Usually, the KoBra had two to three stops a day, and it was in business every day of the week. During the school year, when my dad had Vivian and other part-time workers, he would have days off. But this summer, it was just the three of us, and we’d each have to work at least five days out of every week.
On weekdays, the first stop was always from ten a.m. to two p.m. and, depending on the day, we’d either go to a coffee shop or some workplace, like an office park or movie studio. Our evening shift began at five p.m., and we usually stopped at various bars or events in the city, like farmers markets or festivals. Fridays and Saturdays were always coffee shops in the day and events at night. Sunday evening was the only time the KoBra took a break.
Although it was Monday, my dad decided to keep it to one stop because so much of today would be taken up by our training.
I rode with Pai in the truck and Rose met us at the location, a coffee shop called Wildfox, which was completely packed in the middle of a weekday. Everyone was on their laptops, and no one looked like they were over the age of thirty. “Does anyone in this town work anymore?” I grumbled as I pulled on my cap.
Rose almost elbowed me putting on her KoBra shirt over her body suit. “It’s called freelancing.”
“And it’s called sarcasm, you humorless bag,” I snapped.
“What?!” Rose yelped.
My dad stepped between us. “Are you two going to get your act together, or do I have to kick you guys to the curb?”
Rose immediately straightened, properly chastised. I snapped my gum. “Fine.”
Before we opened the order window, Pai pulled out his phone and took a photo of Rose and me for the truck’s Instagram account. He tried to make us smile, but we refused.
“You two,” he said, shaking his head. “By the way, we document every stop, so I’ll give you guys the passwords to our social media accounts.” The wheels started turning for all the weird stuff I could do with this power.
My dad pointed his phone at me. “Don’t even think about it. I’ll be reviewing every post and have the ability to delete at any given moment.”
“Do you have guidelines?” Rose said, pulling out her little notepad again.
I scoffed. “How complicated could it be to take a photo?”
He jabbed a finger into my temple. Very Korean. “Rose, I’ll e-mail you everything you need to know, no worries.”
She beamed and my dad rubbed his hands together. “All right, this is the real thing, you guys. Girls. Ladies. Whatever. Clara, we’re going to handle the food. Rose, you’ll handle the orders.”
“By myself?” Rose asked, her voice abnormally fearful.
He smiled at her, and her expression changed to adoration. Barf. “Don’t worry, I’ll come over and help,” he said, chucking her playfully under the chin. She floated off to the order window.
Before I could gloat about getting kitchen duty, my dad said, “After thirty minutes, you’ll switch.” Then he popped open the windows. Just like that, without any warning. Rose’s eyes grew wide, and I knew she was equally surprised.
There was already a line. Rose nervously smoothed down the front of her shirt then glanced at my dad—waiting for permission, it seemed. “Go ahead and ask what they’d like,” he said, nodding encouragingly.
She leaned over the counter and spoke loud and clear. “Hello, what would you like to order today?”
I laughed. “You sound like a robot.”
Another poke in my temple from Pai. “Knock it off, Clara. Get ready to prep.” He pushed me toward the food prep counter, which was on the opposite side from the windows.
A nebbishy white guy in round tortoiseshell glasses ordered one lombo and one pastel, which my dad repeated loudly to me. Rose fumbled with the cashbox, dropping wads of cash onto the floor. “Oh God!”
My dad swept it up and handed it to her before she could even reach down. “You’re fine, Rose,” he said with a wink. She smiled but still looked rattled taking the next order. Dang, she really was nervous.
The nervousness seeped into me, too, suddenly. Why was I in this stupid predicament? Sweating over a stove, worrying about people’s dumb lunch orders when I should have been floating on an inflatable unicorn in a swimming pool. I took a breath, then started to prep the ingredients—my dad would put everything together later.
Things were going smoothly until the orders started coming in quickly. Really quickly. And a harried Latina girl with thick black bangs and a nose piercing put in an order for five different plates and ten pasteis.
Sweat pooled under my cap, and one thick lock of hair kept tickling my nose as I rushed to get all the ingredients together. “What the heck, is she catering an event in that dumb coffee shop?” I cried, opening the jar of pickled daikon radishes.
“You guys made an extra lombo order instead of picanha!” Rose hollered, her voice panicky and on edge. The three of us were so smashed into that small space that I felt her breath on the back of my neck as she yelled.
Pai was plating another batch of pasteis. “That’s okay, you can—”
“Just deal with it!” I yelled back, at my wit’s end. I lifted up a hand as I said it, and the latex glove that I had been pulling off flew into the air. I swiveled around to see where it had landed, and when I did, I was standing face-to-face (or to be more accurate, face-to-neck) with Rose.
The kimchi-coated glove was plastered to her cheek.
I burst out laughing at the same time that someone outside yelled, “Yo, where my pasteis at?”
“Coming right up!” Rose called out as she peeled the glove away from her face.
“Coming right up!” I mimicked in a high-pitched voice. I couldn’t help it; my stress levels were off the charts and my resentment had failed to die down over the course of the day. In fact, it was increasingly fueled.
My dad was handing out food through the pickup window. “Clara!” he barked in warning.
“Can’t you just do your job?” Rose snapped. “You’re such an incompetent clown.”
Without thinking, I whipped off my other glove and threw it so hard at her face that it made a satisfying smack.
She gasped and clutched her cheek.
My dad stepped between us again. “I swear to God I am going to kick you both out of here unless you calm down. Can you manage to grow up for three seconds and do that?”
