THESE DAYS, CYDNEY DOESN'T LOOK like she fell in the tackle box. Piercings are out. Her right nostril lost a gold ring. The other nostril heals the puncture where a faux emerald stud stuck. And the ears that were laddered with six delicate hoops each: no metal there. And pièce de résistance, Cydney's left eyebrow hoop, too rad, gone.
A hoop for her lower lip was next, when she noticed that that look, especially among the other sophomores at Markham was like so everywhere. It was time to move, time to go different.
The mirror in Cydney's room tells no lies: The new look is, way cool. This afternoon, her hair was layer-cut two inches long, all over. After the cutting, after the color-stripping, her first dye job: Flamingo Pink. Cydney scopes it out. She could almost hug herself. Her truly cotton candy hair’s gotta stand out from all those pop-top people walking around school.
But she has to wait 'til Monday. It's Friday night and nothing better’s doing than getting online, seeing if Zoe's chatting. Zoe's three blocks away, in Irvington too.
cydney86: i got 107 mp3s of possum.
zoewhat: no way, girl. they record that much???
cydney86: lot o' versions. like i got 5 thunder woman. concerts, all
different cities.
zoewhat: you need a player, a rio.
cydney86: no, i need a minidisc, but they're expensiv-o.
zoewhat: how much?
cydney86: $350. dad's refused already.
zoewhat: can you save your allowance? (smiles.)
cydney86: oh, sure, i'm thinking with bus passes and all, i live on
water, i could buy one, maybe 6 months.
zoewhat: no minidisc 4 u. (smiles.)
cydney86: wrong. i'm going 4 a job tomorrow. got 2 make money.
Next day, Cydney's at Boss Burger on Broadway, lunchtime people packing the place. Some Markham kids too. They double take and Cydney knows: Flamingo Pink rocks. Yet, despite the attention, she's got the willies.
She wants to leave immediately. She's never filled out a job application. And she hates the idea, even with cool hair: REJECTION stamped on the Boss Burger Application for Employment she still has to fill out.
Jason's the tall and lanky manager. He takes Cydney's application and bugs someone to get over to condiments. Cydney follows Jason to a two-seat table in back.
"Give me a min," he says, moving his finger across the application. Cydney swears this Jason guy's lips move on some words he reads.
He flips the sheet over, evidently checking she's signed and dated.
He takes the app by a corner, waves it over like he'll read through again, then says, head down, "This your first job?"
She still has the willies. Leaving out the Christmas tree lot last year--though she got rooked out of any pay--was a mistake. "Yes, my first real job. I've done baby-sitting, off and on, for neighbors." Of course, Cydney's never baby-sat in her life.
Jason seems okay with that and her legs now don't feel so knotted up, like she wants out immediately. He keeps studying the app that took her sixty seconds, tops, to fill out. She bites her lip. What if he says no? Boss Burger is, well, so boss.
"Okay, tell you what, this reference, Ms. Kawabata--" He says the name slowly like it's a syllabic trap. "She your teacher at Markham?"
"Yes."
"Good, let you know, anyone we hire, we check references. I'll do it later. Right now I need someone else working the till swing-shift, starting at four."
Cydney gapes. Is she hired? Boom! Like that?!
"We bring you on board, you understand, this Ms. Cowabunga," he says, rushing the name now, "she's gotta tell me you're responsible, okay?"
Cydney nods.
"Let me tell you about the job."
Jason begins a recitation of what meal-order takers at Boss Burger do. He says all this like dozens of minimum-wagers before Cydney helped him commit it to memory. He tells Cydney it's orders both at the counter and the drive-up window. She takes money, she makes change, and she posts orders, all from the electronic register. She doesn't cook food. She gives food to customers and, for that and other reasons, she strictly observes the State of Oregon hygienic standards for food handlers. At all times, she wears a paper Boss Burger cap, covering her hair. Jason says this without so much as a smile. Then, he winds up by saying tomorrow she trains with Marin.
