Since You've Been Gone

“Well, Mona’s not here,” Kerry said, speaking slowly and deliberately, like maybe the reason I was still standing in front of her, not ordering ice cream, was that I didn’t understand English well. “So if you’re not going to get something, you can’t—” The store phone rang and she picked it up. “Hello, Paradise,” she said, keeping her eyes on me the whole time, like maybe this was all part of an elaborate ruse to rob the place. “Hey, Mona. No. Not a customer. Just—”

“Is that Mona?” I asked quickly, leaning across the counter. Desperation was making me brave, and any sense of dignity I had when I entered the place was long gone. “Can I talk to her?”

“No,” Kerry said into the phone—but probably to me, too—taking a step back. “Just some girl who didn’t order anything. Wanted to talk to you.” She listened for a moment, then lowered the phone. “What do you want?”

“Okay, so my friend,” I babbled, speaking fast, lest Kerry change her mind, “she left me this list—her name’s Sloane Williams, I don’t know if that matters. Anyway, on the list, it said to come here and ask for Mona. So that’s . . . what I’m doing.”

Kerry just raised her eyebrows at me. “Did you get that?” she said into the phone. She tilted her head slightly to the right, listening to something that was being said on the other end. “Oh,” she said, looking at me. “I don’t know why she didn’t just start with that then. Okay. Yeah, I’ll ask her. Talk to you later.” She hung up and I looked in dismay at the phone on the counter, wondering if I should have tried to get on the phone with Mona myself. Kerry reached under the counter and pulled out a manila folder. She flipped through the papers inside, tilting them away from me so I couldn’t see what they were. She stopped, then looked up at me. “What’s your name?”

My heart was starting to beat harder now, but not from nerves—because it felt like I was getting close to something. “Emily,” I said, wondering if I should show some ID. “Emily Hughes.”

She nodded and pulled out a piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “You were supposed to be here last week,” she said. “Mona thought you didn’t want the job.”

I just stared at her. “Job?”

Kerry rolled her eyes, clearly losing any patience she’d once had with me. “Yeah, the job,” she said. “The one you applied for? Mona’s the manager?” She shook her head and reached back underneath the counter, and I pulled the piece of paper closer to me so I could read it.

Sure enough, it was an application to work at Paradise Ice Cream. It had been filled out for me in Sloane’s handwriting. There was Sloane’s email and phone number, but my name and work experience. Sloane had put herself down as my emergency contact, and under Additional Info she had added, I am a really hard worker, a wonderful friend, really punctual, funny, loyal, thoughtful, all-around awesome. Oh, and humble too.

I smiled as I read this while simultaneously feeling like I might burst into tears. The only thing that prevented this was imagining what Mona, or Kerry, or whoever, must have thought of this bizarrely confident application.

“Can I have this?” I asked, holding on to the application as Kerry stood up again, holding two white T-shirts.

“No,” she said, sounding exasperated with me, as she pulled it back and placed it in the folder. “We need to hold on to it. So we have your information in case you burn the place down or something.” She looked at me closely after she said it, clearly thinking I might be capable of this. “Anyway, I’m sure Mona mentioned the salary when you applied. So we need someone five shifts a week, two of those have to be weekends, and Mona does the scheduling tonight, so she can e-mail you.”

I blinked at her. “You mean I got the job?” Kerry didn’t even bother responding to this, just flipped through the folder again.

“Mona wanted to know if your friend was still interested.” She pulled out another paper, and I could see it was Sloane’s handwriting again, this time filling out her own application. I saw, in the section that dealt with scheduling, Sloane had written in all caps, NEED SAME SHIFTS AS EMILY HUGHES!!!

I got it then, finally. She’d had a plan for us to work together after all.  And judging by how empty Paradise was, she had picked the ideal place. Unlike last summer, when our marathon chat sessions were always being interrupted by people who wanted their food brought to them or their orders taken, this would have been the perfect job for us. We would have gotten paid to hang out all day, with minimal customer interference.

Kerry gave a loud sigh, and I realized I hadn’t answered her. “No,” I said quickly. I noticed that Sloane had left the Additional Info section on her own application blank. “She’s . . . not available for it any longer.”

“Okay,” Kerry said, putting Sloane’s application back in the folder. “Do you want the job or not? Because if not, we need to call the other applicants.”

I thought about it as I looked at the two neatly folded white T-shirts on the counter. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I needed a job, after all. And Sloane had gotten me one. She had put this on the list, after all, so that I’d know about this job even after she’d left.  And I had a feeling that it most likely wouldn’t be super demanding. I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

“Great,” Kerry said, sounding decidedly unenthusiastic about this as she pushed the shirts in my direction. “Welcome to Paradise.”

By the time I made it home again, it had turned into the hottest part of the day.  The Volvo’s air conditioner was barely functional, so normally I didn’t even try it. But when I’d attempted it today, only hot air had come out at me, and I’d quickly turned it off. Normally, the open roof let a breeze in, but instead, it just felt like I was sitting directly in a sunbeam I couldn’t get out of. I made a mental note, as I pulled into the driveway, to get the wooden piece for the roof from the garage, if only to cool the car down by providing some shade. As I walked up to the front door, new employee T-shirts in hand—they had rainbows on them like Kerry’s had, I’d been dismayed to see—I was regretting the fact I hadn’t gotten any ice cream after all.