by A. Destiny
Annabelle and I looked at each other. We knew the cruelest thing we could say to Sadie was, “You wouldn’t understand.”
So I just said, “We’re talking about how ideas are the easy part, action is the hard part.”
“Especially,” Annabelle said, “when it comes to boys.”
“Oh, boooooys,” Sadie said, nodding sagely. “I get it.”
“You do?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
Sadie gave the rest of the table a shifty look to make sure nobody was listening.
“Not really,” she admitted. “Mostly, I pretty much think boys are aliens.”
I laughed.
“I kind of think the same thing,” I whispered.
Encouraged by this, Sadie wrinkled her nose. “I mean, aren’t they gross?”
“Eh, I was thinking more foreign and mysterious,” I said, “rather than green and slimy.”
“Oh,” Sadie said. She gave me a disapproving look before returning her attention to her dinner.
I glanced at the big clock on the dining room wall. Like everything else at Camden, it was folksy and old. The minute hand shuddered every time it moved. And with every shudder, I was that much closer to dishwashing duty with one of those alien boys.
Jacob was especially foreign and mysterious. He was all earnest fanboy one moment, a burglar the next. And then there were those smiles he was always shooting at me. Surely they meant something. But it was just as possible they meant nothing. Who could tell?!
It was much easier to think about some other girl and boy before I snuck off to the kitchen.
So I whispered in Annabelle’s ear. “You could just say hi to him after dinner, you know.”
“Of course I could,” she replied. “But then what?”
“Annabelle,” I said. “I know I’ve only known you for five days, but in those five days, you’ve never been at a loss for words once. I mean, not even in your sleep. “
It was true. The second night in our cozy little room, I’d woken at two a.m. to hear Annabelle murmuring, “But is it organic?”
“Don’t overthink it. Just do it. You can tell me how it goes later,” I said by way of good-bye.
I grabbed my dishes and slipped away before she could ask where I was going, especially with Jacob MacEvoy just a couple of steps behind me.
Chapter Eight
Jacob was still quiet when we reported to the kitchen, but that was okay—Ms. Betty did all the talking for us.
“Finally, you’re here!” she said.
“Oh, are we late?” I cried. “Supper just ended.”
“For you, maybe,” Ms. Betty said. She pointed at a big steel table beneath the service window. It was stacked high with trays, plates, and serving bowls.
“Those start showing up about fifteen minutes into the meal,” Ms. Betty said. “And that’s when our shift starts.”
We nodded as Ms. Betty started rattling off instructions.
“Get yourselves some aprons, babies. You’re going to get wet. And dirty.”
She pointed us toward a supply closet. “Grab a couple baseball caps too. This is a kitchen, you keep your heads covered. Now come meet your new best friend, Hobart.”
Hobart, it turned out, was the dishwasher—a hulking, belching metal box with two big levers that operated entry and exit doors.
Our job, Ms. Betty explained, would be to arrange the dishes in huge plastic trays with perforated bottoms, spray them off with a nozzle that bounced at the end of a long, silvery hose, then shove the trays into the Hobart one at a time.
The spitting, chugging box did its washing work in only a few minutes. Then it was time to lever open the exit door, unleashing a massive cloud of steam. Ms. Betty told us to use big black gloves to pull out the scalding tray, then stack the clean dishes on a rolling cart for the next morning.
“Got it?” Ms. Betty barked after she’d explained all this to us.
We nodded numbly.
“Now, Hobart here’s got a few quirks,” Ms. Betty said. “He likes to jam up if you put in too many dishes. If you let the detergent get too low, his motor’ll burn out and then you’re washing all these dishes by hand. The conveyer belt’ll freeze if you push the tray in too fast or too slow.”
“Are you sure you trust us with, um, Hobart?” I said. “I’m scared we’re going to break him.”
Ms. Betty just laughed.
“No worries!” she said. “He’s a hulk. You can’t break him, not completely anyway. And I’ll tell you a secret. When in doubt, give him a wallop. It works nine times out of ten.”
