The low hum I thought I'd been hearing for the past two weeks had been the train in John's head all along.
I crossed my arms and hugged myself, but it was no use. I whispered, "What have we done to each other?"
I did something I hadn’t done since sophomore year, when the doctor told me I was in remission. I cried.
I cried so much that Quincy didn't want to let me ride to Eggstra! Eggstra! on my motorcycle. There was no way I was getting in the ambulance at that point, much less a cop car. He finally settled for letting me ride my motorcycle and following me in the ambulance, with Officer Leroy behind him. We left John at the bridge.
I cried as I tripped through the door of the trailer and tore off John's police jacket and To Protect and Serve T-shirt, which had begun to sear my skin. Of course, I had to wear something to work, but laundry had not been high on my priority list for the past week.
The first shirt I grabbed from my closet was my Cookie Monster T-shirt. I'd always loved the CM, an uninhibited glutton who lived like he was dying. I'd stopped wearing the T-shirt when I dyed my hair blue because the CM and I matched a little too well. But I didn't have time to search for something else this morning. Purcell had already stayed almost an hour late for me.
I cried as I burst through the door of Eggstra! Eggstra!, shoulders squared for the huge argument I was about to have with Purcell that would send half the customers running from the packed diner. But when Purcell and Corey saw me, they both left food burning to rush over to me and ask what was wrong.
I cried harder. Their anger I could have dealt with. I didn't know what to do with sympathy. "I'm okay. I'm fine," I choked out. "Just a little teen angst. Nothing to see here."
Corey ran back to the grill to flip the ham, then reluctantly raked it into the trash. Purcell still stood next to me. Looking at the floor, he mumbled, "Take another hour. I can stay."
"Oh, no. Working will help me. And you've stayed so long already." I wiped at the tears under my eyes. "Do you want me to teach you to read?"
He looked as shocked as I felt at hearing myself. I went on, "I don't know how to teach someone to read, but there are workbooks and stuff I can check out of the high school library. Are you on day shift next week?"
He nodded.
"We can do it after school, in the lull before the dinner crowd."
He held up his fist. I wasn't sure what to do, but I touched his fist with my fist. This seemed to be right, because he took off his apron and headed out the door. I guessed he had accepted my offer with thanks. It was hard to tell, since we'd just now become friends.
I tried to dry up as Corey and I cooked breakfast for the throngs of people from the car factory who got off work at 7 a.m. and the travelers headed home from spring break. But every time I saw the reflection of my Cookie Monster T-shirt in the toaster, I wanted to pull my hair out.
Hours later, toward the end of my shift, after the lunch crowd had thinned, I called Tiffany. Again, I didn't know who was more shocked: Tiffany, that I was calling her, or me, that I was calling her. Soon she be-bopped in and slid onto a stool at the counter.
I poured her a cup of coffee. "Sorry to drag you up here on your one weekend of spring break left."
"No prob. It's not like I have a boyfriend to hang out with or something. I've been asleep since Thursday." She eyed the coffee. I moved the cream and sugar toward her as a hint. She mixed some in clumsily, like a coffee virgin. Then she looked up at me, and her face fell into concern. "Oh my God, Meg, what's wrong?"
What wasn't wrong? I told her the whole story of how John took me to the beach, we almost had sex, I induced his nervous breakdown accidentally, and he gave me a panic attack on purpose.
When I finished, she sat blinking at me for a few seconds. Then she exclaimed, "You had sex with Johnafter?"
I glanced around the diner at the patrons trying not to stare at us. "I told you, no," I said quietly. "But I saw the promised land."
She looked right into my eyes with a steady gaze. "Is he a good kisser?"
I held her gaze. "John does everything well." Then I watched my hand wipe absently at the counter. "I should set the record straight about something I said to you on the phone Wednesday. I still don't think it's a good idea for you to have sex with Brian just to get back together with him. But since you came to me for sex advice, I want to revise what I told you about sex not being any good. With Eric, I was half thinking about something else. With John, there was nothing but John. The frontal lobes fizzled out on me, and only the trusty old medulla was still operating. There was nothing going on but breathing"—I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly—"and touching. Now I can see how sex could be really, really fantastic if the guy was slow and caring and thorough and obviously very into you, and if you were in love." I was so tired of crying by then that I watched with a weird detachment as my tears plopped onto the countertop in small wet circles.
"How are you going to get him back?" Tiffany asked.
I sniffled. "That's why I called you. I want to dye my hair its natural color. Of course, natural color is a relative term. When I get off work in a minute, will you go across the street to the drugstore with me and help me figure out what shade my hair used to be?"
"Wow," Tiffany said. "It's hard to remember back that far. Wasn't it dark brown? And with your blue eyes, you're going to look striking. Wow." She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. "You think dying your hair will get Johnafter back?"
I glanced at my reflection in the toaster. "I think it will help me connect with him. You know, John's going to live in this town forever. And there's nothing I'd less rather do. But I'm almost to the point with him that I'd be willing to live in a triple-wide and bake warm fruit cobbler for him and listen to the police scanner while he was at work." Tiffany choked on her coffee. "You are?* "No, I'm definitely not. I almost am. I'll never quite get there. I have too much fear of becoming my parents. But I feel this connection with John. I can't discount him just because it's inconvenient. And it would be inconvenient. I want to go to college. I want to live in Key West. I want to see the world. But I think if I keep going at this rate, I'll see the world by myself. I'll move to Key West by myself, and live there by myself, and leave again by myself. I never realized that's what I've been doing. I mean, look at my hair. I get along here in town because people here have always known me. No one at college will know me. And if you see someone you don't know with blue hair, around here where the manga aesthetic is hardly the norm, what do you think to yourself? Blue hair says stay away from me" I ran my fingers down one strand and held it out in front of my eyes to study it. "But you think if I dye it brown right after all this happened with John, it will look like I'm desperate to get him back?"