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What made it tolerable most weekends was Lacey’s close proximity. Knowing I could look over at her—no matter where she was in the restaurant—and give her a glare, and she’d nod and know exactly what I was thinking and who about and why, was priceless.

The whole Snax Shax experience was a hell of a lot harder to put up with, without her.

I pulled my phone out a few times, just in case. There was the chance she’d take a picture of what she wore toLOOK GOODto show me, or something would happen that would be so amazing she’d have to instantly inform me, her either first or second best friend. But no. Nothing. I counted the minutes, how long it’d take her to get home from here, to shower the grease out of her hair, blow-dry it, and then get dressed again to go out.

She’d have to explain to her mom how come she got off early on a Friday. Her mom was a tougher customer than Burton—maybe the reason she hadn’t texted me was because she hadn’t gotten to go out at all? She’d gotten home and her mom had smelled the lies on her and grounded her instantly.

“Jessica!” Burton shouted. I yelped and hid my phone without thinking. “Fries!”

“On it!” I shouted back, and ran for the fry station.

Twelve o’clock rolled around and we finally got to close the doors. Raj stood guard so that no one else could come in while the rest of us waited for our remaining customers to leave—a family of four, eating burgers like they were chewing cud. Couldn’t they feel all our eyes on them? The weight of the hush as we cleaned, our intermittent stares? Why was an eight year old and his six year old sister eating fries at midnight? Were their parents the best parents ever, or the worst?

I looked down at my phone again. No messages.Goddammit.

“Finally,” Darius muttered from the broiler. I looked up and the family was waddling toward the door. One by one, we finished our end of shift tasks—being quiet for the family had totally killed the end-of-shift mood—and made our way to the back. Burton was counting out the tills in his office, and the rest of us were trying to escape before he finished and could think of new chores.

Which was when I realized the flaw in Lacey and I’s plan—she had been my ride.

“Shit—”

“Hmm?” Darius made a querying sound as he hitched his black backpack on over a green military jacket, the canvas-y kind with lots of pockets. He was relatively new to school, as he’d been yanked to Kansas from California at the end of last year—and if he was trying to look cool now, he wasn’t succeeding.

He was also our restaurant’s resident pot dealer. This was the third burger joint I’d worked at, since beginning to work the day after I turned fourteen, and every restaurant had had one. Darius, or someone like him, practically came pre-installed.

I did a quick inventory of people who had cars in the parking lot divided by people who lived on my side of town and people I could stand. Darius made the cut, just barely.

“Lacey had to leave?—”

“Yeah, I heard. Female problems,” he said.

I gave him a pained smile. “She was my ride.”

“Ah,” he said, nodded, and then nothing else. I leaned forward expectantly, waiting for him to catch on, while he looked back at me, slowly turning his head to one side, like a confused dog with a smattering of light acne.

I slumped, broken. “Look, can I get a ride with you?”

The corners of his lips curled up. “Sure,” he said, and started for the door with me at his heels.

The humidity outside hit me like a wall. If the air’d been any more damp, we’d have needed scuba gear. I wondered, not for the first time, why anyone had ever moved to Kansas. How could so many people have simultaneously lost a bet?

Darius fished in one of his coat’s many pockets for keys. A Toyota Corolla in the corner beeped as its doors opened, and I took a small amount of satisfaction from the fact that dealer Darius was driving a cream colored car meant for a mom. Hewent for the driver’s side, while I scraped my way through the bushes that lined our parking lot’s far side and opened the passenger door.

Fry cartons spilled out as I did. Technically, I should have picked them up and thrown them away as a good Snax Shax employee—but technically, someone would be here for the breakfast shift in under six hours with parking lot duty and they could do it then.

“Are you stealing these for an art project?” I said, sweeping his passenger seat clean.

“Careful about those!” He lunged to grab something, and I saw what they were through the thin plastic bag.

“Comic books?”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” he said, putting them carefully under his own seat. “You getting in, or what?”

“I’m getting in,” I said.

I closed the door and did that thing where you make yourself small and tried not to touch anything. I was almost glad for the protective layer of Snax Shax grease separating me from his junked out car. What was it we called it in biology? A lipid bilayer.

“You live in Ventana Park, right?”Ventanameant window in Spanish. I’d learned that in 7thgrade, and wondered ‘window to where?’ ever since.