The bell chimed, then faded, and I was left alone again.  And as I walked back to stand behind the counter, I realized that the silence somehow felt louder than it had before.

The afternoon passed with glacial slowness. I cleaned and then re-cleaned the glass cases, then re-organized the ice cream in the walk-in freezer, first by flavor grouping, then alphabetically. I wasn’t in charge of locking up—that was Elise, the assistant manager, who came at closing every day. I had my eyes fixed on the back entrance, just waiting for Elise to show so that I could clock out and go home. I was trying not to think about the fact I had nothing to go home to, really, just parents who couldn’t be disturbed and a little brother probably lurking in a doorway and no life whatsoever. I just wanted to get out. I was looking so intently at the back door that I didn’t hear the bell jingle, and didn’t notice there was someone in front of me until they cleared their throat.

“Sorry,” I said, turning around quickly. Dawn was standing there, holding a pizza delivery carrier with a stack of tickets on top. “Oh, hi.” She looked slightly better than she had earlier in the day, but her eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy.

“Hey,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “I just wanted to thank you again, and apologize for earlier.”

“It’s really fine,” I assured her. To my surprise, I realized I wanted to know what had happened when she’d gone back to work, what Bryan and Mandy had done. But I didn’t actually know this girl, and now that she seemed embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable, I was starting to feel that way too.

“So if there’s anything I can do, let me know,” she said, shifting the carrier to her other hand, closer to the counter. “And I can get you a lunch special with my discount! Just come in any weekday, and . . .”

Dawn kept going, telling me about the pizza deals she could probably get for me, including a can of soda, my choice, but I was no longer hearing her. Instead, my eyes were fixed on the top delivery ticket. It was going to an address in Stanwich, to a Jamie Roarke.

I gasped. It felt like a sign. And if not a sign, at least an opportunity that I wasn’t about to pass up. “Actually,” I said, interrupting Dawn, “there is something you can do.” She raised her eyebrows, and I took a breath, my eyes still fixed on the name on the delivery slip. “Can I deliver pizzas with you?”

“And then Mandy started talking about how she felt like she never saw me anymore, and asked if I could get her a job at Captain Pizza too,” Dawn said as she barreled down the road. I nodded and gripped on to the side of the car, feeling my foot press down on a phantom brake. I wasn’t sure if Dawn was driving like this—fast, and a little distractedly—because she was reliving the Bryan and Mandy saga as she told me about it, or because she always drove like this, but either way, it was clear that we were definitely going to make Captain Pizza’s promised delivery window. “And so I put in a good word for her and she got a job as a hostess, and it was so great for a while, and she and Bryan really got along, and I just thought everything was perfect, you know? I didn’t even suspect anything else was going on.”

“But you had no way of knowing,” I said as Dawn screeched to a stop at a red, causing the figurines on her dashboard—including a shirtless male hula dancer who, I had learned, was named Stan—to bobble and shake. When I first asked to come along, I’d been surprised that she’d agreed so easily, but after I asked her where she went to school (Hartfield, going into senior year, like me) and she’d used the opportunity to fill me in on the drama, it was becoming clear to me that she’d just been glad to have someone to talk to, which I could more than understand.

“I know,” Dawn said, as she glanced down at the directions on her phone, then jolted the car forward as soon as the light turned green. “But I feel like I should have, you know? Everything was going just perfect, and I was sure it was going to be just the best summer ever. It’s like I jinxed it by believing that would happen.” She made a hard left, flicking on her blinker for a second almost as an afterthought, sending Stan’s hips swaying. “I just can’t believe I’ve lost both of them,” she said, shaking her head, still sounding a little dazed by this. “Like, in the same day. And all I want to do is talk to Mandy about this, but of course, I can’t. . . .” Her voice trailed off and she glanced over at me. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said immediately, not even thinking about it first, just so glad to have someone verbalize what I’d been thinking for the last three weeks. “My best friend . . .” I hesitated. “She’s away for the summer,” I said, rationalizing, like I had with my mother, that this wasn’t even really a lie. “And we used to hang out or talk every day, so it’s just . . . hard to adjust to.”

“Yes,” Dawn said as she made a sharp right. She slowed slightly as she leaned forward, squinting at the numbers. “Why don’t you just call her, though?”

“Because,” I said, trying to think fast. “She’s . . . you know . . . camping.” Dawn glanced over at me, and I added, “In Europe.”

“Oh,” she said, looking impressed. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said, already regretting this and wishing I’d chosen almost anything else, since I knew nothing about camping. Or Europe.

“Where?” she asked, and I tried to think fast.

“In . . . Paris,” I said, wondering why I was continuing to do this, but realizing that it was probably too late to admit I’d made the whole thing up.

“I didn’t know there was camping in Paris,” Dawn said.

“Me neither,” I said honestly. “But that’s where she is,” I added, just hoping that Dawn wouldn’t ask any more questions, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer.

Dawn took a breath, like she was about to ask something else, but then slammed on the brakes and leaned over to my side of the car. “Does that say thirty-one?” I nodded and Dawn pulled into the driveway, narrowly avoiding hitting the house’s decorative mailbox. She put the car in park and then got out, tipping her seat forward so she could grab the carrier in the backseat. I got out as well, feeling my pulse start to pound in my throat. I’d been distracted on the ride over, both by Dawn’s story and her driving, but now the reason that I was here—to hug one of Captain Pizza’s customers—was unavoidable.