The Vow

Chapter 2

Mo

I can’t be the only one. There have to be other people out there who see the Mr. Twister mascot for what he is: Hitler. A grinning, cartoon, twisty-cone version of the Führer himself, advertising to the world that this place is secretly Nazi central. There is no other logical reason to put one of those little black smudge mustaches on a custard mascot.

Of course, I’ve got Annie in my head—Chill out, Mo. It’s obviously supposed to be Charlie Chaplin—so fine, where’s the cane? And the hat? Exactly. Hitler.

This truck is an oven. I am pot roast.

I’d go in, but I’m already throwing up a little in my mouth just thinking about the assault of peachy-ness behind those doors. Peach walls, peach aprons, peach countertops, peach chalk on the blackboard menu. And of course, Annie is in there smiling and faking brain-dead. I’m better off as pot roast, and besides, the Spanish Inquisition isn’t going to learn itself.

I turn back to the previous page, the one that I’ve already read and forgotten three times this hour, and start over. The picture of Ferdinand II of Aragon is freakishly distracting. It’s the way he’s glaring. I close my right eye and glare back at him and his unapologetic scowl. I bet nobody told him to quit being cranky.

Laughter erupts from the porch and I look up.

She’s going to hate working here. The clientele is sprawled all over the veranda and grass, mostly kids from school, plus a few of the Saint James snots and some vaguely familiar faces from Bardstown. It’s a typical mix for this side of E-town: some privileged, some middle-class, some trailer park, all white.

Everyone is pretending that finals are already over, even though a good chunk of them have more exams tomorrow. But why study when you could be celebrating the near-completion of another substandard academic year? And why not be patriotic at the same time? Some girl I recognize from basketball games in Taylorsville is wearing an American flag bikini top. And right in front of the truck, that douchebag Chase Dunkirk is licking custard off Tia Kent’s palm, while Maya is five feet away.

Maya Lawless. I mouth her name, imaging what it would feel like to say it to her and have her turn her head and smile with those full lips. Lucky for Chase, she’s too busy doing some kind of cheerleading routine to notice that he’s licking sugar off someone else. Go team.

This. This is why Annie working here is such a bad idea. She’s better than all of this. She sees through it, like I do, and she’s going to be miserable in one of those frilly aprons, listening to bubble-gum pop, counting change for morons all day.

And at some point she’s going to realize Lena isn’t in there.

I’m not an idiot. I know that’s why Annie wants this job, and I don’t like it. It seems dangerous, thinking her sister’s essence is waiting to be unearthed in a bucket of Mr. Twister’s world-famous Strawberry Storm, but I can’t stop her. Or maybe I could if I wanted to, but I don’t want to stop her. People are always stopping her.

If she didn’t want the job so badly, and in that quiet, intense way she has where every cell in her body leans toward an idea, I’d have already talked her out of it, but she’s like an iron shaving being pulled by a magnet on the other side of the screen.

“Chase?” Maya’s voice from clear across the lawn pulls me from my thoughts.

I look up.

“What’s going on?” she asks, genuine confusion on her beautiful face. Cheer-fest over. She’s got her hands on her hips and those movie-star lips in a pout as she closes the distance between her and Tia with long bare-legged strides. Chick fight. I shut the textbook. Ferdinand can wait.

“Nothing, baby.” Douchebag has already taken several steps away from Tia and is pulling Maya to him, expertly spinning her around and away from Tia. “Should we go get you some custard?” he asks, and of course Maya follows, instantly tranquilized.

She deserves better. Also, a little hair pulling would’ve made this scene a lot less lame.

Honesty moment: Mr. Twister’s probably isn’t a white-supremacy hub. Despite the Hitler vibe I’m still getting from the mascot, I doubt anyone who hangs out at this place is capable of feeling strongly about anything more substantial than, I don’t know, The Bachelor.

Music, something twangy and grating, starts up from a few cars down, and several girls on the lawn start singing along. Then several more. Soon every girl on the lawn is belting lyrics about dying young and being buried in satin, like one big redneck choir. I’m considering trying to start the truck with my bike-lock key so I can roll up the windows, when a Frisbee collides with the windshield. It’s like a thousand volts straight to my heart. The clatter echoes in my ears, and after an eternity in that frozen state of shock, my heart resumes beating.

I look up to see who threw it, then reach my arm out the window and give a choice gesture to the deserving recipient. It’s just Bryce.

