one.”

  “Okay, okay.” Dennis smiled. “You’re right.”

  Seth wasn’t a baby elephant in my mind anymore.

  He was merely a kangaroo.

  JUSTINE

  Athena Ma and all the lifeguards from the Bridgefield pool were waiting for us when we got to our spot the next morning.

  “Justine, my girl!” Athena yelled, high-fiving me.

  We’d known each other since nursery school, but we were never really friends-friends. She was super athletic, and I was, well, super not athletic.

  “Hi,” I replied. “Good morning. FYI—I’m not totally awake yet.”

  “Wake up! Wake up!” She put her arms over her head and started stretching. “I got my guards here, and we need to get to work, protecting the young swimmers of Bridgefield.”

  “So I’d suggest the Pineapple Power Plunge,” Mia said, leaning on the counter. “Pineapple, cantaloupe, mango, spinach, crushed ice, protein powder, almond milk.”

  “You guys hear that?” Athena called back to the lifeguards; they were all leaning on each other, looking half-asleep with sunglasses on.

  “Sounds good,” another lifeguard replied. I’d seen him around the pool, but I didn’t know his name. He went to Oakridge High School.

  The rest of them nodded. “Whatever Athena wants,” Zara Sabell said. “Chase, grab one for me. I’m going back to my car.”

  Chase and Zara were one of the Bridgefield couples who would probably end up getting married one day, staying in Bridgefield forever, sending their kids to the schools. They were, like, counting the days until they could get a minivan and volunteer at the town firefighter parade.

  “Okay, so six Pineapple Plunge whatevers,” Athena said. “Thanks so much.”

  A few of the lifeguards went back to their cars, and Athena did jumping jacks while she waited for the smoothies.

  “I need them to wake up, feel more pumped to work, ya know.” She talked to us through the truck window while we made the smoothies in the back. “They’re just kind of lazy.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mia replied. “She’s so hard-core,” she said to me under her breath.

  I nodded. “Yup.”

  We walked with the smoothies and handed two to each lifeguard who was still waiting.

  “I heard about you and Seth,” Athena said as she turned to walk away. “You’re lucky you’re done with him. He’s scum.”

  Mia jolted back. We’d never heard Athena talk like this.

  “Trust me. He was supposed to be on my lifeguard staff this summer, and he bailed at the last minute, something about college visits.” She rolled her eyes. “BS. Total BS.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been trying to tell her he’s no good.”

  “Yeah. You can do much better. And you look great! Have you been working out?” Athena asked her.

  “Kind of,” Mia said.

  Yeah, right—if walking back and forth in the truck counted as working out, and laps around the bases on the field some mornings. But whatever. She did look like she had lost weight, but not, like, too thin. Good thin.

  “Thanks for the smoothies, ladies.”

  After Athena and the lifeguards left, we had a steady stream of customers. A day camp, some of the moms, even the staff of a local accounting office getting provisions for an “off-site.” They made it sound so important.

  I was at the front of the truck scrubbing the window at the end of the day. It was smudged from all the people leaning up against it, and thinking about all the sweat and germs on there thoroughly grossed me out. I decided not to think about it anymore.

  I was starting to realize how good I was at controlling what I thought about and what I didn’t think about. Was that a marketable skill? Maybe I could offer training sessions or motivational speeches about it. I mean, we were all hiding something. We were all trying to forget about one thing and focus on another thing. It was basically a fact of life.

  “Hey, Justine.”

  I jumped.

  Seth was standing right in front of me. Wet hair and a popped-collar green polo like he was sailing on his own yacht.

  My palms started to itch. “Oh, uh, hey.”

  “It’s Seth.”

  Really? He thought I didn’t know who he was?

  “I know who you are.” I kept scrubbing.

  “Oh. You seemed, like, confused.” He laughed for a second, so I did too, which made the whole thing feel even more awkward.

  “Here for a snow cone?” I asked, out of necessity for something to say, and hopes to speed up the interaction.

  “Yeah, actually.”

  Was Mia not hearing this? I had no idea where she was or what she was doing.

  Seth looked at his phone while I told him the flavors. “Pineapple, mango, strawberry, peach, rhubarb…pretty much anything, really.”

  “Uh.” He l
ooked up and it was obvious he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I glared at him. He was such a doofus. I’d never be able to fully understand why Mia loved him so much.

  “You have blueberry?” he asked finally.