Cydney leaves Boss Burger, now positive the MiniDisc is but weeks away. Traffic on Broadway rushes by and in her oh-so-small purse she reaches for the oh-so-small cell phone. Flips it open to speed-dial Mom with the news, except getting this job at Boss Burger was too easy. Although she's pumped about getting the MiniDisc, what work was it to get hired? She sat there and that Jason guy didn't even look her in the eye. She was the warm body. She snaps the cell phone shut.
Sunday afternoon, Cydney shows up at Boss Burger, finds an empty locker in the employee room, puts away her purse, her fleece anorak. She snaps open a Boss Burger paper cap, tugs it on. A mirror hangs opposite the lockers. She checks her look once more.
The face in the mirror says, Ridiculous. Her head, well-shaped, topped off with short Flamingo Pink locks, now seems unbalanced with this disposable paper cap. She slips a finger under the edge of the paper cap to coax out more flashy strands. So she can be more Cydney, even in a silly cap. She sighs. She's ready for hungry, noisy mobs when through the window of the swinging door, she sees Jason comes this way.
He stands there, holding the door open and checks her out, it seems. Cydney bites her lip. What's with this guy? Couldn't bother to look me in the eye when he hired me.
He smiles or maybe it's something like a sneer. She wants him out of the way, so she can get with Marin and get training. But he's boss.
"Too bad the cap covers your hair," he says. He could almost be nice, except Cydney has no idea where this guy is coming from. No idea.
"I'll live," she says.
"You been jello-fighting?"
She says nothing.
Jason looks like a comedian who misfired a joke. "Not funny, okay. Say, Marin's not here. You got a cap, here's a badge. Let's go talk about the till."
Marin clocks in thirty minutes late and Cydney's glad to finally see her. She's decided Jason, who she guesses is in his thirties, if not forties, is all he’ll ever be, being this Boss Burger manager. And that fact, in a way, bums her like Marin doesn't.
Marin's seventeen, went to Grant, and only works for the extra cash. She dresses like she's already at UC Santa Cruz: stone-washed jeans and a Powell's tee. Marin tells Cydney her hair is stylin’. Cydney is ready to learn the job.
Two hours later, they break for dinner. After today, Cydney better be a self-starter, so she gives Marin complete attention for the details about how employees do meals. You can bring your own food, put it in the fridge, and later microwave. But you can't sit in the public area with your own food. Or Boss Burger lets you eat anything from the menu at half-price and deducts from your next paycheck. You don't even need cash. Most employees, Marin says, eat Boss Burger.
Today, Cydney goes for the chicken sand. Marin, the chef’s salad. Marin's talked for most of the last two hours and understandably goes quiet once she starts forking into the lettuce.
"I can't wait to get out of this place in August," Marin says finally.
Cydney is unsure what that means. "What are you really anxious to go to college?" she says, trying to stay neutral.
"No, college will be hard enough. It's this working with customers." She holds her clear plastic fork up like she’s about to kabob a customer or two on tines. "If I never, ever, hear whining again about too much mayo or too little mustard, I'll know God exists. That would prove for me she exists." Marin throws her head back and gives Cydney a sidelong glance, like she's the one getting out of the fast food business and Cydney's the one getting in.
"Well, I don't plan to do this forever. I want to get funds for a MiniDisc, that's my plan, sorta."
"That's cool. Anyway, like I was saying we take thirty minutes on this break, then we do drive-up window, okay?"
"Welcome to Boss Burger. What would you like to order?" Cydney says this, laughing. She already knows that much.
The next day, Monday night, Cydney's live at the drive-up window. It's like working walkups inside. Register's the same, menu's the same, though everything's packed to go. A monitor overhead shows where orders are. She's bends her head back so much, she's sure it was designed for someone taller, say Shaquille O'Neal, he ever decided to take more modest pay and work at Boss Burger.
"Good evening, welcome to Boss Burger. May I take your order?"
"How much is water?" this voice barks in Cydney's headset.
"Water's free. How many cups you want?"
