Typical teenager.
I interpret it to meandammit, more customers.
Probably playing on his phone a minute ago.
“Welcome to Cod Pieces, where our pieces are lit and our chips don’t drip,” he says. He’s wearing a giant cod head as a hat, and I can’t tell if Oliver’s choking noise is from the greeting or the outfit.
“A five-piece cod and two chips, plus an order of hush puppies, please,” I say.
Gotta ease Oliver into this.
The grease can be a lot when you’re not used to fast food.
Although this might not be easing him in.
Guess we’ll see.
“Thirty-two seventy-six,” the kid replies, looking behind us toward the fishbowl and not paying much attention to us at all. “You want a codpiece with that?”
Oliver makes another choking noise.
I can’t look at him—if he’s horrified, I’ll feel a little bad, and if he’s laughing, I’ll lose my shit and laugh with him until I can’t breathe.
The Cod Pieces closest to Athena’s Rest doesn’t offer actual codpieces the way the diner offers kids fake diner hats so they can pretend they work there too.
This might’ve been a bad idea.
The chaos that I find whenever I go back to where I came from has clearly followed me out onto the road.
But a girl can only drive by so many Cod Pieces before she needs a snack.
Though I willnotbe saying that out loud to Oliver.
Probably.
It would be amusing to watch his reaction.
But maybe not yet. Maybe in another couple days.
“You got the cash, Ollie?” I say without looking at him.
He forks over a hundred-dollar bill.
The kid looks at me, then at Oliver, then pulls out the magic marker that they use to check that a dollar bill is real.
“This again?” Oliver mutters.
I pinch my lips together.
The kid makes change and hands it back to him.
He drops all of the change into the tip jar—it’s a fishbowl, of course—and the kid’s eyes go as round as the mom’s eyes did this morning.
And then he looks down at Oliver’s shirt, where I forgot to make sure he took the tag off, as someone shrieks behind us. “That’s the sign! Oh my god! The stripper’s here!”
I choke on a gasp.
I’m up for a lot, but— “Astripper? At akid’s birthday party?” I say to the teenager behind the counter.
