BAD LAD

4. Katherine

A Few weeks later

This job will kill me. This is what I say to myself as I adjust the degrading little badge on my white shirt. But, I have to go through this if I want to put money aside. To get an apartment, to buy a car, to pay my school fees: however, I can’t get the small fortune these demand by serving coffee.

I’m eighteen in two weeks. After... after, I can try for a real job. Nothing will stop me from getting my degree—as an independent applicant if I can’t apply another way.

This thought comforts me as I tie my hair into a ponytail that I made in a hurry. The little bell tinkles and I force myself not to cast a hateful glance at the unfortunate customers I’ll have to deal with. I hate crowds, and even more this kind of work where I have to smile all the time, even to gross lecherous pervs. Father Stephen was more than nice to help me find this extra job: no way to put him at fault. Especially then to suffer the wrath of Julie for weeks.

Male laughter burst out, making my hair stand on end, and I immediately take a look at the group of students who settle down. Lily, my supervisor, who’s only a little older than me, will arrive in half an hour, but until then I’m going to have to hang on.

They’re all wearing preppy outfits, those worn by all the rich kids. I arm myself with a pitcher of coffee and go toward them without looking at anyone in particular, mentally noting that the bell—I’ll soon hate it, that piece of junk, for sure—tinkles again and again.

Great... several herds at the same time, they’ll be partying tonight.

“What can I get you?” I ask them as politely as I can, placing the pitcher on their table.

I’d rather put my head in an oven turned on at two hundred fifty degrees than force myself to smile as nice as pie.

They trot out their orders in turn while grinning like idiots. I just nod without looking up from my notebook. I’d barely turned to head to the kitchen when I feel a brief pat on my butt.

I freeze while my blood deserts my face.

I knew it. This mandatory uniform... it’s killing me.

A white shirt and a red skirt. The skirt may fall well below the knees and not be provocative but that’s all it takes for some horny animals to get excited.

I turn my murderous eyes on the group, adding substantially to the atmosphere:

“Who?” I spit through my teeth.

They exchange glances while laughing like hyenas getting ready to celebrate.

“What?” states one of them, brash.

He has dark hair and eyes and a wicked smile. I focus all my attention on him.

“Who took the liberty?”

“We don’t see what you mean, Miss Waitress!”

The name triggers another round of giggles.

“Hey!” cries a man’s voice behind me. “We’d like to eat, too! Is there a problem?”

Intending to spend my nerves on the other group of customers, I turn in their direction, but an unexpected detail cuts me in my tracks: I recognize the one who just spoke. Such an amused smile, with gray eyes, cold and sharp as the blade of a knife, I’ve already met him. At the campsite where I go every year with my sister, to be precise.

At the moment, he doesn’t seem to recognize me, at least, until our eyes lock, and there I know he places me despite my change of clothes. His eyes go from me to the students and back, several times. The smile on his face turns into a pronounced frown. I’ve no idea who’ll get hurt: them or me?

At the campsite, he didn’t need to get out his resume, it was written all over him, I’m a gangster, the real deal. Some play tough guys to give themselves an image, and there are the others, those who live and breathe the life. The latter... they’re like large predators, if you have the misfortune to reveal your fear to them, they jump at your throat, leaving pity in the freezer aisle to present you as the dish of the day.

I take a deep breath without looking down under his piercing gaze.

“No problem. I’ll take your order.”

He raises an eyebrow, and the smile reappears. My sudden cooperation must surprise him.

“We were first!” one of the bourgeois gets upset.

“I didn’t say otherwise,” I retort without turning to their table.

But what idiots they are, the rich!

When I observe the tattooed stranger slowly rise from his chair, my heart triples its pace.

“He has a problem, the brat?” he asks in an almost amiable tone. “It annoys him that I’m served first?”

He joins us with a kind of smooth and very natural gait and then stops level with me. There, from the corner of my eye, I see him lower his head slightly in my direction and I’m sure he tentatively looked at my hair. He then looks at the student diners.

“Dude, it annoys you that she’s taking our order?” he insists.

“Chris! Forget it! I just want to fill my stomach!” rattles one of his friends, a disheveled blond with sunglasses on his nose.

“Exactly, me too, but if this asshole table prevents the kid from doing her job... we’re not even close to eating,” he explains to his friend without his eyes leaving the group.

I throw him an irritated glance. He can’t be much older than me, but he called me a kid.

“It’s ok,” capitulates brown hair.

No need to check to find out that they’re all trembling like leaves in their overpriced clothes.

Chris, so. He doesn’t have the face of a Chris.

As if he guessed that I was thinking about him, he looks again at me with a satisfied smile:

“You see, crazy chick with the speargun...?”