"One water. And make it small." The headset hisses, then, "Tiffany, you gotta to go yet?" Then, "Make it a small water."
"Anything else?" Cydney says, thinking, if not, this is one silly order and one silly reason to wait in a drive-up window line.
"Yes, three Deluxes, okay?" Before Cydney hits Boss Burger Deluxe three times on the keyboard, the voice booms back. "One Deluxe gots light on lettuce, no pickles, lots of mustard and lots of mayo."
Cydney searches for pencil and paper. Marin didn't mention custom burgers. She bites her lip. What gives? And the keyboard's got no button like HOLD PICKLES, no way.
"Then one everything 'cept no tomato, extra bacon." A pause. "Tiffany, you say you gotta to go bad? Make up your mind." More air of headset hiss, then, "Where was I? Yeah, extra bacon. Got that?"
Cydney has no idea where this order, these changes, are going. None of it's on the keyboard, except for water and the Deluxes.
She should call Jason to set it straight, but she doesn't see him around. She should just deal with it, prove to herself she can handle the job.
"Okay, three Deluxes, one water. You want fries with that?"
"Whadya mean? I haven't even told you all that's in the last burger."
"We don't make custom burgers," Cydney says. "All Deluxes have two patties, lettuce, mayonnaise, mustard, pickles, bacon strips."
"Will you just wait, I always order burgers this way. Why don't you lissen?" the voice growls.
Someone in the drive-up line honks a horn. Cydney needs to finish this order.
"Tell you one more time, you get it right. One light on lettuce, no pickles, lots mustard, lots mayo. One no tomato, extra bacon. One regular. Got that? Why don't you repeat it?" This person has a mad-on that Cydney thinks funny because she's staying cool.
"It's okay, I heard you fine." Cydney could chuckle because the three Deluxes she keyed in ages ago are up, in a paper bag right next to her. "You want fries with that or not? What about drinks?"
A car honks again.
"Three large fries, one large Coke, one small Coke, one small water."
Cydney turns, drops three fries in the paper bag and gets going two Cokes at the dispenser. She keys in the rest of the order. "Ten seventy-five. Drive up to the first window, please."
Cydney closes her eyes. Then a rackety car, a woman's outside the window, glowering. Wiry in a housedress, she holds out a ten and a one, the other hand snubs a cigarette in the ashtray. Two small kids slither up and over the front seat.
She stares at Cydney, then takes back the money. "Let me see the hamburgers, see if you got it right."
"You gotta pay first, ma'am," Cydney says, reaching out for the money.
"You have so much trouble with the order, I thought I’m talking to a retard."
Cydney guesses the woman is nuts. "Ma'am, pay then you get the food."
"I thought I’m talking to a retard, now I know I'm talking to a retard, a pink-haired retard." The woman's smug-faced, like she's got the upper hand now. "Let me see the burgers."
Cydney's right hand, palm up and out for the money, transforms. She peels a banana for the woman and the two inattentive youngsters' private viewing pleasure. Shock wracks the woman's face, a sight that Cydney does not enjoy, she is so mad at having to take this abuse. The peeled banana, Cydney's middle finger soloing, points right at the woman's tobacco-stained teeth that will not be eating any Deluxe Boss Burger this evening. Cydney has shown this nuts-o woman the score.
"I wanna talk to the manager," the woman screams. The car at the order mike honks.
Cydney swings her right hand to the window pull and slams it shut.
Again, "I wanna talk to the manager." This time, with the window closed, the woman might as well be in a box. Cydney takes the bag of Deluxes and fries and shoves them in garbage, where the plastic-lidded drinks go too.
She doesn't bother with Nuts-o now. She yanks free the headset, jerking the cord from the belt transmitter, not caring if it breaks. She rushes by Marin, who walks over, concern in her face.
Cydney runs, head forward, trying to pull loose the Velcro for the transmitter, which she does. At the lockers, her face feels flush. Leaves the transmitter on the bench. Grabs her purse. Grabs her anorak. Throws the Boss Burger paper cap anywhere. Sidesteps Marin. Goes again through the public area and makes for the door. Jason kneels by a table talking to some woman he must know. Jason's eyes cut to capless Cydney, then he returns to talking to his girlfriend or whatever she is.
