The kids around her nodded in agreement.
I looked at Mr. Romano. Sympathy was written all over his face, as if he was just realizing he’d made a terrible mistake.
“I think Hawthorn’s paper raises a lot of interesting points for us to discuss.”
“Yeah, like how she’s pathetic.”
I couldn’t tell where that last comment came from, but it didn’t matter. I retreated to my desk while Mr. Romano tried to regain control of the class.
Emily leaned across the aisle. “It really was a good paper.”
“It was stupid.”
“No, they’re stupid.”
She was right. They were stupid. But not so stupid that they’d write an essay like mine. So really, who was the biggest idiot?
• • •
I had my first shift at the Sunshine Café after school that day. Christa trained me. There wasn’t much to learn.
“As long as you’re friendly, you’ll be fine,” she said.
If that was the case, I was a long way from fine, but I didn’t tell her that.
The same old man was at the same spot at the end of the lunch counter. Christa told me his name was Vernon and he was always there. Other than that, there were only two tables of people the entire night. It seemed like working at the Sunshine Café mostly meant sitting around.
“So there’s no word on Lizzie Lovett, huh?” I asked, trying to sound causal.
Christa was showing me how to work the coffee machine, as if it were complicated.
“Nope. But her boyfriend was in here the other night.”
“In the diner?”
Christa nodded. “He used to come here while she was working. I didn’t expect he’d show up now.”
“I saw his picture in the paper,” I said. “They looked sort of mismatched to me.”
“I couldn’t say. I didn’t really know either of them.”
“But you and Lizzie worked together for a while, right?”
“That doesn’t mean you know someone,” Christa said. “Lizzie kept to herself.”
“Did you like her?” I asked, wondering if I was pushing the conversation too far. Christa was going to think I had ulterior motives. Which I did.
“We got along.”
If I’d known her a little better, I would have told Christa that didn’t answer the question. Instead, I let her lead me from the coffeemaker to the closet where extra napkins and sugar packets were stored.
A little later, Christa asked me to watch the diner while she called her boyfriend. There wasn’t much to watch, so I sat down next to Vernon. He was halfway through a word search.
“Hi.”
Vernon didn’t respond.
“My name’s Hawthorn. I’m the new waitress. Lizzie’s replacement. Did you know her?”
Still nothing.
“This is my first shift. Which is sort of bad timing, because my day sucked.”
Vernon still didn’t speak, but he made a harrumph sound, which I figured meant it was OK to continue.
“I had to write this paper about Griffin Mills, and I wrote the truth, which is that the town is totally lame. I didn’t think anyone besides my teacher would ever read it.”
Vernon found the word stellar and circled it.
“They can’t all think the Mills is a great place to live. Can they?”
Lizzie Lovett must not have thought so. She left after graduating. Though, admittedly, she didn’t get far. Only down the road to Layton and a job at the Sunshine Café. Where, apparently, her boyfriend Lorenzo would visit her sometimes.
I wondered how much Lorenzo Calvetti loved Lizzie and if her turning into a werewolf would ruin his life forever.
“Why didn’t you leave Layton, Vernon?”
Vernon finally looked at me and said in a high, crackly, old man voice, “Did leave. Fer nearly thirty years. Din’t git far though. Come back in the end.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Cuz it’s no difference wheresabouts yinz live, girlie. Zak same trouble everywhere.”
I sighed. “Well, that doesn’t give me much hope for the future.”
“Hope? Wah good ya think hope gonna do?” Vernon said, then threw back his head and cackled.
I laughed too. Because maybe, probably, it was a better response than I’d get from anyone else.
I spent the rest of my first waitressing shift reading The Book of Werewolves by this guy named Sabine Baring-Gould. It was written a long time ago but is still considered one of the most important werewolf texts. Every once in a while, I jotted down notes in a composition book.
“Is that something for school?” Christa asked.
“Uh. Sort of.”
“Looks like a lot of work.”
It was. I didn’t mind though. I wished I could show my teachers and Emily and everyone else that I could apply myself. I just needed the right subject to come along. Werewolves seemed to be just my thing.
Chapter 9
Lorenzo Calvetti
Sometimes, I thought I was really observant, like I saw all this stuff that other kids at school missed, like how ninety-five percent of what they cared about was actually totally pointless. Then there were other times when I missed something so super obvious that I wondered how observant I was after all.
What happened was, on my fourth night working at the Sunshine Café, I walked right by Lorenzo Calvetti without noticing him.
I spent so much time wondering about him, what he was going through, how he was dealing with having a missing girlfriend who was possibly dead but more probably a werewolf, that I had a whole picture of how I would meet him and what we would talk about. I thought of Lorenzo Calvetti only slightly less than I thought about Lizzie. But I still walked right by him.