I look at her. Zoe Kimball. Twenty-two years old. Wants to be a firefighter at a specific fire station badly enough to beg. Drinks Shirley Temples and Moscow mules and ties cherry stems in knots without knowing she’s doing it. Listens to punk for the first time and asks why instead of what.
Licks her lips when she’s nervous and doesn’t know I’m watching.
“You want another one?” I nod at the mug.
“No, I think one’s enough.” She pulls out her wallet. “How much?”
“The Shirley Temple was on me. The mule is twelve.”
She puts a twenty on the bar. “Keep the change.”
“Big tipper for a girl who lives at home.”
“How do you know I live at home?”
“Lucky guess.”
She smiles again. Smaller this time, but real. She slides off the stool and stands there for a second, like she’s deciding whether to say something else. Then she looks at the speakerabove the bar, where the playlist has moved on to the Clash, and she nods at it.
“What’s this one?”
“‘Lost in the Supermarket.’ The Clash. London Calling, 1979.”
“It’s kind of beautiful.”
“Don’t let any punk hear you say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a compliment and punks don’t know what to do with those.” I pick up her glass. “Get home safe, Zoe.”
She walks out. The door swings shut behind her and the bar goes back to what it was before she showed up, which is quiet and mine and exactly how I like it. I wash her mug. Wipe down her spot. Throw away the cherry stem she left on the napkin.
Tied in a knot. She definitely didn’t do that on purpose. I toss it in the trash and go back to closing prep, and I don’t think about her mouth or her laugh or the way her face broke open when I talked about being handed a future you didn’t ask for.
I don’t think about it. I just finish closing and walk home and go to bed.
Chapter Five
Zoe
The walk home takes eleven minutes. I know because I’ve been walking these streets since I was old enough to walk them alone, and I can tell you exactly how long it takes to get from any point in this neighborhood to any other point. Anthem to home is eleven minutes if I take Haverford, thirteen if I cut through the park, fifteen if I go the long way past the school.
I take Haverford.
The air is warm and the street is quiet in that late-Tuesday way where the restaurants have closed but the porch lights are still on and you can hear someone’s TV through an open window. Mrs. Petrosian’s cat is sitting on the front steps of her building, judging me with his whole face. I click my tongue at him and he blinks once, slowly, and goes back to being unimpressed.
My phone buzzes. Keely, my best friend since seventh grade.
How was today??? Did you celebrate? Tell me everything.
I look at the screen for a long time. Keely doesn’t know about Station 11. Nobody knows about Station 11, not really, not in a way that includes the going-there-and-begging part. Keely knows I graduated and got assigned and that my parents are proud and that we had dinner at Lorraine’s. That’s the version. The good version. The version where everything went right.
It was great. Dinner was fun. Tired now. Call you tomorrow?
YES. So proud of you babe!!!
Three exclamation points. Keely does everything in threes. Three exclamation points, three emojis, three attempts at parallel parking before she gives up and finds a different spot. I love her. She would listen if I told her the whole story. She’d sit on FaceTime with me for two hours and say all the right things and mean every one of them. But I don’t want the right things tonight. I don’t want someone agreeing with me or feeling sorry for me or telling me it’ll work out.
