Smart Mouth Waitress (2 page)

I finished my empty calories just as Opera Man came walking down the alley, singing one of his songs for the whole neighborhood. I don't understand Italian, let alone opera Italian, but the song seemed to be about love.

After my shift, I walked home in the drizzly rain, and the hill leading up to my house seemed steeper than usual. My umbrella was back at the restaurant, and I could have doubled back to get it, but the rain suited my mood. Sometimes it feels therapeutic to have a really good, miserable sulk.

I passed a catering van and a string of huge, white trucks. Thick power cables criss-crossed the sidewalk in front of me, and pretty soon, a woman in a fluorescent-hued safety vest stopped me and talked on her walkie talkie for a moment before waving me through.

We get a lot of movies shot here in Vancouver, and TV series too, including Supernatural, and that JJ Abrams show with the parallel universes, Fringe. The big, round, Roman-empire-looking building the Fringe Division is located in is actually our downtown public library. Oh, and a little vampire series you may have heard of—Twilight—was shot here, much to the delight of everyone who spotted the stars around town.

Vancouver's so popular for filming, it can make the movie-going experience surreal. I went to watch the Tron remake downtown during the Christmas break before last, and while the motorbike-chase intro was playing, the people around me wouldn't stop talking about exactly which downtown streets the chase segment was filmed on. Okay, it wasn't the other people talking, it was me.
Attention, people: I talk in the movie theater.
Don't hate me. At least I keep my voice down and at least I don't use my phone for texting, drawing everyone's attention to my little blue screen.

My favorite shot-in-Vancouver movie is
The Butterfly Effect
, which, despite having Ashton Kutcher in it, is a seriously creeptastic sci-fi thriller. Sometimes when I see a little boy with haunted eyes, I think he's going to start talking to me with the authoritative voice of an adult, like the character in the movie, and it scares me. Or maybe little kids scare me.

After I got past the movie set, a gray squirrel dashed across the sidewalk in front of me and jumped on a black squirrel, big fluffy tails twitching and flying. I thought they were fighting to the death, but they were actually making sweet squirrel-love to each other.

I got out my phone and took a video, thinking I might be capturing inter-species mating, which would lead me to YouTube viral video fame. Later, I would get home and discover they were the same breed, and black squirrels are simply the melanistic offspring of our local gray squirrels.

After a few seconds of filming, I put the phone away, feeling like a lonely pervert.

Why did I feel so unhappy? Wild animals getting it on is one of my favorite funny things.

This must be a delayed response to Valentine's Day
, I decided. 

I walked slowly, getting thoroughly soaked by the drizzling rain.

At home, I hung my damp clothes by the heater vent, then started reading the note my mother left—actually, it was more like an instructional manual than a note. She'd used a binder. With divider tabs.

I checked that Sunday's meal instructions and took out the corresponding recipe card for spaghetti sauce. Dad loves mushrooms and my brother likes zucchini, and Mom gave me express permission to omit the usual carrots, as she wouldn't be there and she knows we don't like them in the sauce.

Mom wouldn't be at dinner for five whole weeks.

I thought I was fine with her being gone, but I found myself crying pitifully and chopping up carrots anyway.

Dad and my brother either didn't notice the carrots, or were smart enough to not insult the person who would be cooking for them for the next five weeks.

My brother's name is Garnet, and he's three years younger than me. His name seems normal enough to me, but I grew up with it, and my own name is Peridot. Some people pronounce it pear-i-dough and others pear-i-dot, with a T on the end. Either is correct, and fine by me, though most people call me Perry.

My mother's name is Jade, so as you may have deduced, my parents went with a precious-gem theme for the family. My father's name is Dale, which is not a gemstone.

Peridot is a gem-quality mineral, with a chemical composition of (Mg, Fe)
₂
SiO
₄
. Right about now you're wondering why I'm telling you that, right? Don't worry, it doesn't have anything to do with my story about finding my first love. Also, it won't be on the test. Peridot only comes in green, though the name sounds like it should be blue, doesn't it? Peridot can be light olive or dark, sometimes confused with emerald.

When I was a little girl, my parents called me Dottie for short. When I turned twelve, I put a stop to that and began signing all my school papers with Peridot and refusing to answer to Dottie. The truth is, if you called me Dottie from across a crowded room, I'd still turn.

Garnet is simply Garnet. Our last name is Martin, and a couple of the guys on Garnet's soccer team call him Martin, since that's what's on his jersey. It's funny how boys call each other by their last names but girls never do.

Dad and Garnet were gobbling down the spaghetti like it was a contest, and while they didn't complain about the carrots, neither of them complimented me on what a great job I'd done, cooking my first official family dinner. They were talking away about soccer, as though I wasn't even there.

They weren't going to ignore me.

“I'm ready to lose my virginity,” I announced.