  “Sure.” I glanced over at his phone. He was on Messenger. With Katie! “I, um, actually, we might have run out of that. Let me, uh, go and check the ingredients.”

  I rushed to the back of the truck and found Mia sitting on an egg crate, chatting on her phone with Seth.

  “Mia,” I hissed. “Seth is here.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Shhhh. What are you doing?”

  She showed me the phone. He’d written to Katie again, saying he was sorry he hadn’t responded about the girlfriend thing, and wondered when she was gonna call, and then he asked why she had just joined Facebook so recently.

  “I got nervous,” Mia whispered. “I think he’s getting really suspicious. How much longer can we do this? I had to make something up. I said my parents are really strict and wouldn’t let me do it until I was seventeen.”

  “But Katie’s on every other social media thing! That doesn’t even make sense,” I whispered back. “No one in the world would ever believe that. Why didn’t you discuss with me first?”

  “She joined them all at the same time,” she hissed. “He’s really here? Right now?”

  “Yes! He’s at the window…chatting with YOU!” I clenched my teeth and made the snow cone. “Just stay here.”

  “Hi, sorry,” I said when I got back to the front of the truck. “Here ya go.” I handed him his snow cone.

  He looked at his phone for a second and then back up at me. “Uh, how much is it?”

  “Three dollars.”

  “Really? You can charge way more than that, ya know?”

  I glared at him. “Thanks for telling me how to run my uncle’s business.”

  He laughed. “Um, okay, sorry.” He looked at me and then muttered under his breath, “You haven’t changed.”

  “I know I haven’t. It’s been less than two months since school ended. People don’t change that fast.” I glared at him. “In fact, I don’t think people change at all.”

  He hesitated for a second. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It feels like longer since school let out, though. Doesn’t it?”

  Was he really just standing there and continuing this conversation with me? Like he wanted to stay and talk? I didn’t get it.

  “I guess,” I said. “I need to get back to work.”

  Seth walked away, hesitated, and then turned around. “See ya, Justine.” He paused and slurped up some of his snow cone. “Tell Mia I say hey.”

  “Why should I?” I asked. He’d broken my best friend’s heart, and he was just living life like a normal person, like nothing had even happened. He was just ordering snow cones and wearing popped-collar shirts like he’d done nothing wrong!

  “I dunno,” he said, walking away and not looking back at me this time. “It’s just, like, a thing people say…whatever.”

  “So what happened?” Mia asked me as soon as he was gone.

  “Didn’t you hear?” I asked her, cleaning the counter.

  “Yeah, well, I heard him tell you to tell me to say hey.”

  “That was basically it,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to tell her anything more. She didn’t need to endure any more of the Seth Show. Who did he think he was, just showing up at our business like that? “Let’s just finish cleaning, okay? I’m really tired.”

  We cleaned quietly, not really talking, and I wondered if Mia was all mushy again after the Seth interaction. Was she going to take out the pen and sit by herself staring at it for the rest of the night? I looked for any signs of her emotions.

  Nothing was clear, though. She was just cleaning—spritzing the counter and putting ingredients into sealed containers, making sure the covers of the sorbets and yogurts were all on tight. The usual end-of-day stuff.

  “I don’t feel like stabbing myself right now,” she said after we were done. “That’s kind of a big deal.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t feel like stabbing yourself?” I asked, starting to drive back to the shop.

  “I mean, he’s not even a newborn elephant in my brain anymore. He’s not even a kangaroo. He’s, like, a standard poodle now? Maybe I’m getting over him,” she said. “Like, little by little. We’re doing great with the smoothies, and people are noticing I’ve lost weight, and I feel pretty okay. And I mean, I’m not freaking out right now.”

  “That’s good,” I said, trying to focus on driving. I wasn’t sure if I should believe her. “But I don’t think I can make the Katie call now. My voice may sound too familiar to him.”

  “You think? Maybe Katie’s already lost her phone?” Mia suggested.

  “Does Katie have a landline?” I asked her.

  There were so many things we hadn’t thought about, and I was mad at myself for not focusing on the details. But we were so close to victory; we had to work with what we had.

  MIA

  “Mia. 1908. Go,” Dennis said a few mornings later.

  “Oh, for real? This is still going on?” Justine groaned.

  “I know this one!” I yelled. “John Kern. JK. 1908. That’s how I remembered it!” I bowed, waiting for them to share in the excitement. “Isn’t that great?”

