“World’s Okayest Guidance Counselor. That’s all I needed to know.”
Bea laughed, the tension going out of her shoulders. “Okay. That’s a good sign.”
“Very.”
The bell rang. They gathered their things, Bea corralling the brochures back into her bag the way she did every afternoon. The skateboarder made it down the steps. A small crowd of freshmen cheered.
“Write the essay about Florence,” Stella said.
“Fortune cookie.”
“Write it anyway. You can make a fortune cookie sound like Hemingway if you try.”
Bea slung her bag over her shoulder. “That’s either the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me or a deeply questionable compliment.”
“Probably both.”
The Shack was in its afternoon lull when Stella pushed through the door. Two tables occupied—a couple sharing a basket of fries by the window, and Bernie in his corner booth with a fresh coffee and his tablet.
Anna was behind the counter, restocking cups and humming something off-key that might have been Fleetwood Mac or might have been a hymn. The off-key humming was genetic,apparently. Margo did it. Tyler did it while editing photos. Meg was the only one who could actually carry a tune, and she mostly used the skill to harmonize sarcastically.
“How was school?” Anna slid a plate of fresh focaccia toward her with a ramekin of butter on the side—the good kind, from the farmers’ market.
“School was school. Bea’s having a college essay crisis. Mr. Reeves likes my portrait series.” Stella dropped her bag into her usual booth—third from the door, power outlet on the wall — and pulled out her calc textbook. “The tomatoes come in okay?”
“Roberto was very apologetic. Sent twice as many, which I think was guilt produce.”
“Guilt produce. That’s a new one.”
Stella settled in with her homework, but her camera sat next to the textbook, and she kept glancing at Bernie’s booth through the viewfinder out of habit. He was absorbed in something on his tablet, coffee halfway to his mouth and forgotten there, which meant he was either running odds on something or reading about knee surgery options again.
She framed a quick shot without thinking. Click.
Bernie didn’t look up. His coffee stayed frozen in midair.
The door banged open and Joey appeared, backpack over one shoulder, looking like he’d sprinted from his car.
“I left my laminated prep sheet in the back office,” he announced, already heading behind the counter. “The one with the updated napkin fold diagrams. Version four-point-two. Not four-point-one, which had the wrong crease angle for the dinner napkins?—”
Anna moved aside to let him pass. “You were here yesterday, Joey.”
“I know, but I needed four-point-twospecificallybecause I’m training Brian on weekend shifts and he’s still doing thetri-fold when Iclearlyspecified the fan pattern for tables one through six and the classic fold for seven through?—”
“Joey.”
He stopped. Took a breath. “Yeah?”
“You’re twenty minutes from campus.”
“Itfeelsfarther.” He disappeared into the back office and emerged thirty seconds later clutching a laminated sheet that had been color-coded within an inch of its life. “Also, how’s the ice situation? Brian doesn’t understand the ratio.”
“The ice situation is fine.”
“Define fine.”
“Joey. Go back to school.”
He tucked the laminated sheet into his backpack like it was a sacred text and paused by Stella’s booth on his way out. “How’s the portrait thing?”
