“It wasn’t a good fit.” I swallow the knot that’s forming, thinking about the day the manager, Susan Graph, pulled me into her office to hand me my vacation pay and tell me that it would be best if I didn’t come in anymore, due to what was going on in my personal life. This, after only a month earlier giving me a glowing employee review. The worst part about it is that I have to shop there because it’s the only grocery store in Balsam.
“I can work any shifts you want. Early mornings, midnights . . . anything.” I’m trying not to sound too desperate, but I don’t think I’m succeeding. Then again, maybe employers like desperate employees—we’ll put up with just about anything. And I will put up with just about anything. Misty makes good money in tips. The kind of money I need so I can save up and get as far away from Balsam County as soon as possible. I’ve been waiting for a job opening here for months.
“How will you get here? Do you have a car?”
“With Misty, for now. And I figured I could buy something cheap after a few months.” Diamonds is a fifteen-minute drive from Balsam, on Route 33, way too far to bike.
Lou’s pen shifts back to my education. She frowns. “You haven’t finished high school?”
“No, ma’am.”
She peers up at me from behind thick-rimmed glasses, her curly mouse brown hair framing her face in a short crop. If I had to guess, I’d put her in her midfifties, though it’s hard to say. “Don’t you know how important having your high school diploma is?”
I swallow against the rising shame. “I do, but . . . I decided to take a year off.” I’d thought of lying about it on my résumé, but Misty warned me that Lou’d fire me for lying if she ever found out.
Plus, there’s no way Lou hasn’t heard about “the Philips mess,” as my mother likes to call it. Everyone around here knows about it. It’s been the talk of the local news since Scott was arrested nine months ago.
“People makin’ it hard on you, are they?” She poses it as a question, but I get the feeling she already knows the answer.
I nod.
“That whole business with that teacher is . . .” Lou purses her lips, and I grit my teeth, waiting for her to say something like “What kind of girl are you?” or give me a stern “You should be ashamed of yourself” frown. She would be far from the first. I’ve heard it plenty and from every direction, it seems, especially after I recanted my statement ten days later—after I learned that no DA would force a seventeen-year-old “victim” to testify—and the charges against him were dropped. At the store, where Scott’s family and friends have more than once passed by me, making comments about how I deserve to be punished for trying to ruin his reputation, how I should stick to boys my own age, how someone needs to teach me to close my legs. At school, where the many students who adore Scott trail after me in the halls, hissing “slut” and “skank” and “attention whore.” Walking down Main Street, where strangers point me out to their friends.
I’ve become a local celebrity, as ridiculous as that sounds.
“You and him . . . it’s over and done with, right?” Lou says instead.
I open my mouth to deny that it ever started, but her eyes narrow, as if calling me on the lie. And so I answer with a small nod instead, even as my throat tightens and the first prickles of tears touch my eyes. Great, I’m going to cry in my interview. I’m sure Lou will be chomping at the bit to hire me now.
But the whole ordeal still stings today, even more than it did the day Scott was let go on bail and wouldn’t answer my phone calls and texts. I convinced myself that he had no choice but to avoid me, that it must be a condition of his release.
And it was . . . partly.
The rumors began quickly and spread like a stomach virus at a day care, just as nasty. Whispers in art class—but not so quiet I couldn’t hear them—about how I had thrown myself at him and then accused him of rape; how he turned me down and I was so mad I decided to destroy his life; how I was a stalker who’d lingered around his house late at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. If anyone considered the alternative—that Scott and I had been together, that I’d been forced to give a statement—they kept it to themselves.
The charges were dropped and Scott’s job was reinstated, only he was no longer teaching my art class. He was no longer glancing my way as we passed in the halls.
It was as if what we’d had, had never happened.
As if I didn’t exist.
Lou clears her throat. “Well, that’s for the best. Nothing was ever going to come of that, anyway.”
“No, I guess not,” I agree softly. Too bad it took me so long to see.
A waitress strolls past with a plate of fried onions and my stomach does a full flip with the smell.
“You okay? You’re awful pale all of a sudden.”
“I’m fine.” I glance over at Misty, punching an order into the computer. She grins and gives me the thumbs-up. I wish I could be as confident as her.
A woman at the table two over from us is staring at me. That’s Dr. Ramona Perkins, my dentist. Or ex-dentist. In April, we got a phone call to tell us that her office was reducing its patient load and that she would no longer be able to accept my family for appointments. In a town of three thousand, Perkins Dentistry is the only office. Now my family has to drive almost thirty minutes away, to the far side of Belmont, to get their teeth looked after.
My mother was in shock at first, given she started with Ramona’s father, John Perkins, when she moved to Balsam twenty years ago. But after a few questions, she found out that Dr. Perkins is best friends with Scott’s mother, Melissa Philips.
The other two women have the decency to look away, but Dr. Perkins spears me with a haughty glare and then offers loudly, “Wives will have to hold on to their husbands when they come in here, with that one serving them.”
“You know what? I think we’re better off talkin’ in my office.” Lou heaves her squat, plump body from the booth, collecting my résumé on her way past, not so much as glancing Ramona’s way. She leads me through the kitchen, where a heavy-set, ebony-skinned man is flipping pancakes through the air with one hand and stirring a pot of grits in the other with deft precision. “That’s Leroy. He’s the head cook around here.”
“But she takes me home at night and does my laundry. Occasionally refers to me as ‘husband’ too.” Leroy winks, and then his face splits into a wide grin.
I force a returning smile, but I’m afraid it’s unpleasant at best because the overpowering stench of grease from the deep fryers is making saliva pool in my mouth.
“Three tables of four just came in,” Lou warns him. “Don’t know why it’s so damn busy all of a sudden. I should be out there coverin’ tables. We’ll wrap this up quick. Here’s my office, right . . .”
I lose her words as I shove through the door marked STAFF -RESTROOM, making it just in time to dive for the toilet before my oatmeal makes its reappearance.
Lou’s waiting for me when I step out a few minutes later, her arms folded over her ample chest, the look on her face unreadable but alarming all the same.
“The smell of sausage must have gotten to me.”