Rose nodded, taking a deep breath, smoothing down her shirt again. It was like rubbing the shirt gave her magical calming powers. “Sorry, Adrian,” she said with a little smile.
He looked at me, arms crossed, his forearm tattoo of my birthday written in Gothic font obnoxiously displayed.
I tilted my head back and rolled my eyes as deeply as humanly possible. “Okaaaay.”
Rose went back to taking orders and me to cooking and assembling them. I had just finished wrapping the pasteis up in foil when Rose bumped into me as she reached for the cashbox.
We glared at each other but didn’t say a word, feeling my dad’s eyes on us. But when I turned to hand the pasteis to my dad, Rose stepped back again and her shoulder knocked my head, shooting a jolt of pain straight through my skull.
I grabbed my head. “Watch it, clumso!”
“You watch it!” As she said it, Rose swept her arm and knocked over a bowl full of vinaigrette onto the floor.
We both froze. My dad turned at the sound and cursed. “Are you kidding me right now?” His voice did this funny squeaking thing.
“Sorry!” Rose said as she reached over to grab a towel.
I picked up the bowl. “Has anyone ever told you it’s annoying when girls say sorry all the time?”
She threw the towel on the floor where it landed with a wet splat. “That’s it. I’ve tried to be the bigger person here and let you act like a little jerk to me. But you need to be put in your place!”
Something about Rose’s anger really gave me life. I let out a brittle laugh. “This isn’t Elysian. You have no power here.”
Her face was inches away from mine. “We’ll see.”
The guy who was ordering at the window clapped his hands over his head. “Fight, fight!”
“PARE!”
We all stared at my dad. He shook his head. “I mean, stop. That’s it. You guys are not only acting like kids, you’re affecting business!”
And within seconds, we were both pushed out onto the sidewalk and the KoBra’s door was locked against us. I pounded on it, but my dad refused to open it.
“PAI!” I yelled. “You’re being a total fascist!” I kicked the door and stalked off, throwing my cap onto the ground as I walked away.
Rose followed behind. I was steaming but didn’t know where to go, and I was annoyed that Rose was following me. “Can’t you go to your car?” I seethed as I walked rapidly down the sidewalk. She didn’t respond, but I could still feel her on my heels. Where had she parked? God!
“Too good to talk to me now?” I asked while glancing behind me.
She looked at me, then huffed with frustration. “Will you, like, turn into a toad or something if you stop talking for more than one minute?”
I glared at her. “Don’t be jealous of my charisma.”
She just made a repulsed face.
I continued walking and clenched my jaw. “You do realize that this entire thing is your fault? That if you hadn’t lost your mind at the dance we wouldn’t be in this mess?” We passed by a group of hipster dudes who laughed at my raised voice. I flipped them off.
I could almost hear Rose’s eyes roll. “If you hadn’t felt the narcissistic need to pull a prank at junior prom and make it all about yourself, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
I stopped walking and turned around to face her. “Narcissistic? I was entertaining. It was a selfless act—someone needed to spice up that dance.”
She scoffed and walked right up to me, her posture challenging. “I’ve known you since middle school. You are a classic narcissist. Inflated sense of self-importance? Check. Need for attention based on some issue with your absent mother, clearly? Check.”
I felt an uncontrollable anger rising up—something that I usually had a grip on.
“And, here’s the kicker, you have absolutely no empathy for others. Never wondering if the stuff you’re always pulling might actually hurt other people. Like, did you know Kathy Tamayo really wanted to win prom queen? That her little sister recently got into a car accident and was badly injured and maybe this would have been a nice thing for her to win?” Her voice was louder now.
I felt a brief flash of guilt before anger took over again. “How was I supposed to know that? And it’s not my fault her sister’s hurt or that she didn’t get enough votes! It was supposed to be a joke!” I was yelling at this point.
A sharp whistle interrupted me. “Girls, can you move along?” I looked over and saw a man leaning out of his shoe repair shop. He had an annoyed expression on his face.
“You move along, sir!” I snapped back but then stomped off, leaving Rose standing on the sidewalk behind me.
A bus ride later, I was home, and I headed straight to the bathroom, my heart pounding and my hands clammy. I splashed my face with cold water, trying to wash myself of Rose’s self-righteousness. Who the heck did she think she was? Like she was just so kind and never self-serving! What a load of utter crap. And how was I supposed to know about Kathy freaking Tamayo and her sister?!
Guilt pooled inside me—insidious, unfamiliar, and very unwelcome. I holed myself up in my room and started reading an old John Grisham novel that I had read so many times the cover was creased beyond recognition. Then I blasted girlie Motown and settled deep into my pillows, Flo curling up into a ball comfortably on top of my head.
But when I found myself reading the same paragraph for the fifth time, I tossed the book aside, making Flo growl deeply and jump off my head.
“Excuse me for living, Queen Licker of Butts,” I muttered as I pulled out my phone. I went to Facebook and took a deep breath. In the search bar, I typed “Kathy Tamayo.” When I got to her profile page, I saw photos of her in a sparkly silver dress at junior prom. I scrolled down farther and saw a link for a crowdfunding page for her sister, Jill. The photo accompanying the link was of a little Filipino girl, maybe ten or so. Shiny black hair, big smile with dimples. I bit down on my lip. For Pete’s sake.
I clicked on the link and read about the car accident that had injured Jill a few weeks ago. And then I read about the medical bills.
Good thing I had memorized my dad’s credit card number a long time ago. I donated thirty dollars on the site. Then I scribbled a note on a piece of notepad paper and slipped it under my dad’s door.
Pai, I owe you $30, you’ll see a random charge on your credit card.