Chapter 2

After I announced to my father and my fifteen-year-old brother that I was ready to lose my virginity, they got the same shocked, mystified expressions they get when Mom yanks the TV plug out of the wall.

Yes, I got their attention.

My father said, “I didn't even know you had a boyfriend.”

“Who'd screw you?” Garnet said with a laugh. Dad gave him a dirty look and he quickly recanted with, “I'm sure you'll make some weird guy very happy. Don't do
it
to any of my friends.”

I threw a celery stalk at him. “I'm not going to
do it to
any of your disgusting friends.” And I wouldn't have
done it
with any of his friends, except for maybe Jesse. But that was beside the point, because Garnet always hung out with Kyle, and I never got to see Jesse.

My father rubbed his hairline, probably checking to see if my bombshell had made his fair, reddish hair recede further. “Let's hold off until your mother gets back from LA,” he said.

“That'll be weeks!” I said.

“You must be really horny,” Garnet said.

“I may have spoke too soon on the virginity issue,” I said. “What I would like is to fall in love, and then, if everything's right, lose my virginity.”

Garnet put down his fork and studied me. “If you wanna get a boyfriend, you have to cut the ropes out of your hair.”

I reflexively grabbed my dreadlocks, which were tied back in a loose ponytail. I'd had them for nearly four years, and the longest ones reached my waist. My dreads were as much a part of me as my arms and legs.

My father didn't speak up to agree with Garnet, but neither did he disagree. One of his eyes twitched.

My mother had the same dreads as me, though hers were blonder, and understandably, my father couldn't exactly say anything against mine, or it would also be against hers.

“The ropes are gross,” Garnet said in his usually-eloquent manner.

“Don't be racist,” I said.

“You're white,” he said.

“Exactly.”

He put his chin on his hand and gave me another good stare. “This isn't about all people with dreads, just you,” he said. “People get weird ideas about you.”

“Weird? Like that I listen to
Counting Crows
?” I said, getting angry, but scooping a forkful of spaghetti into my mouth to cover my feelings. Garnet's pretty much the best little brother a girl could have, but he's still a
little brother
. If he thinks he's getting under your skin, he won't stop until there's blood or tears.

“Like you'd know where to buy pot,” he said. “And you don't shave your legs.”

Indignantly, I said, “I shave my legs.”

“I'm just tellin' it how it is, bro.”

“Are you just guessing what people think, or do you know this for a fact?” I asked.

He looked up at the ceiling and counted to himself, holding out seven fingers. “This many times, people have asked me to ask you to get them some pot. It's true, bro.”

Garnet always calls me bro, because neither of us like the sound of
sis
. When he calls me by that term of endearment, I know he's being honest in his own loving way, which he doesn't mean to be brutal. I grabbed some more garlic bread and thought about what he'd just said, about the impression I made.

“Would people think those things about Mom?” I asked.

“No, that's different. She's older, and she wears nice clothes that look expensive. And besides, she's famous. People don't think those things about famous people. They're allowed to be weird.”

“Dad? Did you swallow your tongue? No opinion, huh?”

My father was arranging his remaining spaghetti in a three by three grid on his plate.

“Dad.” I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “Should I lose the dreadlocks? Do you think I'll be able to find a nice boyfriend if I do?”

Diplomatically, he said, “Perry, I support whatever decision you make.” He scooped a portion of food into his mouth and looked at me intently, like I was one of his diagrams of water pipes for his job at the City's Department of Engineering.

I'd had the dreadlocks so long, I'd almost forgotten why. No, it wasn't to support the Rastafarian movement. It wasn't political at all. Nor was it about becoming a clone of my mother.

See, I was sensitive about the size of my bum. And my legs. And my whole body, really, and I thought having bigger hair would sorta
balance me out
, like how chunky shoes make your calves look smaller.

Over the last year, I'd lost my so-called baby fat, thanks to portion control and avoidance of cake, so maybe I didn't need the dreads, but I had gotten used to them. Sometimes black people with dreads would give me a thumbs-up and a nice smile. Three people back in my high school had dreads, and whenever we crossed paths, we'd nod, even though our social circles didn't overlap.

The best part about dreads is you never have a bad hair day. No, scratch that. The
best
part is confusing the heck out of senior citizens who don't know if they should give you money to keep you from sleeping on the street that night, or run screaming.

“It's down to you, Dad,” I said. “Garnet says the dreads need to go. You're the other man in my life, and I need your opinion.

It took nearly a minute for my father to go through his methodical engineer's thought process. Finally, he said, “I don't know if you have to cut them out or what other methods you would use. I don't suppose the hair would be in a healthy-looking state, having sustained some damage. You could always regrow the dreadlocks, but hair only grows at a rate of half an inch per month.”

Garnet held his hands up, framing my face. “You're not ugly,” he said.