I understand where he’s coming from; his little moral lesson made in the bathrooms of the campsite. I purse my lips hard and walk over to the table besieged by his gang.

“Can I take your order?”

My dry tone doesn’t seem to bother them. The shaggy blond grins, the dark-skinned one doesn’t let up on his phone, as for the last... the leanest and the smallest of them, he’s sleeping outright, neck resting on the edge of his seatback.

My body reacts to the predatory presence of Chris. He’s standing right behind me and each of my muscles stiffens to the point where I have to grit my teeth because it’s physically painful to feel this way. I’m sure all this amuses him: my nervousness, my shoulders clenched in an unnatural position. I have the feeling of being watched by a tiger and it’s not pleasant. I dutifully note their order: it’s simple, they are all the same. Ditto for the one who goes back to sleep immediately after declaring his order.

I nod and, upon turning to leave to the kitchen, hit my nose against the torso of the alleged tiger. I immediately execute a step to the right, he imitates me; a fleeting quizzical smile on his lips devoured by stubble. I purse my own again and try to dodge to the other side but then he prevents me from passing. When my furious eyes meet his, certainly delighted, I answer with a look that I hope is sufficiently murderous.

Ultimately, without us having exchanged a single word, he finally lets me pass and boldly laughs when I walk away.

Mario, the cook, thanks me with a very happy "gracias" and I return to the counter, engaging myself with menial tasks like making more coffee because I refuse to go retrieve the pitcher cooling on the table of those bourgeois cretins.

I feel him coming without needing to check.

“Can I help you?”

My tone is grating and my eyes are still glued to the machine.

“Since when do you work here?”

“What’s it to do with you?”

“To me? Nothing. It’s just that I often eat here with the guys and I’ve never seen you before. I take it that this is very recent.”

I briefly close my eyes.

“Tonight. Since tonight.”

“You look young. You breeze here, like, after school?”

“Yes, sir-I-want-to-know-all.”

I confront him, hands on hips.

“You good? The interview’s over?”

He gives me a broad smile before putting his tattooed forearms on the counter surface and sitting on a stool, his chin resting on his wrists. I mentally beg Mario into a higher gear so that they all eat their burgers and fries and leave as soon as possible.

“How old are you?”

I go about my business pretending to ignore him and his question. My current job is scouring a kind of grate without knowing what device it can belong to.

If I tell him seventeen... it could cool his ardour. But it’s impossible to be sure.

“Eighteen. In two weeks,” I say, after a short pause.

He remains silent, so I throw him a glance. An amused smile still stretches his lips.

“And you?” I inquire, wondering about my curiosity.

“Twenty-two... in two weeks.”

I stop rubbing the greasy grate with a sponge to plant my gaze into his. His metal gray eyes seem a shade lighter than earlier.

“Are you kidding me?”

He slowly shakes his head from side to side as his smile widens slightly.

“Talk about a coincidence!” I mutter, returning to my work.

My thoughts catch a laugh. No huge outburst, but a discrete sound like he didn’t notice that it was coming from him.

“Chris!” a female voice suddenly exclaims, not far from us.

It’s vaguely familiar, but I prefer not to pay attention: the black grate of grime deserves more.

However, when a disgusting sound of clinging mouths resounds too close to me, I can’t help it: I look at them for a moment and the entire exhibition is very distressing for me.

That girl, hanging on Chris’s neck and gleefully devouring his tonsils... It’s not possible! This can’t be tolerated! Why does fate care so much about the pathetic creature that I am?!

“Mel?”

I involuntarily murmur her name and after that, oxygen decides to desert my lungs, numbing my nerves to the point that I forget how I should proceed to replenish them.

On hearing my voice, the delicious blond creature turns with an expression both surprised and intrigued, but when she takes the time to stare at me, her complexion becomes crimson.

“Katherine?” she whispers. “What... are you doing here?”

“Katherine?” Chris repeats without pushing away the young woman in the provocative outfit pressed against him.

I feel his puzzled look navigate from my sister to me.

“That's my line, don't you think?!” I scold. “Where have you been? Hell, Mel! Where were you!”

She moves away from the tattooed thug suddenly visibly uncomfortable in her low-cut top and skirt revealing her attractive physique. She pulls on it as if she could lengthen the garment.

“Not far enough away!”

Her laughter rings false and my anger grows to wickedly spill into every atom of my being.

“Mel, you know this kid?”

I blink to hear the last word he uttered.

She giggles again.

“It’s my little sister... Katherine. Katherine, this is my boyfriend Christopher Farwick.”

Her... boyfriend?!

By reflex, I look and my eyes hold those of said boyfriend in question, the same one who boasted, camping, to having rolled in lust with two Swedish women.

Perhaps they weren't together at that time?

But deep down, I know this isn’t the case.