Mutual Release (21 page)

And today that ghostly voice prodded her to refuse Amy’s offer. “No, that’s okay. I am… um… you know, they’re letting me earn a few bucks bussing tables and stuff at Hardin’s.” She named the expensive restaurant where her mother supervised the alcohol servers. This was only a half lie. She did bus tables, but got nothing for it. Well, she got to eat pretty much anything she wanted off the menu, food her mother would never be able to afford. “I gotta go there,” she muttered as the bus groaned to a halt and disgorged its load of teenagers into the hallowed halls of learning and subtle torture known as Novi High School.

* * * *

By the time three o’clock rolled around, Julie was close to taking back her lie and following Amy to soccer practice and then home. She’d done it before. It gave her an hour and a half of homework time on the bleachers while her friend ran around. Her mother would be pissed. But since when was that a new thing? And Julie had no interest in spending a second in that stifling manager’s office shoved into a corner of the huge restaurant. The rank odors of a kitchen that had been used, cleaned, and used over and over again made her want to retch.

Her mom used to accuse Julie of making herself throw up on purpose, just for attention, but Julie was convinced she had something like a super-hero sense of smell. And the stronger the aroma, the more she reacted to it. She hated perfume and used only unscented shampoo and soap and detergent, since she was responsible for all the laundry. She found all these things at the discount store not far from their apartment building and justified it by claiming she broke out when she used anything else, if her mother ever complained about it.

And the kitchen of Hardin’s Restaurant, a Zagat’s five-star “must visit locale” that served giant slabs of beef or expensive seafood alongside imported wines and beer and fancy cocktails, had been open long enough to truly have that horrifying, putrid stench of well-used and not-so-well-cleaned commercial kitchens everywhere, no matter how high the ticket averages were. Julie shivered in the overheated first floor bathroom in the high school building. Just contemplating Hardin’s back office made her want to puke.

She sighed, pulled her uncontrollable, mousy blond hair back in a ponytail as the door flew open to reveal a couple of senior girls in the middle rung of the popularity hierarchy. “Oh, hi, Julie. We’re having a little back-to-school party tomorrow night. Want to come?”

She shrugged, not meeting their eyes. She’d learned by now that while not overt, most of the conversations she was included in contained a certain level of jealousy-tinged sympathy. She tugged her loose-fitting t-shirt down over the waistband of her jeans. Cursed with her mother’s curvy body by the time she was fourteen, Julie had been hiding her giant boobs ever since, wearing loose clothes as much as possible, no makeup, and keeping her hair barely under control in an attempt to camouflage the fact she was prettier than eighty percent of the girls in her class. But they knew it. There was no hiding it from the female of the species when one of their own outshone them. But these two were among the least bitchy, so she considered it for a half-second.

“No, thanks. I’ll be working. Have fun.” She started to walk past them.

“C’mon, Jules.” One of them – Alice, Julie thought was her name – caught her arm. “Nathan will be there. I heard he likes you. Wants to ask you out.”

A strange, unfamiliar buzz shot down her spine. Her face flushed. She heard herself stuttering more excuses before escaping their trap. Nathan Harrow was the best-looking guy in their class of nearly three hundred almost-adults. He was center on the state-championship basketball team and was going to play for Michigan State on scholarship. He was one of those rare gamma males – handsome, popular, not a total asshole, with brains to match his brawn, and a reputation as the sort of guy you would love for your parents to meet and be proud of you for dating.
Yeah. As if Nathan Harrow even knows I exist. Nice try, girls.

Angry tears clouded her vision as she yanked her locker open to grab her books for the last hour. All the athletic kids were hollering and running around, headed out to their various practices. Most of the other kids were slouching towards seventh hour, the one that supposedly got them their credits early, leaving senior year for fun. But Julie still had to finish her language requirement, as it was the one class where she struggled, and Spanish III was only offered during first hour, when she had AP Chemistry, and the final, hottest, most boring hour of the day.

“Jules!” Amy’s voice made her wince and try to sink into the metal wall. She hated it when someone drew attention to her. “Hold up!” Her friend bounded up, already dressed for practice, with her backpack slung over her shoulder. “Did you hear? Did they ask you? Oh God, Julie – Nathan…”

“Stop.” She held up a hand, pissed her friend was rubbing her nose in this annoying lie. “I don’t believe it. I have two classes with him, and he has never once even looked at me. I’m not going to some stupid, boring party just because of a rumor.”

“Oh yes you are… I’ll make you!” Amy skipped down the hall. Julie watched her go, frowning and trying to process how the day had started so badly and now seemed to be ending on a promising note. She turned, frustrated she was now late to the one class she dreaded more than anything and ran straight into a distinctly male torso.

“Shit, sorry,” she mumbled, reaching down to grab her notebook and pens that had scattered across the hall. She rose and came face to face with the crooked smile of one Nathan Harrow, Mister Perfect High School Specimen. “Oh, uh, hey. I’m late.” She shouldered past him but he made a quick side step, blocking her. A thrill of fear-tinged anger shot through her. “Excuse me.”

“Hang on, hang on. Julie, right?” He ducked down to her level, forcing her to meet his bright blue eyes.

She looked away, uncomfortable and acutely aware of the sweaty odor coming from his shirt. She gulped, cursing her stupid hyper-sensitive nose. “Yeah. Hi, Nathan.”

He grinned, and his face looked so goofy at that moment she could barely suppress a laugh. But realizing that she was standing here with the Most Popular Boy in High School, giggling as if she knew what she was doing, she choked it off, ducked her head and moved past him.

“Hope to see you tomorrow night,” he called out, making her face burn hot as she slipped into the Spanish classroom to the sounds of roll already being called.

