52 Reasons to Hate My Father (16 page)

“Huh?”

“Are you going to tell me why you’re asking these kinds of questions?”

All this hypothesizing is starting to make my brain hurt. I suddenly feel very tired. And foolishly paranoid. I’m probably blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. So my mom liked to go on cruises. So what? Raising five children
is
very stressful. And that man at the party
was
really wasted. It was probably the scotch talking. He said he’d known my mother for a long time so maybe he’d always had some secret crush on her that was never requited. Maybe this was his way of getting back at her. By spreading rumors.

In any case, there’s no point in getting Cooper worked up about it. Especially when he’s halfway across the world trying to deal with
real
problems.

“Never mind,” I reply quietly. “It’s not important.” I transfer the phone to my other ear and sink farther down into the bed. “Tell me the latest about your trip. How is saving the world treating you?”

Cooper laughs and launches into several stories about his adventures in the Sudan, including one about a boy named Chiumbo who has been teaching him how to rap. I smile as his warm, familiar voice envelops me and allow myself to drift away, if only momentarily, to the other side of the earth where my problems cease to exist and my mind is empty.

I GET THAT A LOT

Today is my first day working at the fine establishment of Don Juan’s Tacos, a popular fast food chain famous for their creative use of nacho cheese. Not to mention an entire menu of delectable food items available for under a dollar. As if that’s supposed to be a
good
thing.

The uniform is a whole other issue. Let’s start with the color of this shirt. Hideous. Fashion rule number one: No one looks good in mustard. Not even me. And I’ve been known to pull off some pretty risqué colors in my day. And what’s with the elastic waistband on these pants? Are they maternity pants? Or have they just been designed to stretch to accommodate the weight you’re guaranteed to gain from working at this place and eating the food?

And don’t get me started on the sombrero.

Not even my beautiful blond wig with its sleek, straight, shoulder-length layers can improve this thing.

I’ve never actually been
inside
a Don Juan’s Tacos before but I’m somewhat familiar with at least a few of their menu items from the never-ending string of commercials on TV. Although apparently not familiar enough to
make
any of the items from scratch.

Javier, the supervisor who is training me on the food line, is getting really frustrated at my burrito-building ineptness. So far, I’ve proven myself completely incapable of wrapping a tortilla around half a pound of beans and cheese without ripping it.

And judging by the way he’s yelling at me, he seems to be taking the whole thing
very
personally. I’m not sure what that’s about but it’s giving me a serious headache.

I grab a handful of lettuce and dump it into the open tortilla in front of me.

“Oh
dios mio
!” Javier screams again, throwing in a few random Spanish curse words that I recognize from eighteen years of witnessing Horatio attempt to repair things around the house.

“How on earth are you going to wrap it with that much lettuce in there?” he asks. “Huh? Huh?”

He’s glaring at me now as though he really expects me to answer.

I’m starting to think this guy might be related to Fidel Castro.

“You can’t!” he bellows back before I can utter a single word. “That’s how.”

He scoops up half of the lettuce and violently throws it back in the bin. Then he shoves me to the side, mumbles for me to go up front and have Jenna train me on the register, and hastily wraps the burrito in waxed paper and drops it onto the tray.

It’s hard to believe, after all I’ve been through so far, that I’m only on job number fifteen. Which means I have thirty-seven weeks left to go.

I stagger out to the front of the store and find a small blond girl with dramatic aquamarine eyeliner, a bad perm, and a name tag that reads: J
ENNA
. I introduce myself with my code name for the week—Alicia—and unenthusiastically inform her that she’s supposed to train me on the register.

“Don’t worry about Javier,” she says, reading my defeated expression. “He’s like that with all new people. But he’s actually pretty nice once you get to know him.”

“Oh yeah,” I jest. “I can tell we’re gonna be BFFs.”

She giggles and then stops suddenly as a strange expression comes over her face. She’s staring at me really curiously and I feel my heart start to accelerate.

I know that look.

I’ve seen it a million times. In a thousand different places. It’s that bewildered expression people get when they think they recognize you but can’t quite figure out why. And now it’ll only be a matter of seconds before the gears click into place, the lightbulb goes off, her face lights up with recognition, and she goes …

“Oh my God!” she exclaims, pointing at my face and jumping up and down excitedly.

I close my eyes and swear under my breath.

So this is going to be my ultimate undoing, huh? Don Juan’s Tacos is going to be my Waterloo. So much for flying under the radar. For being “out of context.” I knew it was wishful thinking. That someone was
bound
to recognize me eventually.

“Do you know who you look like?” the girl bubbles excitedly.

I cautiously open my eyes. “Huh?”

“I bet you get it all the time.”

I squint inquisitively at her. “Get
what
all the time?”

“That you look exactly like Lexington Larrabee!”

The tall and lanky employee cleaning up the salsa bar stops wiping for a moment and curiously shifts his gaze toward us.

“You know,” Jenna prompts, “that spoiled-brat heiress that’s always in the tabloids.”

I exhale loudly and force a smile. “Oh. Right.
Her
.”

“You look
exactly
like her,” she compliments, like she’s expecting her comment to make my day. Although, to be honest, it did. Only not in the way she would think.

She turns to the teenage boy at the salsa bar. “Rolando, doesn’t she look
exactly
like Lexington Larrabee?”

He nods hurriedly and then goes back to wiping.

“You could totally, like,
be
her,” Jenna continues. “Except for, you know, the hair.”

