Don’t call me that.
EDDIE: Oh. Why shouldn’t / I—?
BECKY: I don’t want to have a name.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: Really?
BECKY: No one in America deserves a name. And “Becky” is fucking stupid anyway.
EDDIE: So what should I call you?
BECKY: You don’t need to call me anything.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: When I was a kid, for a while I started telling people my name was “Randolph.”
BECKY: “Randolph”?
EDDIE: Yeah. It’s my great-grandpa’s name.
BECKY: Sounds like Adolph. Like Hitler.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: Yeah, I—I guess it— . . . (Pause) You know, I’ve known your mom and dad a long time, and they—. They’re gonna work this out. (Pause) I remember going to your grandpa’s hardware store downtown when you were just a toddler, and you were there running up and down the / aisles—
BECKY: I don’t care if they get a divorce.
EDDIE: C’mon, don’t say that.
BECKY: Maybe they’ll get a divorce after this restaurant closes.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: What?
BECKY: I heard you talking to your family yesterday. People think I don’t listen but I listen.
(Pause.)
EDDIE: Have you told your / dad?
BECKY: No. Why should I?
(Pause.)
EDDIE: It’s not for sure yet that it’s shutting down. We’ve been doing better these past couple nights and I might / be able to—
BECKY: I don’t care.
EDDIE: But, I mean—if it does end up shutting down, you guys are gonna be fine, your dad can find work somewhere else—
BECKY: Seriously, I don’t care. If he loses his job maybe they’ll finally get a divorce, it’d probably be best for both of them.
EDDIE: You don’t mean that.
(Pause. Becky closes her book.)
BECKY: Excuse me?
EDDIE: I’m just saying, you can’t actually mean what you’re saying right now.
BECKY: Do you know how many times a day people tell me I don’t mean the thing I am very clearly saying?
EDDIE: Look, I was seventeen once / too—
BECKY: And do you know how many times a day people try to tell me they know me better than I know myself because they were once my age? (Pause) Do you know why I got suspended this morning? I was in history class. We were talking about World War II, and I tried to tell everyone about Nanking. Do you know what that is?
EDDIE: No.
BECKY: Of course you don’t. It’s a city in China, it was invaded by Japan in 1937 and three hundred thousand people were killed in six weeks. And I pulled out my phone and I typed “Nanking” into Google, and I started showing people pictures. Real pictures, stuff that actually happened. And the principal said it was “graphic,” and I got suspended. For that.
(Pause.)
I go to a school where I get suspended for showing people true things from history in a history class.
(Becky goes back to her book. Silence.)
EDDIE: I shouldn’t have said that you don’t mean what you’re saying. And—it’s not fair that people fault you for thinking about things they would rather ignore.
(Becky peers up at him. Pause.)
My dad used to own this little diner here in town. When I was little he had to close it down. He put his whole life into the place, and when it was gone, he just— . . . He used to spend entire days just wandering around town, he’d come home and wouldn’t say anything to us. And things just got worse and worse until— . . . And I’d go to my mom and tell her we needed to do something, that we needed to get him help, or—. And she would tell me that I didn’t know what I was saying. And now I’m here telling you the same thing.
(Pause. Becky lowers her book, looking at Eddie.)
BECKY: What happened?
(Pause.)
EDDIE: He killed himself. When I was thirteen, with a shotgun. My brother found him.
(Pause.)
It’s sort of hard to know how to live nowadays, isn’t it?
(Pause.)
BECKY: Yeah. (Pause) Do you have like a banana?
(Pause.)
EDDIE: Yeah, uh—hold on.
(Eddie exits momentarily. Becky puts her book back into her bag. Eddie reenters with his bagged lunch, pulls out a banana and hands it to Becky.)
BECKY: Do you know if it’s fair trade?
EDDIE: I—uh, I’m actually not sure.
(Becky looks at Eddie for a moment, rolling her eyes. She considers, then takes the banana.
Becky peels the banana carefully, eating small chunks of it.)
BECKY: My mom sends me to this psychiatrist, Doctor Kendall. The first time I saw him, he just sat there clicking a pen over and over and after like five minutes he tells me I have bulimia. And I’m like, no, I do not have bulimia, I don’t give a shit if I’m skinny or not. It’s just when I eat stuff, all I can think about is where it came from. Like, how the animal was slaughtered, or what third-world country produced the lettuce, how many antibiotics and chemicals have been pumped into it and I just—can’t keep it down. So this idiot doctor tells me I’m bulimic, so I need to take antidepressants.
EDDIE: Do they help?
BECKY: I don’t take them. Sometimes Mom makes me take one while she watches but I just throw it up.
EDDIE: That’s really bad for you.
BECKY: So is taking a pill to forget about what you’re actually eating.