To demonstrate, Ms. Betty gave Hobart a big, open-palmed whack, which seemed to make its (his?) swish-swash-churn noises step up their rhythm a bit.
Once we (sort of) knew what to do, Ms. Betty retreated to the food prep part of the kitchen, where one of the other staffers, Ms. Eleanor, was mopping the floor. The last worker, Ms. Loretta, was in the back, stocking the walk-in fridge.
Ms. Betty pulled out a massive crockery bowl and announced to all of us, “I am going to make pecan praline scones. They are going to be dee-lectable, and Teagle is going to be eating her words! And my scones!”
While she turned on the radio and began measuring out massive amounts of flour, Jacob and I cautiously approached the now-looming tower of dishes. Jacob used one of the rolling carts to transport them from the window to the rinsing area, where I stacked them on a tray and hosed them down.
Okay, stacked might be a generous term.
The truth was, I quickly got overwhelmed by the teetering stacks of dishes and just started grabbing whatever was closest. Bowls, mugs, glasses, plates—I frantically scraped them into a compost barrel, then wedged them into their tray as quickly as I could. I held my breath as I shoved the whole business into the Hobart, which I fully expected to hack and cough and shudder to a halt.
But somehow, it didn’t. So I kept on loading and shoving, loading and shoving, until—
“Um, Nell?”
Jacob had wandered over from the receiving end of the Hobart, looking pink and damp. The hair peeking out from beneath his baseball cap had waved up in the steam, and his glasses were smudged.
It was almost annoying how good a person could look under such uglifying conditions.
“I wonder if, y’know, organizing the dishes would make it easier,” he said. “Say, plates with plates? Bowls with bowls?”
“No time!” I blurted. I grabbed the sprayer and hosed down the tray. I might have also splattered the counter, my apron, and one of my shoes. “There’s too many.”
“No, really,” Jacob said. “It’s easy. I’ll help.”
He quickly whisked the leftovers off some dinner plates and assembled them into a neat stack on the stainless-steel counter. Then he carefully pushed the stack toward me the way you leave food on a stump for a wild rabbit.
“Oh, all right,” I said. I grabbed the top four plates on the stack, cradled them to my chest, then began to prop them between the stubby plastic prongs on the next tray.
“Okaaaay,” Jacob said dubiously.
“What?!” I demanded. “Look, they’re lined up like little soldiers, just like you wanted.”
“But it could be so much faster if you just—”
Jacob paused and exhaled heavily. “Okay, you’re right,” he said. “I’m ridiculously type A.”
“And a stalker,” I reminded him. “Let’s not forget that.”
“Fine, fine,” he sputtered with a mock glower. “You can put it on a sign. I’ll wear it around my neck, right next to my big green V, if you’ll just let me stack that tray.”
“Hey, stack away,” I said, holding up my hands and taking a step backward. “But I’m telling you, it’s not going to be any faster.”
Jacob stared down the dishwashing tray for a split second before he began shuffling the dinner plates from his left hand to his right. He used his right hand to plunk the plate into a neat, upright position.
Pass, prop, pass, prop.
In about fifteen seconds, the plates were lined up, but there was still an empty section on the tray. Jacob filled it with glasses, each a perfect fit until only a little gap was left in the corner. For that, Jacob swept up a bouquet of spoons and plunked them into the crevice. He carefully sprayed the whole thing down in precise horizontal strokes. Then he shoved the tray into the Hobart and pumped his fist.
“I knew bagging all those groceries would pay off someday,” he said.
“You’re like a Hobart savant!” I said.
Jacob laughed, but as he began filling the next tray, I sensed his dinnertime gloom returning. I could see it in his shoulders, which were just a little too high and tense; in his Adam’s apple, bobbing over and over; in the angle of his head, which was a notch lower than it needed to be.
“Jacob?” I asked.
Somehow, I didn’t need to say anything else.
