By her twentieth birthday, there are a few things Valarie Ricci knows for certain.
She knows that her waitressing job barely covers the costs of living out of a beat up old van. She knows she's stuck in the dead end hometown her high school friends...
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"Where are we going?"
"Home," Valarie said for the fifth time in twenty minutes as she pulled into their driveway. "Look." She pointed out the windshield to their front door. "We're here. This is where you live."
Nonno squinted his eyes and adjusted his glasses. "I've never been here before."
"You've never been here before?"
He shook his head. "Never. I have to go to the bank. You need to take me to the bank."
She groaned. "Why do you need to go to the bank?"
"Eh–you don't know. I just do." He gave her a suspicious look. "I need to, eh, make sure everything's alright. I need to pay my bills."
"What bills? You're too old to have bills."
Nonno laughed. "Don't joke with me, Valarie, please. I need to go."
Well, at least he got her name right. "Okay, how 'bout we go later? We have to eat dinner first, no? Aren't you hungry? What do you want to eat?"
"What's Rosa making?"
Valarie's grandmother. She opted to not remind him that his wife was dead. "She has the night off. You're stuck with me instead. What do you want to eat?"
"Wha–?" He laughed again, which he did whenever he thought she was being completely ridiculous. "You can't cook. Don't touch the fire." By fire, he meant don't accidentally burn the house down with the stove or the TV or the lamp or anything else that glowed and confused him. "Where's Rosa?"
"Why can't I cook?"
"What?"
"Why. Can't. I. Cook?"
"You're too young. Don't touch the fire."
"I'm seventeen. Look," she placed her hands on the steering wheel so he could see. "I literally just drove us home. We're still in the car."
His brain clearly refused to process this information. Nonno shook his head and said, "I need to go to the bank. Tell Rosa–she knows what I'm talking about."
"Yeah, okay." She opened the driver's side door, grabbed her school bag, and hopped down. As she helped Nonno out of the van, she waved over to Jared Kent, who was smoking a cigarette on the curb outside his house. He was wearing a dishevelled, grease-stained uniform from the local deli shop.
Valarie thought about the conspirial tone Layla Keita had used earlier at school when they were gossiping about Grace: She's dating Jared Kent. She never could quite grasp the gap in how people talked about Jared and who Jared actually was as a person. After all, real criminals probably didn't have to work part-time to afford their car insurance.
Upon seeing her, Jared's characteristic shit-eating grin spread across his face. He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered back, "VAAaaLLaaaaRRiieeeeee."
