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No one was outside at work to see us both get out of the same car, thank God, not that it mattered though because no one here mattered. Working at the Shax was the definition of notmattering. What if Lacey never heard me out? What if we were on the outs forever? Because I did one stupid thing? Which…I hadn’t precisely stopped doing yet? I put my backpack into my locker and slammed it shut.

“Watch it, Jessica,” Burton said, coming out of his office to give me a look.

“I am. Watching it. Whatever it is,” I muttered under my breath as we assembled.

Now that I was quiet, I could feel the other world that I had access to all around me here. I knew if I blinked and kept my eyes closed, I’d see the traces of all the power here as well, the cables running through the walls, the elements controlling the grill and the heat sources for the burbling grease beneath the fry-baskets. I bit my lips together and stared straight ahead.

“Okay dinner team—I’ve posted your assignments?—”

I raised my hand. “I don’t want to do register tonight.” Because A) people and B) what if the registers zapped me? Or worse yet, I zapped them? If Burton accused me of stealing?—

He made a face like I was crazy, then pointed at Raj. “You’re up then. And Jessica, you can work the fries back there with Darius.”

I made my way to the back of the Shax where the Fryolater was and Darius took a place by my side at the grill. It was the hottest part of the entire Shax and the most disgusting, with all the grease in the air.

“Don’t you hate being back here?” I asked. He was scraping the grill, even though it was already clean.

“Yeah.”

I leaned on the counter carefully. “Then why do you do this job, anyhow? Surely your other one is more lucrative.”

“I need to have a job to explain my income to my uncle. He doesn’t keep a close eye on me, but he’s not dumb.” He said andthen looked at me a little too long, like he could see something I couldn’t. “You clearly hate it here, what’s in it for you?”

Up until recently, it’d been a chance to hang with my best friend. I pressed buttons, scraped gum off the bottom of tables, ignored when men older than my dad hit on me, and made a little cash. Now, though…I shrugged. “My mom’s income—it’s, uh, variable.”

Darius’s full lips pursed. “Oh. That’s tough.”

“Yeah, it is.” Nothing I could do about it now.

We were ready to go by the time the dinner rush occurred. It’d been a long time since I was grill-side, but I hadn’t forgotten any of my skills, and once I got into a rhythm it wasn’t half-bad. Being busy kept my mind off of other things, like when and if Lacey was ever going to talk to me.

“Break-time,” Raj announced, tapping me on the shoulder. I nodded and stepped back, letting him take over my station, then I walked around the front to see how the floor was looking, and saw Burton working the register—andherthere.

A blonde college girl. No matter the weather, whenever she came in, she always wore shorts that barely covered her ass, with a tank top or without, but with some amount of cleavage showing—it was her uniform and she wore it well. And Burton—he was like some old fashioned cartoon wolf, eyes bugged, mouth drooling.

She took out her money and he did what he always did for her. “Your money’s no good here.”

This was normally the point when I’d look for Lacey. We’d give each other the strength to persevere. But without her—knowing that she was fired—knowing why she wasn’t here—I said words I’d never said to him before. “Are you kidding me?”

Both Burton and the girl looked at me. I hadn’t even been talking to them, really, more to the universe at large, but nowthat I had their attention, I found I couldn’t stop— “I mean, really. Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious,” Burton said, attempting to be suave.

I turned to the woman. “Are you happy with that?”

She looked at me, doe-eyed. “I…like free fries.”

You know who else liked free fries? My little sister. And it was all too easy to imagine some point in the future when my sister was older and Burton would be staring at her and?—

“Whoa—whoa whoa whoa!” Raj shouted. “Grease fire!”

I whirled. The grease we dipped the fries in had sparked and was burning away, sending a plume of black smoke up.

“No! Don’t use water!” Darius shouted, but Joey threw some on it anyways. Grease hissed like a living thing and spattered and the fire started climbing up the wall. Raj screamed, and customers started running for the exits.

Darius yanked a fire extinguisher off the wall and started hosing its contents at the base of the fire, while I heard Burton shouting at a 911 operator on his phone.

I stood in the middle of the chaos, as customers ran for the door and the rest of my coworkers evacuated or tried to help or grabbed their own things before running.