Outside the air cools her face.
Her heart beats like bongos. She checks inside Boss Burger, detached as anyone who's blown up a bridge, sees the head of Jason. He's hard at work. He's still kneeling, chatting up what must be his best chance for a girlfriend.
She walks a few steps and stops. She’s gotta get away. But where to? It's only seven. Her mom was going to pick her up at nine.
She takes her cell phone out. How can she explain that awful woman? She slips it back in her purse.
She'll take the bus home.
The bus grinds up Weidler, going past wHEELwORX, a skateboard shop in this funky Old Portland-style house. She bites her lip. That’s where I should apply. Not gonna pay less than Boss Burger and besides I can work the till. Yes. Skate punks, my hair, gotta happen.
Next afternoon, Cydney's inside wHEELwORX. She tugs a lock of her Flamingo Pink, getting the eye of this guy in cutoffs, who straightens up some skateboards on display. "Can I help you?" he asks.
"Yes, the manager here? I wanna apply for a job."
Todd, the store manager, comes out from in back and is one smooth dude. Cydney sees him riding a skateboard like some wide-winged hawk in flight. His head is shaved bald.
"So you can sell?" he says, the gray eyes steady on Cydney like, This is your interview and it's right now.
"Yes. I think it would be so cool to work here." Cydney prays she is not sounding too eager and, would it be, uncool?
"You got good timing." Todd checks out approvingly--Cydney’s positive--her neon locks. "I need someone twenty hours a week. You ever work with a cash register?"
"As a matter of fact, I've been working at Boss Burger, take orders, make change, all that cash register stuff."
Todd picks up a skateboard from the display beside him and spins a wheel with his thumb. "That's tight."
Her heart skips. Tomorrow after school, she'll be working here. She can see it now. And that MiniDisc, in four weeks, follows.
"Boss Burger, down on Broadway?" he asks.
Cydney nods.
"So how long you been there?"
"You want the swear-to-God truth?" Cydney says, now less sure she should have mentioned Boss Burger. Her stomach sinks.
Todd rocks his bald head once, thumb-spins the skateboard wheel again.
"Day and a half. I left."
Todd unslouches like he's getting close to knowing something. "You weren't fired?"
"No, I quit." Cydney ruffles her hair that is now so short.
"What happened?"
"Basically, I mean you had to been there, understand it." His gray eyes fix on her. "I flipped off a customer at the drive-up window."
"You flipped off a customer?" His eyes widen.
"She was abusive. She had to know she can't be disrespectful of people, no reason at all."
He turns to the other guy, who leans against the wall by the cash register, leafs through some skateboard magazine. "You hear that, Shane, she says she flipped off a customer at Boss Burger."
Cydney bites her lip. You’d think I’m like telling Mom all this. Pleeeeease!
"Wish I'd saw that." Shane answers in a monotone like he's lost with a photograph in the magazine.
"Whoa," Todd says, turning back to Cydney. "That was some totally committed thing to do. You understand we don't do that here, okay?"
"Sure," she says in a voice that’s anything but sure.
"Well, some skaters can be a little raw. I just want you to know that. So, you done much skating?"
"You want the truth, don’t you?"
Todd nods.
"Never been on a skateboard in my life, but I could learn."
His eyebrows jump like he's been shoveled one lame promise. "So you wouldn't know an ollie from a tick-tack?"
"No," she says in the unsure voice again.
"Maybe that's why we haven't had a chick working here. Though I think you could sell," Todd says. "Here, why don't you write down your name and number, so we can be in touch. Shane and I have to talk things over, see how we'd work in someone new. Okay?"
Cydney knows she's being blown off. She can see it in how Shane is burying his head in the magazine, not looking up at her to make eye contact. He knows he'll never see her working in the store, otherwise he'd be looking up, smiling. She knows she's lost. She writes on the piece of paper Todd gives her, changing the last digit of her phone number. What difference does it make anyway? He won't call.
