Smart Mouth Waitress (15 page)

“How? Did she chew on all your furniture?”

“Nah, just got me evicted. No dogs allowed in my apartment. That's why Pickles and I live in our happy shithole!”

“Your what?”

“I shouldn't say that. It smells a lot better now. We live in a basement suite below Cooper, my friend that you met. We love Cooper, but he's a very loud walker, isn't he, Pickles? And he stays up too late.”

“I'm sure your dog appreciates the sacrifices you've made for her.”

“She sure does.” Pickles was getting a little
bitey
, so he set her back down on the grass to nose around for good smells. “She shows her appreciation by farting in my face.”

“My best friend Courtney does the same thing.”

Marc laughed loud enough for other people out walking their dogs in the park to stop and stare our way.

This could be our life
, I thought. We could take Pickles for walks in this park every night. I wasn't happy, exactly, but I was content. If only he would hold my hand or kiss me, I'd be happy.

He said, “Those dolls up in your room were odd.”

“My Forgotten Creatures?”

“Yeah, the little nightmare teddy bears.”

“You should have come into my room and gotten a better look.”

“Right,” he said. “I just had dinner with your father. I wasn't going to barge into his little girl's pink, frilly bedroom.”

“My room's not frilly.”

“No, you have those demons on your wall,” he teased.

I laughed. “They're sort of an ongoing project, but I haven't made one in a while. Whenever I'm out, if I see an interesting washer or kids' toy, I'll pick it up and put it in my pocket to make eyes or teeth or something.”

“I collected some stuff as a kid,” he said.

“Like animal bones? I found a whole dead bird once, it was pretty cool.”

He laughed uncomfortably, his eyebrows tenting up at in a triangle. “No animal bones. Just, like, unusual beer caps.”

“I could work with those.”

“We have something in common!” He held his hand toward me and I realized—too late—he was holding an imaginary glass for me to clink, but I was already attempting to give him a high-five, wrapping my hand around his and shaking it.

“Friends,” he said, and it sounded more like a statement than a question.

“Totes,” I said.

He yawned and raised his arms over his head, then rested one arm down on the back of the bench, behind me.

He said, “That wine I had at dinner is making me feel like kissing you.”

That did not sound like something a friend would say to another friend.

Pickles barked, and a second later, Marc stood and shook out his legs. “Best be getting home or Pickles will miss her bedtime,” he said.

That was it? What a tease.

“See you around,” I said, waving.

“Come on, I'll walk you back to your front door.”

“That's okay. I'll sit here for a bit, with my thoughts. I'm feeling introspective right now.”

“You're sure?”

“It's a block. I'm a big girl now and I know my way home.”

“Thanks again for dinner, buddy,” he said, walking away with his dog.

I sat on the bench for a long time, growing cold enough to shiver.

Marc liked me, but
as a friend
, or so he said. Wasn't that something girls were supposed to do to guys? Put them in the so-called friend zone? Since when did guys do that to girls?

I bet most guys think a girl can get a boyfriend any time she wants, just by virtue of being a girl. But what about the homely girls, like me? Yes, as I sat there shivering on the bench, I'd gone from believing I was a seven out of ten to thinking of myself as homely. I usually had a decent sense of my own attractiveness, but I was starting to have doubts.

If everyone thinks they're above-average attractive, then where are all the below-average people? Statistics don't allow everyone to be in the upper half.

I must be ugly and not know it
, I decided.

In the dark park, I watched people in sweatpants and untied shoes without socks taking their dogs for the last pee of the evening. I ran my fingers lightly over my face, trying to visualize my features. I wished my eyes were further apart, and the tip of my nose were smaller. My cheeks felt chubby and huge, my forehead was oily, but my chin was dry and flaked. Classic combination skin.

I wondered how much plastic surgery it would take to make me look like Megan Fox. Rumor is, it even took her a few surgeries to look like Megan Fox, though honestly, I've seen older photos of her and she was always stunning, even in high school.

Looking down at my body made me depressed. My thighs were spread out and enormous on the bench. Marc must have seen my big, fat, squishy thighs next to him and gotten scared off.

An older woman walked past me, lighting her cigarette with a match. My mom used to smoke, but she quit a few years ago. I wondered what she was doing in LA at that very moment … besides hanging out with rock stars and making my father lose his mind.

My phone buzzed with a message: Dad wondering where I was, since he'd noticed Marc's car was gone from the front of the house.

I texted back:
Losing my virginity. Call back later.

He replied:
Don't be asshole.

You have to laugh at a father who tells his daughter to not be an asshole, don't you?

He texted again a minute later:
I meant “Don't be asinine.” Damn you, autocorrect!

I giggled like a fool over the text and sent a screencap copy to Courtney.

I'd wanted to sit on the bench until I had everything figured out, but instead I got up and went back home to face the mess in the kitchen.