“What are you doing in there?” he calls, jogging over to retrieve the Frisbee. “Aren’t you dying?”

“Studying, and yes.”

“Sometimes I really wish I could beat the crap out of you, you know? It’s not right to be such a loser and not get punished. Put the books down and get out here.”

“I’ve gotta read this. Remember reading? The thing with the letters and the words?”

“Yeah, I remember,” he says with a grin. “Your mom’s been tutoring me. She’s incredible, by the way.”

Ah, yes. Bryce’s your mom shtick—not classy but comfortable. Like old sweatpants. Like Red Lobster. Like South Park reruns. I’d tell him how lame it is, but I’d hate to neuter his personality completely.

Plus, Bryce and I have a little something I call court synergy that can’t be screwed with. He’s Crick to my Watson, Jerry to my Ben, Diddy to my Donkey Kong. It’s this melding of rhythm and flow and intuition that I barely understand. We would have taken State this year if it weren’t for a team of seven-foot ’roid-ragers from Louisville.

All of this, as he said, is why he doesn’t beat the crap out of me and why I put up with a friend who is a barely functionally literate. That’s the beauty of basketball. I don’t know why it’s not being used to resolve global unrest.

Just the thought of pebbled leather under my fingertips pulls my muscles tight, and I force my eyes back down to Ferdinand. I won’t be benched by the venerable Dr. Hussein for one single A-minus.

“Come on, man,” Bryce says. “You gotta be roasting.”

“I’ve gotta be roasting?” Bryce’s skin is pink and glistening. Another ten minutes in the sun and he’ll be a walking blister. “I can practically hear your skin sizzling.”

“I’m fine.”

“You smell like bacon.”

“Where’s your girlfriend?” he asks.

“No clue. Probably back at your house, making your dad’s dinner.”

It takes him a second; then he grins appreciatively. “Your other girlfriend.”

Annie is not my girlfriend, and she never will be. Bryce knows this, I know this, and Annie knows this. As for the rest of the world, they’re all idiots. It’s not one of those faux-platonic friendships where one person is secretly obsessed with the other one. And it’s not one of those things where hanging out is peppered with random make-out sessions and periods of hating each other. We just are what we are.

Annie isn’t ugly. And over the years there’ve been a string of guys, mostly jerks, intrigued enough to pursue, date, and get dumped by her. But that waify, translucent-skinned thing doesn’t do it for me. I need a girl with something to hold on to. A girl with sway in her hips. Like maybe a certain cheerleader who’s temporarily distracted by a passing douchebag, but who will come to her senses any day now. For example.

The only sway Annie’s got is accidental. I love her and all, but she walks like a double-jointed robot, and she’s so skinny a gust of wind could level her.

Besides, if Annie and I ever got together like that, the inevitable breakup would kill us.

“Fine,” Bryce says. “Where is that chick you’re always with who isn’t your girlfriend?”

“Interviewing.”

“In there?”

“No, at your proctologist’s.”

“I don’t know what a proctologist is.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Yeah, she’s in there.”

“Seriously? Mr. Twister? Why would anyone do that to their summer?”

I shrug. Bryce is from tobacco. Every year he watches the Derby from the shaded seats at Churchill Downs. I’ve seen him on TV, positioned between his mother (wearing an acid-trip-inspired hat) and his father (red-faced and drinking mint juleps until they become jint muleps). If Bryce doesn’t understand the economics behind employment—as in, people have to work to eat—it’s because his parents can pay for the horse, the stable, the riding lessons, and the summer polo camp in Argentina, which is what he’s doing for the entire month of July.

“Hey, didn’t Annie work in your dad’s lab last summer?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah, he’s working on a different project this summer.” In reality, my dad’s prosthetics research company has taken an economic kidney shot and is barely solvent. Not worth explaining to Bryce. “Are you finished with finals?”

“Yeah. I just took precalc.”

“How’d it go?”

He chews his lip. “I’m still not exactly sure what precalc is, so . . .”

“Hmm.”

“Hey, where’s your sister?” he asks.

“My sister? Poach elsewhere, idiot.”

“Chill out. Yesterday she told Natalie she’d bring some old ballet shoes for her to see, and now Natalie won’t stop bugging me about them. And if you haven’t noticed, Sarina’s not exactly my type. A little too ethnic. No offense.”

No offense. I hide the wince. It’s just Bryce. 180-pound Bryce, who’s afraid of spiders. Bryce, who brings his sister Natalie, who has Down syndrome, along on 7-Eleven runs and to the movies. Yes, he’s undeniably stupid, but he isn’t a bigot, even if he does open his fat mouth and insert his size-thirteen foot all the time, without even knowing it.