  “Amazing!” Dennis clapped and then wrapped his arms around me. A real hug. Not like he was just staying still, being hugged.

  It lasted for a second, and then he pulled away and rubbed his palms on the sides of his pants. “Uh, okay, I got a little excited there.”

  “Okay. Wow.” Justine laughed. “I have no idea what’s going on. But losing political candidates aren’t usually this exciting. And we have smoothies, I mean snow cones, to make!”

  Justine walked in front of me and I turned around to say goodbye to Dennis. Call me later, I mouthed.

  —

  “We have a line of customers and Seth is writing to Katie,” Justine said when we were in the back of the truck getting the ingredients ready.

  “Already?” I asked.

  “See for yourself.” Justine handed me the phone.

  Seth: You still haven’t called…

  Katie: OMG. I am so sorry. My grandma just left, and I lost my phone when we went into the city the other day. My parents are so pissed bc I’ve lost like 3 phones, so I’m banned from using the landline, and I can’t get a new phone for a few weeks.

  Seth: That sucks. How are you messaging me now?

  “Crap. How am I typing to him?” I asked Justine.

  “An iPad,” she said. “Now, come on, we need to serve these customers. I never thought I’d say this, but we gotta stop with Katie now.”

  Katie: iPad. Ugh. And now I gotta go help my mom bring in the groceries. Another punishment. NEVER LOSE YOUR PHONE.

  Seth: Later.

  “Wait, who’s in line?” I asked Justine as she walked to the front of the truck. “Anyone we know?”

  She looked around. “Yeah, actually. It’s like the whole Mathletes team. They wake up early. In the summer. Kind of sad.”

  “We wake up early. In the summer,” I reminded her, walking to the front of the truck.

  “Mia, this is so incredible!” Rita Mellsen, cocaptain of Mathletes, said. She was always trying to get me to join, but competitive stuff just wasn’t my thing.

  “Thanks. You guys are, like, all hanging out, this early in the morning? Is this a team meeting or something?” I asked her.

  Rita pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “It is, actually. And we need to step up our game.” She paused. “Our math game. We have some steep competition this year—hello, East Oakridge—and we need to crush them!”

  “Okay…Go, Wildcats!” Justine twirled her fingers in the air. “Rita, tell us how we can help.”

  I cracked up and then bit my cheek to stop myself.

  Then Jamal Curtis, the other cocaptain, chimed in, “We
need a brain-food smoothie to help with concentration. Blueberries, avocados, dark chocolate, some leafy green veggie. I’ve researched it.”

  “Brain food,” Justine and I repeated at the same time.

  “I’m on it,” I said.

  “Great,” Rita replied. “We’ll take eight of them.”

  “The smoothies are coming, guys!” Jamal yelled back to the team. “Get ready. We are going to decimate the competition.”

  After the Mathletes left, Justine and I sat down for a few minutes to take a break. “I think Dennis is really rocking the social media. People are hearing about us. Ya know?”

  “Yeah,” Justine said. “Mathletes, moms, lifeguards, the Skinnies…everyone loves our product.”

  “I’m too tired to move,” I said, lifting my foot. “Foot five?”

  Justine lifted her foot too and we touched flip-flops. “Foot five.”

  Seth: Well, since you’re never gonna call me and you’re never gonna show…

  “Um, what does this mean?” I showed Justine the phone.

  She jolted up and read it over. She started to type.

  Katie: I know, I’m honestly a huge flake. You should know that about me. But I’m a good person. And I’m cute.

  “I felt like I had to step up the flirting, offer something new,” she explained. “He was obviously thinking about Katie.”

  Seth: You are cute…

  “Give me the phone,” I said. “I have a good response.”

  Katie: Well, you never answered my question. Do you have a girlfriend or not? How do I know if it’s worth it to show up, call you, get to know you? You may be taken…

  I finished typing and chewed my cheek, waiting for him to respond.

  At first I’d thought it was Katie who gave me the confidence, the ability to say things I’d never say in real life. I was hiding behind a fake person and a screen, and everything was fair game.

  But I was starting to realize that was only part of it. I felt good as myself, too. More brave, more self-assured.

  Maybe Katie was the gateway, but Mia was beginning to take over.

  Seth: Oh so that’s why you’re avoiding me?

  Katie: Answer the question, dude.

  Seth: I’m flying solo these days.

  My heart pounded. “So he’s single?”