Mary could blame part of her tardiness on Andi, who decided to take the espresso machine all the way apart for its weekly cleaning right before closing time. But then Mary also had to blame herself, for offering to lend a hand. She helped pour a mix of water and vinegar into the machine and let it run. She helped disassemble the frothing wand and clean that. She helped remove the brew head and clean that. She did all of these things despite the fact that Andi kept telling her she could clock out, and despite the fact that she knew Josh was waiting for her.
“I’m okay,” she told Andi. “I’m good.” While the wand soaked in warm water, she wiped the entire machine down, rubbing away any spots or streaks until she could see her reflection (which looked tired, and worried). Every so often she glanced at the clock over the espresso machine. The clock hands kept moving forward, the way clock hands do, and every time another minute went by she felt a small sickening burst in her stomach. Still, she cleaned on. She ran the vinegar water through the machine once, twice, three times. When her cell phone buzzed in her apron pocket she ignored it.
Andi and Daphne used to call Josh Mary’s “young man,” like they were elderly grandparents unaccustomed to the ways of today’s youth, though Mary knew for a fact that Daphne was thirty-six, the same age as Vivienne, and Andi was forty-one. Sometimes to tease her Daphne called Andi “old lady”; these were the only times Mary saw Andi get irritated with Daphne. Once Mary had heard her say under her breath, “Jesus Christ, Daph, it’s five goddamn years, let it go.”
Then once Josh had lingered too long in the café at closing, waiting for Mary, and Andi had talked to him for a couple of minutes, and after that something had shifted: they stopped the jokiness, and every now and then Mary caught one or the other of them giving her a look that lived between parental and something more.
Mary put her phone down on the table and bent and kissed Josh. She’d stopped at home to put on the yellow dress that she loved and that Vivienne hated: “Makes you look like a prairie girl.” She felt feminine and pretty; she even added a Hunger Games–style wraparound braid that Vivienne had taught her to do. Vivienne was always threatening to have Mary come in so the girls could “do something” with Mary’s hair.
Josh tasted like Miller Lite. He gestured toward the full cans on the table and said, “Have one, babe.” She touched her belly and said, “No thanks, maybe later.”
On the screen was Fast N’ Loud, Josh’s favorite car-restoring show. He had to pay extra for the Discovery channel on cable to watch it. There were months when that was a stretch, the extra twelve dollars on the cable bill, but he never considered giving it up. Sometimes Mary paid for part of the bill from the envelope of cash she got from The Cup. She half hoped that Josh would turn the money down but he never did. Maybe she was just as much to blame, for offering. Also, it seemed only fair to help foot the bill, she reasoned, since she and Josh watched a lot of television together.
Mary’s math teacher, Ms. Berry, had by April of senior year noticed that Mary was slipping in her grades and forgetting to turn in homework. She asked Mary to stay late one day to talk about it; she even suggested that she might want to call in Mary’s mother for a conference—she smiled and used air quotes and called it a “one-on-one,” like that made it more fun, intimate and girly, like a slumber party. But Mary, who knew Vivienne would rather pull off her own eyelash extensions than come in to talk to a math teacher, mumbled something about a really bad cold that had dragged on through the spring. And then she slipped even further under the radar until school came to a close.
It was easy, in a school like theirs, in a life like hers, to disappear. People did it all the time. In fact, it was the people who didn’t slip who stood out.
It was funny, because Mary knew almost nothing about Ms. Berry, except for the fact that she hailed from New Hampshire, lived in nearby Franklin, and owned a German shepherd named William, but sometimes when she thought about disappointing her Mary got a rocky feeling deep in her belly.
It was the same feeling that she remembered having as a nine-year-old when she’d lost one of her brand-new birthstone earrings at the state fair in Presque Isle. “Well, that’s that,” Vivienne had said. “Guess you didn’t have them screwed in tight enough.” The stomach-dropping permanence of the loss: Mary would recognize it for the rest of her life.
“Aw, come on, darling,” Josh wheedled, pointing to the Miller Lite.
He liked it when she drank with him; he liked that it loosened her up. Mary liked it too, if she was being honest. Sober, she was like a balloon tethered to the ground with a series of durable ropes, trying but unable to wrench herself free. After a beer or two, it was as though an invisible hand reached out from nowhere and cut the ropes, and off she floated, into the sky, darting among the clouds, away from herself.
“Maybe later,” she said, though she was not going to have a beer, not today.
His expression became a little less cheery. So she pretended great interest in the television: “What are they working on today?” Actually, though, she had no interest in cars.
“Check this out, babe,” Josh said, nodding at the television screen.
Josh’s dream was to own a ’69 Chevy Camaro in blue with two white stripes down the front that he could cruise around town in. He wanted to enter it in the Down East Auto Show in Ellsworth, lined up with the others, hood popped, engine on display. “You can practically eat off those engines, they’re so clean!” he had said once.
Mary slid Josh’s legs over to make room for herself on the couch, then put his legs on top of the yellow dress. He hadn’t mentioned the dress. Maybe Vivienne was right: maybe it wasn’t a good dress on her. Maybe she did look like a prairie girl. She ventured, “Mmm, you smell clean.”
“Had all the time in the world to shower, babe, you were so late.” Josh smiled again but this time there was something less nice behind the smile: more beery, less cheery. Sometimes Josh’s face changed really quickly like that. Was it normal, for that to happen? Mary didn’t think so, but she didn’t really have anyone she could ask. She didn’t have a best girlfriend the way teenagers in the movies or on TV shows did. She used to. She used to have Alyssa Michaud, before that whole stupid mess with Tyler Wasson.
Virgin Mary, Tyler Wasson had called her after the big disaster, and then he’d gotten all of those assholes on the basketball team to call her that too. Mary’s eyes burned, thinking about it.
When Josh, who was new to town, asked Mary to go to the movies with him, Mary figured he thought she was older than she was, even though not very many people mistook her for older. But then it turned out that he knew exactly how old she was, knew she was still in high school. One date led to two and then three and Mary, who had never been on an actual date before, and who thought (at first) that Josh was funny and charming, was smitten. When she thought about that asshole Tyler Wasson she practically put her virginity on a platter and said, “Here you go!”