“None taken,” I say.

Bryce has his qualities. He’s loyal. He punched that Taylorsville dropout who called me a towelhead. And he’s the best alibi in the world when I’m hanging out with Annie, who my parents are convinced is plotting to trick me into getting her pregnant. It’s typical Muslim-American paranoia, and even though they’re barely practicing (as in the last religious thing they did was name me Mohammed), the thought of a baby out of wedlock with a white girl makes them physically ill.

Bryce, however, they love because he’s rich and there’s very little chance I’m going to get him pregnant. He doesn’t mind lying to them, and he does a pretty convincing job of it too, except when he forgets that he’s supposed to be covering. But even then he just comes across as stupid. It’s very believable.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. “Maybe I am getting a sunburn. Let’s go in.”

I slide the textbook into my backpack. A little AC would be nice. “I don’t know if Annie wants me in there. It might make her nervous.”

“We’ll sit in a corner. She won’t even see us.”

I get out of the truck. Sunlight hits my eyes, and I force myself to squint through the glare, following Bryce through the lawn crowd. He says over his shoulder, “I just realized how much this summer is gonna rule with Annie working here. Unlimited free custard.”

“What, like you can’t afford to buy it?”

He shrugs. “Free is free. You don’t think she’ll hook us up?”

“No offense, but Annie’s not going to give you anything. Ever. Just in case you get the wrong idea. Again.”

He shrugs.

Bryce has made horrifically genuine passes at Annie at least once a year since seventh grade, but the rejection hasn’t seemed to damage his self-esteem. One attempt included plagiarized poetry on cologne-drenched paper.

He takes the steps two at a time. “But she’ll give you free custard, right? You can just ask for two spoons.”

“Wrong.”

He goes in. I follow and let the smell of waffle cone swallow me whole. It’s Mr. Twister’s sole redeeming quality.

A couple of months after we moved to the States, my parents took Sarina and me to Disney World. We ended up spending half the day doing It’s a Small World over and over—Sarina’s choice. She was mesmerized, but the eerie mechanical smiles and robotic swiveling heads screwed with my ten-year-old brain. I had nightmares for longer than I care to admit. I only have to walk into Mr. Twister, and it’s like I’m sitting in that mint-green boat staring into the eyes of creepy motorized marionettes all over again.

I don’t see Annie, which is good. I don’t want her to think I’m checking up on her—she hates that her parents are always doing that. She must be in the back, so we stand in line and make it to the front before I realize I’m screwed in the usual way. “I don’t have money,” I mumble but check my pockets anyway. Nothing. Clearly, I’m the one who should be getting a job, not Annie. If only my dad didn’t have other plans for my summer. Plans involving scientific slavery at his lab. Unpaid plans.

“No worries,” Bryce says.

My parents aren’t poor; in fact, my grandparents in Jordan are stinking rich, but there is no trickle-down effect in the Hussein financial plan, so I have no discretionary funds. Ironically, my parents fear what terrible shame I might bring on them if I had an extra twenty bucks every once in a while. But what they should fear is the terrible shame I might bring on them for shoplifting or selling drugs or plasma or semen or whatever else I have that can be traded for enough cash to buy a measly cup of frozen custard once in a while.

Bryce hands me five bucks.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m not putting out at the end of this.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not my type either.”

I get a cone, and Bryce gets a Peanut Butter Hurricane. It’s bigger than his head. “Coach said more protein,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what he had in mind.”

We find a booth in the corner and watch the staff try to appease the never-ending line.

“How long has she been in there?” he asks, tunneling into the Hurricane with his plastic spoon.

“A while. I’m sure it’s a very thorough process. They’ve probably finished the obstacle course and are administering the polygraph right now.”

“Or one of those inkblot tests to weed out the crazies,” he says.

“Rorschach.”

“Ro-what? I don’t even know what language you’re speaking.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, there she is,” he says, pointing his spoon over my shoulder.

I turn, and at first I don’t see her, but then I do. She’s coming out of the back room behind some schmuck wearing the peach apron. Poor guy. No ruffles like the ones the girls have to wear, but still.

She’s smiling.

Then she looks at me, and I have to smile too. Because even though it’s still catastrophically stupid for her to walk in here and apply for her dead sister’s old job, I can’t not smile back at Annie.