Mrs.Adler hadn’t changed much in about eight years: she was petite, linear as an exclamation point, her face oblong and weathered to a glossy walnut brown, her inky black hair bobbed precisely at her shoulders and sliced in the straightest imaginable line across her forehead. Her eyes were huge and round and dark, like a colon turned sideways. She was the human equivalent of a diagrammed sentence. Glory never could decide if she’d morphed into an English teacher because of how she looked or if her looks had given her no choice.
“Well. Myyyygoodness. MissGlory Greenleaf.” Her eyes glinted sardonically up at Glory. “As I live and breathe. It’s been quite a while. I thought you were... now how did you put it on that last day of class? ‘Getting the hell out of this stuffy, dusty hellhole’? Which is why you didn’t have to care whether you got an A or a C on your English final? And why you found diagramming sentences such a ridiculous pastime?”
Alas, this was all true. Shehadsaid this. Glory kind of wanted to go back in time and smack herself, even if the sentiments held true. And Glory had given enough thought about diagramming sentences to be able to use them as a metaphor. And that was about it.
She tried a smile, but her mouth was having none of it. She finally managed to peel her top lip up off her teeth a little. “Hi, Mrs.Adler.Whata great memory you have. I guess all that stuff I said... was a figure of speech.”
Which she recognized immediately was the wrong thing to say to an English teacher.
“Ah. A figure of speech, was it? So youdidn’tmean to imply that the town resembles a hole in hell, one which is coated in dust, populated by prigs, suggesting that it’s a very unpleasant place indeed?”
The way forward was littered with little landmines, representing all the things she desperately wanted to say. Glory counted to five in her head before she opened her mouth.
“I guess I have an impassioned way of expressing myself.”
She was pleased with that answer, but all this did was make Mrs.Adler go silent and grim. This was in part what had maddened Mrs.Adler about Glory. Glory was clearly intelligent and articulate and did indeed express herself colorfully, and Mrs.Adler could count on one hand the students she’d known who bothered to use the wordimpassionedin a sentence. But Glory had always balked against doing things when she failed to see their point. Diagramming sentences, for instance.
“And you said all that in front of the whole class, no less.”
“Guess I can’t resist an audience. Ha ha. Let me tell you about our specials, Mrs.Adler. Eggs Benedict is the breakfast special, and we’re serving that all day. And the turkey club is the lunch special. Only $6.99!”
“Weren’t eggs Benedict the special justlastweek?” Mrs.Adler countered, shrewdly.
Crap. This was turning out to be right up there with all the dreams she’d had about showing up to school naked or all of her teeth suddenly falling out into her hand.
But she wasnotabout to flail incompetently in front of her former English teacher.
“The eggs Benedict here is truly specialeveryday, but you can get them for a little less today. You’ll have enough money left over for...” She shot a sneaky glance at the whiteboard over the grill. “...a pumpkin muffin. And if the eggs Benedict isspecial,” she riffed, “well, the pumpkin muffins arespectacular.”
Sherrie breezed by with her arms full of plates, but she still managed to give Glory a surreptitious thumbs-up and a nod.
Mrs.Adler was eyeing Glory with those huge dark eyes that missed nothing and loathed everything about overly spirited students. “I want the turkey club, MissGreenleaf. But hold the turkey, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. Bacon very crispy.”
Glory processed this like a word problem. “So... what you want is a triple-decker toasted bacon sandwich pinned together by a toothpick?”
The worried look Sherrie shot her on her way back to the kitchen was confirmation that she’d failed to keep incredulity entirely from her tone.
“That’s exactly what I want, MissGreenleaf. If only you’d paid that much attention to detail in class, young lady, you’d have gone far indeed. At least as far as the next town over.”
Oh.Welldone, Mrs.Adler. Perversely, she appreciated skillful sarcasm when she heard it.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’d like on the side?” Mrs.Adler prompted sweetly.
Why, you bitch, Glory thought admiringly.
Glory knew it would make Mrs.Adler’s decade to hear Glory say “do you want fries with that?”
They stared each other down.
“I’ll bring you a pumpkin muffin, Mrs.Adler,” she said finally. “They’re good for... sweetening things up.”
She pivoted immediately lest she say the “you bitch” part out loud instead of in her head, scribbled the order on the tag, and headed over to Giorgio. She hovered there by the grill a second, distracted and soothed bysounds: the rhythmic swish of the flour sifter in Glenn’s hand, the clink of silverware and glasses, the jingle of the bells on the door.
The jingle of the bells on the door.
Followed by more jingling of the bells.
She whipped about. A veritable flood of customers was pouring in. The lunch rush was officially on.