I'M PRETENDING TO mop, facing the other side of the building, and I hear The Count burst through the open door. I sneak a peek over my shoulder because I feel so conspicuous. The mop isn't even wet.
But The Count isn't looking at me. He looks so furious over his free ice cream that he can't see anything at all, until he stares behind the counter and sees Shoe standing there with a goofy grin. The Count turns and stomps toward the counter--it's hard to tell if he's just after his ice cream, or if he realizes he's being duped again, but just then I see Dave Underwood take his cue and turn away from the counter and toward The Count.
So it begins.
When we got to work, we poured strawberry syrup into one of our GigantiGulp cups. It's like eighty ounces of neon crimson glop, sticky and smelly, and Dave does a fake little trip as he turns and pretends to fall right at The Count. With all eighty ounces of the syrup flying.
Right about then is when Jubilee makes it into the door. She has this look of amused horror, because Dave hits The Count right in the crotch with the syrup. It's running up his sweater and down both legs of his pleated khakis and dripping grossly on his loafers into a gooey pool at his feet.
The Count says, more or less, "Graaaakkkk Aahhhsssshhhhh!" He tries to take a step but realizes he's standing in the center of the most slippery and sticky space-age fruit-flavoring ever. He looks up at Dave, furious.
I think Dave's having a hard time keeping a straight face. But so am I. The way the syrup hit him, it looks like The Count's crotch has exploded.
Shoe, though, is in character. He vaults over the counter and bounds toward them.
"Mr. Marshfield! Oh! The humanity!" He turns to Dave. "How dare you do that to Mr. Marshfield!" It's a bad English accent, like he's a knight in King Arthur's court. And the fake fight begins. Shoe rears back and throws a right hook at Dave, Dave blocks it with his forearm and comes back with a right of his own, which Shoe tries to block but misses and instead takes the punch right to his gut.
"Ouufff!" he says. So he slaps Dave on the ear and Dave kind of looks stunned. Dave yanks Shoe's sleeve and they spin around, and for a second I wonder if the fake fight isn't a little bit real all of a sudden. They go twirling away from The Count and into a little table, and the cheap chairs go flying away like birds scared out of a tree. As they descend to the floor to grunt and wrestle, like most all fights I've ever seen in high school actually do, Blevins walks in, right on cue. He looks perfect: a short-sleeved blue button-up shirt and a red tie with ice cream cones on it. It's like he bought the outfit just for the occasion.
I can't help but watch, once Blevins starts his lines. For being the drama teacher, he's terrible at acting.
"Sir! My sincerest apologies!" He romps over to The Count. "I'm Dan Mouser, the manager here. This is unacceptable for the high standards we follow here at Papa's Custard. Mr. Shoemaker will be terminated. From his employment here, I mean." Which is true, of course. Me, too.
Down on the ground, Dave and Shoe are rolling around like they're in a mad makeout session.
"Do you hear me, Mr. Shoemaker? You're fired." Blevins stares at the two of them like he's disappointed in their poor stuntman fighting skill.
From the ground, there only come a few more indistinguishable grunts. I glance over at the door where Jubilee is still standing. She still has the exact same look on her face, like she doesn't know what's happening, doesn't know whether to laugh or be mad, doesn't know if this is actually happening or not.
"Please, allow me to assist you--we can go to the executive restroom and clean up, Mr...?" Blevins says, holding out a hand to help The Count across the moat of strawberry glop.
The Count looks very confused, staring back and forth between the squirmy wrestling and Blevins.
"M-Marshfield," he says.
Blevins helps him walk carefully through the pool and back to the bathrooms. There is no executive restroom, of course. It is Blevins' job to keep The Count occupied for the next three to five minutes. As they pass, I pivot around them, keeping my back and the long hair of my wig to them, wheeling the empty mop bucket over toward the mess I have no intention of cleaning.
Perfectly on cue, Dramatical pops up from behind the little divider, her head just taller than the green plastic leaves of the fake plants atop it.
"Stop!" she says. Then she starts singing, "In the naaaame of love..."
Dave and Shoe stop writhing on the tile floor and sit up suddenly, singing, "Before you breaaaaak my heart."
Dramatical pops around the divider, wearing a dress covered in spangles, like something out of the 1920s. "Stop! In the naaaaame of love..."
"Before you breaaaak my heart," sing the dudes, who've gotten up. They both run over and jump up on the countertop and start doing this little side-to-side shuffle step while Dramatical sings, "Think it o-o-verrrr... Think it o-o-verrrr..."
