Pop Songs Echo

through the tiny staff bathroom in Millers. Britney Spears drops bubblegum beats that bounce off the stall walls and into Anh-thu’s throbbing head. When her tune fades, Justin Timberlake takes over. OutKast. Matchbox Twenty. Jennifer Lopez. Their melodies filling the blue-tiled box of a bathroom with cotton candy.

Anh-thu leans on her elbows over the toilet bowl. One hand gripping white porcelain, the other holding back her long black hair. She spits and stares into the water: a rippling reflection of her puffy brown face. She heaves again and coughs. Flushes. Everything is pushing at the back of her watery eyes.

She spits again and stares.

The summer music mix bumps into an old-school Rob Base jam: “It Takes Two.” It’s the third time Anh-thu’s heard this song today and her ears anticipate every shift in melody. She pictures the way customers always react, busting a couple quick dance steps near a mirror or keeping time with a subtle head bop.

She wipes away forehead sweat with the back of her hand.

Shift leader Dori creeps up to the locked bathroom door and leans in with an ear, taps her knuckles. Everything OK, Annie? She fingers the end of her long blond ponytail.

Anh-thu spins around, says through the door in her best smiling voice: Everything’s fine.

All right, Dori says. Just checking. She listens at the door a few seconds longer and then heads back out onto the floor.

Anh-thu turns back to the bowl. She digs her fingers into her stomach again and starts to cry. She’s picturing Sticky’s face if she really is pregnant. She’s so nervous her stomach feels nauseous again. She heaves and coughs. She spits. Flushes.

Ten minutes ago Anh-thu was folding clothes with the rest of the girls. Folding and talking about some guy that gave Laura his cell number. They were gathered around the fifty-percent-off table, listening to Laura and cleaning up the two-story mess left by thoughtless customers—people who pull every item off a sale stack, unfold and throw back. Laura was dropping serious insight about UCLA dudes, what a girl has to do to catch their eye. She was doing heavy analysis, but Anh-thu had stopped listening.

Anh-thu was thinking about Sticky again. How her situation might mess everything up. It was her birthday, she was sixteen today, and Sticky would show up with a gift. He’d want to touch her and kiss her. But what if everything was different now?

She tossed an unfolded shirt on a stack of sweaters and hustled for the staff bathroom holding her stomach.

Somethin up with Annie, Laura said, watching Anh-thu hurry off.

She’s not being normal, a girl named Julie said.

Shift leader Dori finished folding a sweater and watched Anh-thu turn the corner into the break room. She figured she’d give her a couple minutes before she went over to investigate.

Anh-thu picks herself up from the toilet and moves to the sink. She turns the water on full blast, cups her hands and splashes her face. She rinses out her mouth. She shuts the water off and pulls down a clean towel from the cupboard. As she dries her face, she stares at herself in the mirror. Her hair matted to her forehead. Her swollen eyes and puffy cheeks. This is the way her face looks after a long night of crying.

But when she locks in on her own eyes for too long, starts thinking about her situation, her and Sticky’s situation, that nervous sick feeling comes spinning back into her stomach. She plants a hand against the sink and looks away.

Eminem starts flowing through the speakers: “Lose Yourself.” The song Sticky made Anh-thu listen to over and over a few days back, on the tape deck of a borrowed car.

He drove them up to a small empty lot between two giant houses with tall fences. Somewhere in the Pacific Palisades. There were dense trees and bushes so nobody could look in. Signs that warned in big black writing: KEEP OUT. There were construction postings and idle tractors, a streetlight dug out of the ground and lying on its side. Sticky maneuvered the car past all that stuff and up to the edge of the cliff, where he cranked the parking brake. He and Anh-thu looked out at the stars hovering above the big black ocean. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. Sticky bopped his head with the beat and pulled Anh-thu in close. They held hands and kissed.

At one point, he motioned to the tape deck and told her: This dude got skills, Annie.

Anh-thu agreed.

He said: You know what? I wanna be the Eminem of hoops .

Anh-thu laughed.

When Eminem spilled his last line of lyrics and the beat trailed off, Sticky hit rewind and started the song all over again.

Anh-thu feels like crying again but instead she stomps her foot to stop herself. Quit acting like a little girl, she says to her image in the mirror, and she grits her teeth. Just stop it already.

She takes a few deep breaths and tries to pull herself together. She tosses the towel in a bin, runs a finger under each eye and straightens her clothes. She takes another deep breath and unwraps a stick of gum. As she pops the gum in her mouth she devises a plan. What’s done is done, she thinks. All she can do is deal. She’ll tell Sticky the situation tonight, and then go from there based on how he reacts. It might not go perfect at first, but they’ll figure out what to do.

A Jewel song comes on, one she doesn’t really dig, but Anh-thu feels okay about her plan. She takes another deep breath and unlocks the door. Then she heads back out onto the floor.