Suddenly, I’m as nauseous as I was the morning after my birthday. As the stream of tears weasels its way down my cheek, I yank open the door and dart away for fresh air. Nobody stops me, but everybody in the snack shack pauses and turns to stare.
Nothing to see here, just your manager breaking down into a heap of spare parts.
The night air washing over me does nothing to stop my chest from caving in. When Derick walks into my field of vision, everything goes red.
He’s holding up one of the finished event posters as if he’s a kid showing his parents a perfect grade on a spelling quiz. The only thing he’s getting an A+ on is his deception this summer.
“Derick,” I seethe.
“Don’t they look amazing? I went for matte instead of glossy so that if local businesses hang them in the windows they won’t be too reflective.” He registers my squished expression. “You think I should’ve gone with glossy? I wasn’t…”
I snatch the poster from his hands. In a single, swift motion, I tear it down the middle and then once more for good measure. His horrified look only makes my fury feel more justified. I throw it back in his face, a sad shower of confetti.
“Did you know your dad was planning to demolish Wiley’s?” I ask, even though I’m certain I know the answer. When he’s quiet for too long, I ask again with more bite, “Did…you…know?”
“I did,” he says, ashamed. “But I didn’t know for sure that he’d go through with it.”
“Was the internship ever real? Was any of this real?”
“The internship was real, I swear. After a while, it became apparent that my job here wasn’t to boost sales though. It was to dig into the drive-in’s finances.”
My fists ball up. “Is that even legal?”
“I didn’t report anything back that I wasn’t told outright.” The dread rises into my throat.I told him?Shit. I realize in being open with him, I may have advertised Earl’s money woes to the man with the means to lock the gates for good. How stupid can I be?
“What was the plan?” I need to hear it. To know this isn’t some talking-in-my-sleep stress dream.
In a low voice, he says, “I was ordered to see if the investment was still lucrative, to help decide if this could be a prime spot for the new station. It’s all a numbers game. My dad determined he could make more on parking than he can from Earl’s lease.” And then, sounding suspiciously like his father, he adds, “It’s business. It’s nothing personal.”
“What is with you people? Why do you keep saying that?” Exasperation makes it hard to speak. “Business is between people. Interactions between people are inherently personal.” Part of me wants to mentionourpersonal interactions, our slow build from former friends to friends to something more. Was that all business too?
Derick immediately sobers, fully himself again. “Wren…I swear I tried to talk him out of it. You know I have no power with him. It’s completely out of my control. And anyway, I thought this whole Alice Kelly thing was to move past this place. You said it yourself. You can’t stay here forever.” His seriousness is upsetting. He really believed that. Wow, I almost believed it too.
“That wasn’t the truth, and it definitely didn’t mean I wanted to see this place close.”
The lot continues to fill up. Cars box me in on all sides. My stomach tightens, knowing there’s nowhere to run.
“If I could do something, I would. Please, let me explain.”
“Nothing you can say will make this better,” I hiss. I wipe the tears from my eyes. I’m blubbering too badly to see. “This is my life, my job, my home you’re ruining.” All those times I concluded that Earl should logically pass the drive-in on to me were signs of something I wasn’t ready to accept. It seemed foolish, a nonstarter. But just as I hadn’t been aware of my demisexuality because I hadn’t let myself explore the identities beyond the ones presented to me, I hadn’t let myself consider that the answer to my future had been right in front of me this whole time. Of course I’d realize it right as it’s being ripped out from under me.
“Just because you and your father think everyone needs to chase the urban quotidian dream doesn’t mean we want to. Some of us are happy here. Some of us don’t need Fortune-Five-Hundred internships or fancy colleges or sports cars with stupid grated windows.” I close my eyes so I don’t have to see his Silly Putty expressions of distress. “We promised in the city that we would communicate, and this whole time you were keeping the worst imaginable thing from me. How do you think that makes me feel?”
On the inside of my eyelids, a montage of us flickers at top speed through every frame. All the clues I missed because I was too busy wasting time on boyish whims and Hollywood romanticism.
“Listen. I swear, I didn’t know the whole time, and when I found out my dad was moving forward with the application, there was never a right time to tell you.” My eyes snap open at that blatant lie. He had every opportunity to be real with me. He let me kiss him while sitting atop this Jenga tower of lies or half-truths or whatever.
Across the way, Mateo twirls the traffic wand in one hand and taps his lit-up phone in the other. I know I should march over there and pry that device from his grasp, insist he focus on his job. What he’s doing is dangerous. But I’m stuck in this horrendous scene, playing out heartbreak in real time.
“I hate myself for upsetting you, but I promise my intentions are good,” Derick pleads, snapping me right back. Those are the exact words I said to David in the office the other night. It’s like they’re pranking me. Bring out the hidden cameras!
“Wrenji.” His voice is pleading and that nickname means nothing now, drowned out by engines and laughing. A car, going faster than it should, is swerving down Mateo’s aisle.
“Your intentions mean nothing to me,” I say.
Behind Mateo, a car is backing out of its space, trying to straighten out to face the screen, tires spinning in a sticky patch of mud. They rev and rev. Those spinning wheels speed up with the thumping of my heart.
“You don’t mean that.”