Before she knows it, Cydney is back out on the sidewalk, ready to catch a bus. She looks back at wHEELwORX one last time, sees that it is not that cool.
Cydney bites her lip. So many places to work are horrible and I don’t fit in.
She crosses the street for the bus shelter and notices a band poster stapled to a telephone pole. She forgets about being bummed by Todd and wHEELwORX in a hot half-sec. This is as real as it can get. It says 'Possum will play the Rose Garden. First time ever.
Later that evening, Cydney's on chat:
cydney86: i tell u i saw a poster possum's 2b at the rose garden
(hyperventilates).
zoewhat: u going???
cydney86: 1st 1 2 buy tix. i'll buy 1 4 u 2.
zoewhat: u don't have a job anymore :-( .
cydney86: e-z. i get $50 this sat. & mom gives me a $30 advance
on next week (smiles).
zoewhat: that's really kewl of you.
cydney86: call me ms. kewl. i really need a job now.
zoewhat: & you need to buy a minidisc . . .
cydney86: if i had my minidisc, i could tape the whole concert
(long sigh).
zoewhat: & put it out 2 the net.
cydney86: 2 right.
Next afternoon, Cydney heads for Lloyd Center to apply for a job at the hair color place. She’s not sure if people there are cool, but they’re probably not like Todd at wHEELwORX: Cool on the outside, sure, but too full of himself on the inside.
She's off the bus, right in front of, what else, Boss Burger.
"Hey, Pinkie." a voice behind calls.
She turns. It's Marin.
"What happened the other night? You just left."
"A customer just got to me and I freaked," Cydney says, amazed that Marin is talking to her after her, well, uncool exit.
"Jason didn't know what happened. So he grills me."
"What’d you say?"
"I said you had to run home, family emergency, your mom was in the hospital. I had to make up something."
"But what about that crazy woman at the drive-up?"
"What woman?" Marin's face is blank. Blank like, A woman with tobacco-stained teeth really yelled to see the manager?
"I wonder, I wonder if that woman just drove off." Cydney feels a flush of pleasure spread across her back. Like she truly found a hall pass when she needed one. "I need to talk to Jason," Cydney tells Marin, whom she silently thanks for the second chance.
"So your mom is okay, I didn't jinx her?" Marin laughs.
"I want my job back, if I can still have it," Cydney tells Jason. They’re back by the kitchen door and he leans, a hand on the wall.
"You know, you don't have any more chances with me, that taking off without telling anyone."
"I know, I know, I lost my head when my dad called."
"Your mom okay?"
"Yeah," Cydney says, looking into the kitchen area, seeing Armando slit open a bag of fries. "It was something that came on sudden, something she ate they said, but she's fine now." Cydney can't think of what else to say, tries to play it straight about the idea of bad food.
"Well, I'm giving you your job back, but you need to work right now, okay? I don't have time to pull out apps and call people."
"I will do better, I think I learned something."
"Okay," Jason says, looking at a loss for words, evidently wondering if he missed something.
Cydney’s ready. But first, she has to call Mom for a ride at nine. Then it’s all about money. Money for 'Possum tix. Money for the MiniDisc. She can record the whole concert.
Five minutes later, Cydney's at the drive-up window. Jason wants her there. That's okay. "Welcome to Boss Burger. What would you like to order?" Cydney says, a believer now.
Nobody, but nobody, driving up will take it away. That night--six weeks from now--lights blazing, strobes firing, 'Possum sonic-booming the Rose Garden, she and Zoe, they’re right there. This order, the voice crackling in her headset, could be another woman with tobacco-stained teeth wanting three custom Boss Burgers. Whatever. If so, she calls Jason, tells him, Stop talking with your girlfriend on company time. Deal with this.
Cydney now knows the woman only wanted three burgers her way and Cydney’s not giving up a 'Possum concert and a MiniDisc to record their concert for that.
"You want fries?" Cydney says, starting to key in the order.