Chapter Two

Julie rode the city bus in a daze across town to Hardin’s Restaurant. The temptation to skip it and go home with Amy had passed, distracted as she’d been by the sudden, bizarre attention from Nathan before seventh hour. She felt different in her skin somehow, as if that awful, awkward moment in the hallway of the steamy-hot high school could change anything for her. She bit her lip, tried to keep from smiling. But it broke through, and when the bus hissed to a stop she nearly skipped from it down the few blocks to the large building where she would be forced to spend the next few hours holding her nose, doing her homework, and avoiding her mother’s boyfriend.

She pulled the back door open, already holding her nose in anticipation of the stink. After letting it wash through her for a few seconds, she stepped into the dim back hallway. A few of the wait staff nodded at her, slumped over their newspapers and boring lives. But Julie had a new lease now.
Nathan Harrow liked her
. He truly did and had proven it by actually talking to her in the hallway today. She had no use for these sad sacks, not anymore. She breezed past them and into the corridor between kitchen and bar.

Hardin’s was an old-school-style place, no “open kitchen” nonsense which implied customers could actually see what went on during the preparation of their expensive meals. The bar boasted a few regulars hunched over beer bottles and glasses full of ice and booze. Her mother was at one end chatting with a new bartender. Julie poured herself a coke from the fountain and continued around behind the bar towards the room she hated.

Her mother’s office was a tiny square with an anemic overhead light and a butt-sprung chair where people sat when they got fired. It was nearly impossible to maneuver in the small space, and Julie had suggested more than once that she get rid of the too-big chair and replace it with something that actually fit the space. Sometimes in a rare fit of maternal attention, her mother would listen, nod, and say she’d think about it before turning away from Julie to pay attention to whatever man was hanging around.

Julie’s mother was in a perpetual state of “Finding Mr. Right.” She’d run through at least five Mr. Almosts and two Mr. Assholes that Julie could remember, and was currently working on Mr. Restaurant Owner – Bartholomew Hardin, great-grandson of the original restaurateur, who was rapidly squandering the family’s hard-won fortune by opening a series of stupid-concept, high-priced cocktail bars. Bart had latched on to her mother for some reason, and Julie could tell he was bad news from the get-go.

She set her soda on a pile of computer printouts with the week’s inventory reports and dropped into the desk chair. The blazing, obnoxious fall heat wave was multiplied times about a thousand in this tiny inner room. But somehow her mother had it in her head that Julie should be in here, gagging her way through a pile of homework, “safe.” But Julie was about as far from “safe” as she could be in this space, and she knew it.

After two hours, she’d plowed through all of her math homework and was half done with an English essay. A growling, empty stomach made her stand and stretch, and she wondered if she dared emerge to find some food. The heavy door made a loud creak when she eased it open. She peeked down the hallway to make sure it was clear before tiptoeing around the corner. The bar was nearly full now, her mother in overdrive, laughing, and joking with customers and wait staff, relaxed and happy in a way she never was with her own daughter. Julie frowned when she spotted him. Bart Hardin leaned on the far corner of the bar, near the service area, blocking it in his large, annoying way while waitresses suffered his flirty comments and bossy presence. Julie narrowed her eyes, studying him for a few minutes.

His tall frame was poured into what must be an expensive suit, but it hung on him funny. His smile was too wide, his dark eyes predatory. She hated the way he would stare at her mother, then flick his eyes up and down whatever woman was closest to him, as if devouring her in one gulp. Julie had zero real experience with boys, having avoided them like the plague thanks to her mother’s long harangues about the importance of this very thing. The way she slid in and out of the lives of so many men baffled Julie but, up until this year, she’d listened, absorbed, and tried to keep a steady head and her “knees together” around members of the opposite sex, just as her mother ordered.

Realizing she needed to concoct a lie to cover the fact she planned to go to a party – with plenty of boys, including one she had nursed a crush on for nearly a year – she refocused on the far end of the bar at the sound of laughter. Her mother stood close to Bart, and even Julie could see the woman was attempting to establish her claim on him in front of all the waitresses he was eyeballing. She sighed, put a hand over her loudly protesting stomach, and slid to the side hoping to make it into the kitchen without being noticed.

The kitchen manager smiled as she handed Julie a plateful of shrimp and spicy rice. She snagged one of the salads from a waiting tray under half-hearted protest from a server and contemplated eating back in the break room so as to avoid the whole disgusting scene between her mother and Bart. But she still needed to get a few more things done and had a split-second of uncertainty. Maybe she was overreacting to Bart. He could be harmless. He was going to lift them up, marry her mother, provide her with college money and all sorts of great shit, she’d been told countless times. She should be nice to him as her mother insisted, not such a surly, mistrustful teenager.

Julie didn’t see either of them on her quick trip between kitchen and back hall, ducking into the tiny office with a sigh of relief. She inhaled the food, finished the rest of her soda, and wrapped up the essay within the hour. In the meantime the room had gotten even hotter. The old building had crappy ventilation. Between the kitchen and the body heat of hundreds of customers and employees, the plaster seemed to soak it all up and blow it straight down onto Julie’s damp forehead. She put her head down on the desk, willing it to be cool, for her mind to still and stop knocking around ridiculous images of her and Nathan Harrow.

She yelped and jumped up when a wet, meaty hand dropped onto her shoulder. Her throat closed up in fear but she set her face in calm lines.
Overreacting, remember? He only wants to help you and your mother.
And he
was
nice to her, which, after her mother’s last guy left them with nothing but an overdue rent payment, was somewhat of a relief.

“Hi, Bart. I was, uh, just finishing. I think I’ll catch the next bus home.” She shouldered her backpack and lowered her gaze.