Dramatical goes over and pulls Jubilee out of the door and into the room with us, then twirls around over in front of Shoe and Dave and join in their little dance. They start humming the song for background music, which is my cue.
Jubilee. She's absolutely beautiful. Hot. She's the kind of girl who is so nice to look at, you can't stop, like she isn't real, she's a mirage, like you have to try and soak her right into your eyes and brain and soul because you can't get enough. To be best friends with a person who looks beautiful like this to you is maybe the most petrifying, glorious thing.
But it isn't enough, either.
Jubilee is wearing this amazing look on her beautiful face. Her mouth is open in confusion, but there's a smile curling up at the corners of it, too. Her eyes are huge, taking in everything. Her posture is straight up, as if she's ready to join in, not scared at all.
She sees me, of course, and the corners of her mouth get a little curlier. It's just what I need. I whip off my gross long-haired wig and use the end of the mop like a microphone.
I can't sing. But I sing.
Girl, when I had to leave you
You know I had to go
And Paps showed me 'bout love
In San Francisco
But you weren't there with me
You were back here instead
All we had was a mountaintop
And those words I said
And I know there are a bunch of strange kids watching this, and I know that the two dudes on my team are clowning around behind me dancing on the counter between the cash registers, and I know it's very strange to try and win a girl's heart after you kamikaze her dad's crotch with strawberry syrup. But none of that matters, because it feels so good to take a shot at love.
"Jubilee," I say, over the humming of my backing band. I can feel every eye from the room on me, so I talk softly where only she can hear it. "I wish we could've made it to San Francisco together. Everything there that I learned just made me love you more. I had to tell you. I'm sorry for leaving you at the airport, but I had to go--"
"Of course you had to go," she interrupts. "I would've been mad at you if you didn't go. For Paps' sake." She pauses and looks around the room. The dancing, the puddle, the crowd--she sort of waves her hands around at all of it and says, "But this. You didn't have to..."
"Yes, I did. That's what I learned. That love takes action. It's not something you wait around for."
"Yeah, but--"
"This is me acting. Not 'acting' like in a play, but acting. This is me telling you I meant what I said on that mountain in Utah. This is me telling you, Jubilee Marshfield, that I lo--"
But the look on her face changes. The mouth, the bright eyes, all of it turns to horror and fear. Her eyes aren't looking at me, I realize after a nanosecond of meltdown. They're going right over my shoulder. That's when I hear the commotion behind me.
"...Outrageous...unacceptable...you'll be out of business come Monday..." shouts The Count.
"Mr. Marshfield, please, let us make it up to you," Blevins is saying. But The Count comes storming through all of us, like he fully expected to find kids dancing on the counters, and a wig on the ground. Come to think of it, he probably did calculate as much. He takes Jubilee by the shoulders, spins her around, and they walk out the door into the dark evening together.
At the last second, I think I see her eyes glance over her shoulder and find mine. But I can't tell what they mean.
~~~
This is me, getting apologized to from Blevins, who can only say, "He's a very forceful man."
This is me, getting pitiful looks from the girls and a few snickers from the guys who saw me fail.
This is me, moping past my best friend Shoe, who knows enough to not say anything, but pats me on the back. Moping past Dramatical, who is, of course, overtly dramatical and sobbing openly.
This is me, walking home, still in my work uniform, without my coat, in a Minneapolis winter night.
This is me, not feeling anything. Not the cold, not sadness, not relief from it being over, at least. Nothing. Empty.
This is me, walking in the door, surprising my mother, who is watching some trashy reality TV show. Reality, I think.
This is me, lying to her that I'm home early because the place is going out of business. Which may be true, knowing the wrath of The Count.
This is me, getting in bed, realizing how numb my body is from the cold outside, and how numb my mind is.
This is me, realizing that this is what it feels like to go big, then go home. This is what it feels like to know you failed without knowing what's happening next. This is what it feels like to have had a chance, and blow it.
This is me waking up, realizing I didn't know I'd fallen asleep. This is me waking up to someone pecking at my window with their fingernail just enough to wake me up but not wake my mother. This is me hearing someone do this over and over and over, until I realize what the noise is and go over to the window and see Shoe outside in the glow of the moon on the snow, and he holds up his phone to the window and waits for me to read it.
Jubilee @ playground right now. Go now. Fly, you must.
Even his texts are dramatic. And even though I know that our footprints in the snow will give us away in the morning, I pull on a jacket and hat and open the window as quietly as I can, and slip out. And when I get to my feet, Shoe is gone and it's just me. I have to go to the playground alone to meet Jubilee. Go, I must.
This is me, going.