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We didn’t get a lot of variety with our customers. It was sort of the same people—or the same type of people—over and over again. College students when school was in. Lots of truckers. Regulars. Nobody particularly interesting. I was glad I took the weird guy.

At least today would be entertaining.

3

MATTY

I DID NOT ENJOY the pancakes.

It’s not that they weren’t good or that I didn’t like pancakes. I just didn’t like eating them under duress. It was a mental thing, like my brain was in protest.

I was bored and uncomfortable. The costume was hot, and there was nothing to do. I wasn’t even getting good cell phone service, and the Wi-Fi was private. I’d already heard “Jingle Bells” three times and not even a different version, just the same one over and over.

I squinted through my tiny eye holes at the time on my phone. With one stack down and one hour served, I still had fourteen more hours to go. Maybe I should take a nap? Would that be weird? Weirder than what I was already doing?

Every single person who came in gawked at me and the line cook laughed and shook his head every time I made eye contact with him.

Being in this mask was starting to feel like a kind of torture. It was humid and I couldn’t see right. It sucked squinting through the slits.

I wondered if I’d get disqualified for cutting bigger holes for my eyes.

I texted the group chat to ask. A minute later a reply came through:

Paulie: The council has convened and the verdict is NO.

I pressed my lips into a line and set my phone down. Jerks.

My server was taking an order a few tables over. She glanced at me and smiled and I gave her a little wave.

At least this didn’t suck.

She was pretty. She had shoulder-length blond hair in two French braids, brown eyes. She wore a fitted white Pancake Disco T-shirt and a black waist apron with dangly red Christmas ornament earrings. Her name tag read Rhiannon, like the song. I’d appreciated the smaller pancake thing she did. She was cool.

And of course I was dressed like I’d rummaged through the lost and found of an elementary school the day after the Halloween parade.

I was never going to stop kicking myself for not clarifying the terms of this stupid bet before I agreed to it. I’d just been so sure I was right.

When Rhiannon was done with her other table, she swung by with the coffeepot. “Warm-up?” she asked.

“Nah, I think I’m all coffeed out.” I watched her clear my plate. “So have you worked here long?” I asked.

“A few years,” she said, balancing my dishes impressively.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s just a job. I’m in school, actually. I graduate next year.”

“Oh, what do you want to be?”

“I’m going for a medical lab tech.”

“What do they do?” I asked.

“Analyze samples. Blood, urine, spinal fluid.”

“And why that?”

She shrugged. “I love science. Solving medical puzzles. I want to work at that big hospital in Minneapolis.”