Who fences?! Anyway, we wanted our trophy in the glass case at the front of the school with all the others. And Principal Graser wasn’t exactly shy about pointing out its absence at assemblies.
“Walesa said so. He overheard Coach talking to another teacher during gym class.”
“When?” Seth asked, sitting straighter.
“Friday morning,” Zack said.
“When will he tell us?” My lips sputtered as I tried to release a strand of Gwyneth’s blond hair from the side of my mouth.
“Monday after school, I think,” Zack said. “Maybe he’s made some changes to the schedule. Maybe we’re in more tournaments this year or something.” His shoulders shrugged like it was probably nothing major.
I leaned back against my chair. I turned to Seth, who also gave me a shoulder shrug as if to say, Hey, it’s no big deal. And then he smirked and nodded toward Zack. Consider the source, he mouthed.
Gwyneth turned herself around in my lap, eager for more attention. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her glossy lips against mine. She tasted like candy. Her hair cascaded over my shoulder, invading my nostrils with strawberry.
My nose wrinkled. It felt as if I could suffocate from the sweetness in her hair, but I pulled her closer, searching for her tongue with mine. She wanted me, and I guessed I wanted her, too.
Tomorrow I wouldn’t remember a single thing anyway.
* * *
Saturday night, all available bussers and waitresses at the Wild Horse Restaurant, along with a gray-haired guy on a sad-sounding wooden flute, sang a Native American birthday song to Mom for her fortieth birthday, even though she’d begged everybody not to. The song seemed better suited to a funeral than a birthday. No one in my family understood the lyrics either, the words sounding more like grunts and heavy exhales.
Dad grinned uncomfortably at the six-person wait team who’d tended our table all evening, clearing dozens of white porcelain plates and soup bowls, filling crystal water goblets whenever they drained only a fraction, scraping crumbs from the linen tablecloth with razor-blade knives. My younger sister, Riley, and I sank lower in our chairs while everyone else in the packed restaurant interrupted their five-course dinners of grilled venison and mackerel salads and turned to stare at our round table smack-dab in the middle of the floor. The only thing missing was a strobe light pulsating above us as we watched the presentation of a six-layer, custom-made mesquite-honey mousse cake. It was pure torture.
I tried to tune out the misery by picturing the cheeseburger and fries that Riley and I would scarf down as soon as we got home and ditched Mom and Dad for the nearest Burger King. The sooner this nightmare dinner was over, the better.
Mom beamed at her cake, pressed her hands against the base of her neck where her birthday present rested, mouthed I love you to Dad and then blew out the half-dozen candles in the middle of the cake. “Thank you for not ruining this gorgeous cake with forty candles,” she told the waitress, a thin woman with black hair and matching eyes. Her twisted bun was pulled back so tightly that it raised her smooth cheekbones. Like the rest of the restaurant staff, she wore black pants and a long-sleeved white shirt. The only color she sported was a teal-blue silk sash threaded through her belt loops. The real colors, the menu boasted, should unfold on your plates and through the restaurant windows where you can see uninterrupted desert all the way to the Estrella Mountains.
Riley had laughed when I’d read it aloud to her with a haughty English accent, and Mom had frowned from across the table, but, you had to admit, it sounded cheesy.
The waitress cut the cake in four equally huge slices and placed each slice on a microscopically small plate even though the only one who’d eat it was Mom. As the waitress cut each piece, she handed the plate to a younger girl, the same one who’d kept dropping things all night—the rolls from the bread basket, the extra soup spoon Dad requested, ice cubes from the water pitcher that crashed down into our glasses whenever she poured. I wondered why our waitress didn’t simply banish her someplace else. She was definitely not waitress material. Even I could see that, hungover or not.
The girl’s eyes remained lowered as she used both hands to deliver a dessert plate to each of us. Everything proceeded smoothly until she delivered the last piece.
Mine.
Her eyes rose and flickered at me as she moved alongside my right elbow, brushing against it.
I was still majorly numb from Zack’s party, so I barely noticed—until the piece of birthday cake that I didn’t want, in a fancy restaurant with my parents where I didn’t want to be, eating weird food that I hated, fell off the edge of my white plate like a brown avalanche and plopped straight into my lap.
“Oh, god!” the girl gasped. The plate dropped to the floor and shattered. Her hands flew to her mouth.
I leaped out of my chair, but it was too late. “Shit!” I said as the gooey mess rolled off me in a solid, heavy lump. In the confusion, my wooden chair crashed backward like a gunshot, reverberating inside my head.
A lady screamed behind me.
I glared down at the girl, angry and more than a little embarrassed. “What is your problem?”
The girl’s black eyes widened. “I am so sorry.” She reached for a linen napkin on the table and tried to blotch out the chocolate stain on my pant leg but succeeded only in spreading it. And making me a million times more uncomfortable as her hands reached dangerously close to my crotch.
My breathing quickened. I could hear it whizzing through my teeth as I continued to glare at the girl.
No doubt every head in the restaurant had turned to watch the entertainment as the room grew silent, except for harps and flutes, playing through hidden speakers, that sounded just like the mind-numbing music played in the girls’ yoga classes at school.
“Settle down, Ryan,” Mom said, her gaze sweeping about the room. “It was an accident, for god’s sake.” She grabbed my arm as Dad watched from across the table with tightly pressed lips, his disappointment as obvious as the wet stain on my pants.
Not a huge surprise.
Riley, meanwhile, tried to stifle nervous laughter by biting down on her linen napkin.
All in all, epic! Why hadn’t I stayed home? Pretended to have the flu or something?
“Can we get some towels over here?” Dad called to the waitress on the other side of the room, the one who seemed to be in charge of our table. He waved his hand over his head. The woman darted over to us.
“Certainly, sir.” She began pointing to other bussers for water, napkins and possibly even another mesquite-honey mousse cake. “My apologies,” she added. “We’ll take care of it.”
I would have told her not to bother, but I was too preoccupied with the wet stain on my pants and the girl who’d caused it. She kept trying to blotch it with a napkin.
My breathing was still pretty heavy. “Just...just leave it alone,” I stammered, sitting back down in the chair, which someone had picked up for me. “You’ve done enough already,” I said as she took a step back, the stained napkin still clutched in one hand, poised and ready.
“Fred?”