“It’s just . . . I didn’t come here to become a dishwashing prodigy,” Jacob said.
“Something happened in class today,” I said. “Didn’t it?”
“Eh, it’s nothing,” Jacob said. “Only that apparently I’ve been bowing incorrectly my entire life.”
“Oh, you have not!” I scoffed. “Fiddling is really different from classical violin, you know. You just have to get the hang of it. It’s not a big deal, trust me.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jacob muttered.
He was right. I’d never thought twice about my bow hold. Or my fingering. Or any number of musical techniques. I just played because I literally always had.
I knew saying any of this to Jacob would only make me look cluelessly entitled, and make him feel worse.
And besides, the Hobart was beeping, clamoring for me to pull out the tray.
I went to the other side of the washer and pulled the lever that raised the little garage door. Then I plunged my left arm into the steam and hooked the tray with my fingertips.
“Nell!”
Jacob’s shout had barely reached me when suddenly he reached me. He dove for my arm and snatched my hand out of the Hobart. Then, scowling, he flipped my hand over so it rested in his palm.
“What’s wrong?” I blurted.
Except my words didn’t come out loud and irate, the way blurting usually does. My voice had gone reedy and breathless.
Jacob’s hands were damp and pruney. His grip was too tight. And yet, his touch still made me speak in the voice of Snow White.
Without answering my question, Jacob peered at my fingertips.
“What’s wrong?” I repeated. My voice had gone back to normal, now that it was clear that Jacob hadn’t grabbed my hand in a fit of passion.
“Nothing,” Jacob said, shaking his head in incredulity. “Your hand is totally fine, even though Ms. Betty said you’ll get steam burns if you don’t wear those to unload the Hobart.”
He pointed at the thick, black rubber gloves that were wadded up near the Hobart’s exit door.
“Oh yeah,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at Ms. Betty. I hoped she hadn’t seen my gaffe. “I guess this is just another example of me being hopelessly type B to your A.”
“Yeah, but you’re not hurt,” Jacob marveled. He poked at the tip of my left index finger. “Wow!” he said. “I guess that’s why.”
“Excuse me?” I pulled my hand away from him and hid it behind my back.
“Your calluses are almost as gnarly as your grandma’s,” Jacob said.
“Thanks a lot,” I protested.
“No, that’s a compliment!” Jacob assured me. “Those calluses are awesome. But how do you still have them? I thought you didn’t play anymore.”
I looked at him as if he’d just spoken to me in Japanese.
“Are you kidding? How could I get away with that?”
Jacob looked pointedly at my right hand—the one I’d burned on the anvil.
“Hello?” he said. “Didn’t you trade in your bow for a sledgehammer?”
“I mostly use a cross-peen hammer,” I said, “and please. That’s only for this month at Camden. Back home, I can’t get away with not playing. I tour with my family on weekends and school breaks. We record. We have these endless jams on our front porch and—”
Jacob looked a little shifty-eyed as I ticked off all my fiddle-playing duties.
“—and you know all these things already, don’t you?” I said.
“It’s on your grandma’s Wikipedia page,” Jacob protested. “Right there for the whole world to see. I’m not a stalker, I swear!”
While I tried not to laugh, Jacob turned to grab some clean dishes from the still-steaming rack.
The “still-steaming” part proved problematic for his glasses. Immediately, they fogged up.
“Whoa!” he muttered. Completely blind, he stumbled a few steps backward, knocking right into a dirty dish cart. A bowl full of flatware tumbled noisily to the floor.
Clearly mortified, Jacob looked in my general direction, with his glasses still misted over and his baseball hat askew.
That’s when the laugh I’d been biting back burst forth.
Jacob swiped off his glasses and stared at the forks and spoons scattered across the tile floor.
I held my breath and tried to stop laughing, which, of course, only made me laugh louder.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m just picturing a Three Stooges movie.”
“But there’re only two of us,” Jacob said.