So, the date was Wednesday and then Thursday at work was unremarkable, unless you're interested in what I overheard when I walked into the kitchen. Toph was rapt, listening to a story from Donny, who was saying, “There was a piece of corn, right on the end of my dick.”

I turned and walked straight out again.

Unfortunately, when you work in a restaurant, the group of guys in the kitchen can get crude. What I just told you was not even anywhere near the worst thing I'd heard at work.

Here's a little tip for you: if a group of guys in the kitchen tell you to come quick and look at something, just don't. I can tell you from experience, it often involves a scrotum, and it's nothing you want to see. Watch the movie
Waiting
if you'd like a fairly accurate facsimile of the real-life experience. Actually, simply watch it if you like Ryan Reynolds or funny things, because it's great.

At The Whistle, we usually had two, maximum three dudes in the kitchen at once, so luckily things didn't get too outrageous. Donny's stories, however, would put you off food.

Friday and Saturday were my days off, as well as Courtney's.

The little monster tricked me into going shopping with her and Britain. How she did it was by offering me a free ticket to see
John Carter
at the big mall, Metropolis at Metrotown, in Burnaby.

I took the Skytrain there, and when I got off at the Metrotown station, I realized I had forgotten that rule of teen couplehood: the new love interest will ALWAYS be there as part of group outings, unless otherwise explicitly noted. Had I learned nothing from the Haylee-Andrew debacle of Spring 2011? I'd been through more than enough of our other friends getting their first boyfriends to know this rule. Little had I known, it also applied to girlfriends.

Britain stood like a skinny tree next to my friend, her short brown hair defying gravity and swooping up.

“Courtney!” I yelled and gave my friend a huge hug. “Britain!” I held my arms out and dared her.

She called my bluff and gave me a hug, complete with a back-pat. Oh, she was good.

“Britain wants to get her eyebrow pierced,” Courtney said.

“They do that here?”

“I can't see why not,” Courtney said. “It'll give us our special mission.”

I clapped my hands and jumped enthusiastically. “Eee!”

Whenever we go shopping at a mall, before we get there, Courtney and I think of something challenging to hunt down. Our mission could be finding cotton candy, or rainbow-striped toe socks, or day-of-the-week underwear, such as the ones I owned two complete sets of. I didn't like the idea of hanging out with Britain, but having a fun mission would make it bearable. Also, she was going to suffer pain and discomfort, and possibly bleed or cry. I can't say I wasn't looking forward to that part.

Britain said, “Maybe we should save the eyebrow piercing for when we're downtown sometime. Today could be a scouting mission for jewelry.”

“No,” Courtney said. “Piercing is our mission. They have a thousand stores here. They have to do piercing.”

I said, “Get me something sharp, plus a potato, and I'll do it.”

Britain scowled and tugged Courtney's arm, leading her into the mall. I followed along behind them, as a third wheel does.

Breathing that sweet, chemical mall interior air got my shopping-adrenaline going. Metrotown doesn't have a
thousand
stores, as Courtney had said, but it does have over four hundred, spread over three levels. It's the second-biggest mall in Canada, bested only by West Edmonton Mall, which is a whopping ten times the size and includes a water park.

Someone walked by with Beard Papa's cream puffs, and I knew what my secondary mission would be. The girl eating the enormous cream puff wore orange platform boots and matching bright orange hair, impeccably styled.

From all my time on Main Street, where people wear a lot of polar fleece and ironic ugly sweaters, I'd almost forgotten how dressed-up people are inside Metrotown. I swear people put on their best clothes to go there and buy more best clothes.

My wallet began to jump up and down excitedly inside my purse.

In front of me, Courtney and Britain held hands. I opted to continue following behind them rather than walk three abreast and disrupt traffic, so I was able to observe people's reactions to the couple. People looked their way, noticed the held hands, then glanced back up at their faces. To my surprise, a lot of people smiled, as if to say,
ah, young love
.

I wondered what my friend Marc was up to. I'd requested he add me as a friend on Facebook the night after our dinner, and he still hadn't approved me. I wondered if he was busy, or avoiding me. No, I didn't wonder. I
knew
he was avoiding me.

Britain stopped at one of the mall directory signs, and Courtney squealed and dragged her away. She then explained we didn't use maps. The rules were: no directories, no searches on your phone, and no asking mall staff at the info kiosks. Everything else was fair game, including asking other shoppers and store staff. That was actually the point—to talk to other people and have fun.

My father says when people are on vacation, they don't feel the regular social restrictions, and they'll talk to strangers when they're at a resort in a foreign city. He says half the fun of traveling is the people you meet who are from your home country. We went to a resort in Mexico for a week in December and hung out the entire time with another family from Vancouver—people who just happened to be there.

After we left the directory, Courtney led us into a candy store, where she bought three colors of Jelly Belly candies, plus a mixed bag for eating. For her current art project, she was working on some mosaics of images made from the bright-hued beans.