I reach up and stroke a lock of my ash-blond wig, saying a silent prayer of thanks to the online wig warehouse that supplied it. “Yeah.” I nod vehemently. “I get that a
lot
.”

“You know who I get?” she asks.

“Um…” I begin, staring intently. Truthfully, with that crunchy, over-gelled perm on her head, I can’t imagine people thinking she looks like
any
celebrity. “Hmm.” I attempt to buy time while I rack my brain for a name. Fortunately, I’m saved when two customers walk through the door and she turns to greet them.

“Welcome to Don Juan’s!” she says with a slight bounce. “What can I get for you today?”

The man holds up one finger as he and his wife quickly scan the menu, whispering to each other. I can tell immediately from the way they’re dressed that they’re not American. Having spent the majority of my childhood traipsing around Western Europe, I have a very finely tuned radar for foreigners. Especially of the European variety.

The woman makes a disgusted face and turns away from the menu, muttering to her husband,
“Je n’arrive pas à croire que les Américains mangent cette nourriture dégoûtante. Je ne peux pas manger ici.”

I was right. They’re French. And that woman just expressed her utter disbelief that Americans can call anything on this menu
food.
It’s the exact same thought I had when I walked in here this morning.

“I assure you,” I reply in French, without thinking, “not
all
Americans eat this crap.”

The couple laughs and the woman murmurs something about trying Mimi’s Café next door instead. I tell her it’s probably a safer bet.

As soon as they exit, Jenna turns to me with a look of pure awe. “You speak French?”

I blink back at her in surprise, taking a moment to figure out why she looks so astonished. Even Rolando, the guy cleaning the salsa bar, has looked over here again to wait for my answer.

Whoops.

I guess employees of Don Juan’s Tacos aren’t usually fluent in French.

“Oh,” I say quickly, waving my hand in the air to downplay the situation, “just a little.”

Jenna laughs. “Sounded like more than a little.” She turns toward the salsa bar again. “Rolando, did you hear that? She was like,
Bloodidoo bla bloo bla.
”

He laughs. “Yep. Pretty impressive.”

“Well…” I fidget with the stack of plastic trays on the counter. “My mom is French.”

As soon as the lie is out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back. I immediately feel guilty about mentioning my mother. Especially when what I said is not even true.

“Cool,” Jenna says. “My relatives are from, like, Norway or something. But that was, like, thousands of years ago. You know what’s kind of weird? I think Lexington Larrabee speaks French too! I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere. She has, like, five houses in France or something.”

Actually it’s only two. An apartment in Paris and a château near Aix-en-Provence but I’m not about to correct her.

“I don’t think her mom is from France, though.” Jenna keeps babbling. “I’m pretty sure she’s dead. Some tragic car accident or something. It’s kinda sad when you think about it, huh? Losing your mom like that?”

“We should probably finish the register training,” I interject quickly. “You know, before Javier comes out here and murders me with a taco shell.”

Jenna laughs, seemingly oblivious to my skillful topic-dodging. “Good thinking,” she says, tapping her forehead.

Thankfully, Rolando goes back to filling salsa bins, Jenna goes back to pointing at random buttons on the computer in front of us, and I slowly go back to breathing normally again.

CULT CLASSIC

I thought working in fast food was supposed to be easy. But it’s actually ridiculously hard. Like brain surgery or something. The drive-thru headset requires a PhD to operate. In one shift I manage to accidentally cuss out three customers because I thought I was pressing the off button when really I was pressing the broadcast-my-voice-to-the-world button. And since every employee in the restaurant wears a headset pretty much everyone heard me.

The order screens positioned above the food line are even worse. I swear the incoming orders are displayed in some kind of top-secret government code. What the heck is
SDT wo ch
+
so
supposed to mean? I need a translator just to figure out what item to make and there are so many freaking ingredients, even then I don’t get it right.

Plus the deep fryer is out to get me. I’m convinced of it. It bubbles and boils in blistering hot rage and lashes out at me every time I attempt to submerge a basket of fries. And don’t even get me started on the nacho cheese sauce. This lethal substance is dangerous, volatile, and should be kept far away from living creatures. Its creamy and inviting texture is but a ruse to reel you in and gain your trust. But turn your back for only a few minutes and it morphs into a crusty, gelatinous, fluorescent yellow sludge. And once it’s touched the surface of any object it’s virtually impossible to remove.

By the end of my first day, my feet are swollen, my back is throbbing, I have burns on my arms, and I smell like I’ve been rolling around in french fries all day. I swear the stench of grease has seeped into my clothes and skin.

So I think it’s safe to say that the very
last
face I want to see at ten o’clock at night after coming off my hellish eight-hour shift is my father’s. And yet, there it is. The second I open the door of Luke’s Honda Civic, I see it. Lying on the passenger seat. That infamous I’m-going-to-eat-you-alive-and-enjoy-it half smile staring up at me.

It’s a copy of my father’s autobiography. Although the “auto” part is yet another brilliant Richard Larrabee deception. I know for a fact that he hired a ghostwriter to write the stupid thing.

I let out a loud groan. “What is
that
doing here?” I ask, glaring at the hardcover. I lower myself into the car, trying to aim my butt
right
onto the image of my father’s smug face. Luke saves the book just in time and holds it protectively to his chest.

“I bought it today,” Luke says proudly. “I’m going to take it into the office tomorrow to get it autographed.”

I roll my eyes and buckle my seat belt.

“We’re studying him in our entrepreneurship class,” Luke continues eagerly. “I’m reading about how your father started out with no money, no higher education, working in the mail room of a small newspaper.”