At once, both of us looked over at Ms. Betty, who at that moment was scraping big hunks of sticky dough off her hands and muttering, “This never happens when I make biscuits. Durn Brits!”
“Bwa, ha, ha!”
Now it was both of us cackling, him bent over at the waist and me stumbling around as I scooped spoons off the floor.
Then the Hobart beeped again, attracting Ms. Betty’s attention.
“Listen, you two,” she called over to us. “Cute don’t get the dishes done.”
I cringed in embarrassment and glanced at Jacob. He, too, quickly stopped laughing.
“All right,” I said. “Clearly we have a division of labor. You load.”
“And you, Leatherhands, unload,” Jacob said, grinning as he returned to his side of the Hobart.
“Just for that,” I said, “I’m not going to tell you my idea.”
“About what?” Jacob asked, leaning backward so he could see me around the dishwasher.
“About that bowing problem you’re having,” I said lightly as I stacked up clean plates. “I bet Nanny told you to bend the bone between your wrist and elbow, didn’t she?”
“Yes!” Jacob cried. “I mean, seriously? That’s like telling someone to breathe through their eyelids.”
“What, you can’t breathe through your eyelids?” I said. “How do you do the breast stroke?”
Even though I was busy scooping forks into a metal canister, I could just feel Jacob gaping at me.
“Kidding!” I yelled over my shoulder. “C’mon, I may have E.T. fingers, but I’m not a complete mutant.”
Then Jacob said something, a phrase that got swept away by the chug, chug, chug of the Hobart and the noisy spray of the water. I couldn’t discern the words, but something about the tone made me catch my breath.
It made my hands, grasping a handful of serving spoons, suddenly feel weak and shaky.
It made me turn around to look at Jacob.
I didn’t need to hear his words to know that he had just paid me a compliment.
The sudden blotches on his neck and the way his eyes couldn’t bear to meet mine? Well, that confirmed it.
But I was too shy to ask him what he’d said.
And he was clearly too embarrassed to repeat it.
The next thing I knew, it was me saying something completely unexpected.
“I could show you, if you want.”
“Show me . . . ?” Jacob looked confused.
“How to bend the bone between your elbow and your wrist,” I said.
He di
dn’t answer for a long moment.
“I promise, it’s much easier than breathing through your eyelids.”
A perplexed smile slowly bloomed on his face.
“But I warn you,” I added, “it is harder than reading with the soles of your feet.”
He didn’t laugh. Instead he looked at me curiously.
“You really want to help me?” he asked. “With fiddle?”
I shrugged, then nodded. “Sure.”
“But I thought this was your month to get away from all that,” Jacob said.
He looked pointedly at my right hand. Not the one with the calluses that he so weirdly thought were awesome. But the one I’d injured in the blacksmithing barn.
“It was,” I said haltingly. “I mean, it is. I mean . . . whatever! It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Jacob paused for a long moment. He seemed to be searching my face.
I’m sure he didn’t find anything clarifying there. I myself still wasn’t sure why I’d made the offer. Now that I had, I didn’t know if I believed what I’d said, that teaching Jacob that fiddle trick was no big deal.
In fact, maybe I’d just done something momentous.
“I’ll take those minutes,” Jacob said. “How about tomorrow after class? Do you know that little river at the end of the Sap Hill trail?”
Just as I nodded, the Hobart beeped shrilly.
I quickly turned my back to Jacob and hauled the door open, happy to hide my half-giddy, half-panicked face in the resulting billow of steam.
Over on his side, Jacob got back to work too. For the rest of our shift, we didn’t talk much. But we did seem to get in sync as we stacked, sprayed, washed, and unloaded the supper dishes. By the end of the evening, we’d reached a rhythm you could almost call musical.
Chapter Nine
Ten minutes before class ended in the barn on Friday, most of the guys were putting away their tools. But I was still pounding away, determined to finally get somewhere after an entire week of blacksmithing fails.
Maybe I was also obsessing about my ironwork so I wouldn’t fixate on the fiddle lesson I’d promised Jacob.
