The Unexpected Everything

It was early enough that I was able to get parking out front. I climbed the seven steps and pulled open the metal-handled door, walking past the candy machines and the arcade games, one of which, Honour Quest, Bri had become obsessed with two years ago. The PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF sign was facing out, so I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and scanned the restaurant. Our normal booth was taken by a family—screaming kids and parents ignoring them as they read the paper. I looked around for our second-favorite booth and saw Palmer sitting in it alone.

I made a beeline over to her. I was still feeling jangly and on the verge of panicking, but somehow knowing I would be able to talk about it with her was making things seem a little bit better. “Hey,” I said, sliding into the booth across from her. There was what looked like a half-eaten plate of waffles and what I was assuming was a vanilla Coke—Palmer’s usual—sat in front of her.

“Hi,” she said as she looked at me, surprised, her blue eyes wide. “You got here fast. Did you speed?”

“Not exactly,” I said, taking a menu from where they were stacked on the table, opening it, then putting it back immediately, realizing I didn’t even have to look. I got about four things at the diner, and this was not a place to experiment. There were things that were safe to get—all breakfast foods, mozzarella sticks, burgers, sandwiches. And then there were things that you should never, ever order at a diner, despite the fact that the menu was the size of a small phone book. Palmer loved to dare people, and last year she’d challenged Toby to get the seven-dollar lobster. When it had arrived, it had looked so suspicious that she’d called off the bet immediately, before anyone got food poisoning. “I was over on Sound View,” I started. “And—”

“Morning, Andie,” Tom said as he approached the table with a smile. Then he looked at where I was sitting and his face fell. “Does this mean I’ve lost my seat?”

“Afraid so,” Palmer said, patting the spot next to her. “Scoot in, babe.”

We had a very particular seating arrangement at the diner. Palmer and I sat across from each other, closest to the jukebox, Bri next to me, and Toby across from her. When one of us wasn’t there, Tom got to sit across from Palmer, but if we were all there, he had to pull a chair up to the end of the table. He didn’t really complain about it, maybe because he understood that this seating arrangement had come before he had. Tom had, over the last three years, pretty much become a de facto member of our group, but he was always really respectful of the fact that we were still a foursome and seemed to have a sixth sense for when we needed girl time.

Tom slid next to his girlfriend, kissed her on the cheek, and then turned to me. “So what’s going on?” he asked. He looked down at his own plate, which had about two bites left on it. “Pancake?” he offered, and I shook my head.

I’d known Thomas Harrison—he always did a bit about how nobody could ever tell if he had two last names or two first names—since third grade. I’d never really thought about him all that much. He was the quiet, neatly dressed kid who sat in the middle of the classroom and was in every single play in elementary and middle school—usually the character part, but occasionally the lead. If I’d thought about it, I would have assumed he was gay, based on nothing other than the most superficial of reasons and the fact that I’d never seen him with a girl.

But on the third day of high school, I’d been at my locker trying to figure out what I’d done with my biology book when Palmer had grabbed my arm. “Who is that?” she’d whispered, her voice higher than normal.

“Who is who?” I asked, trying to look around Tom Harrison, who was carefully placing his books in his locker, for whoever it was Palmer was talking about.

“Him,” she’d whispered, her nails digging into my arm, and I saw she was looking right at Tom, her cheeks flushed. They’d started going out a week later, and they’d been together ever since.

“Well,” I started, leaning forward, ready to tell them what happened. My mind had been spinning the whole drive over, unable to attach to anything concrete that would help me figure out the next step. I hoped that in the course of telling them, something might hit me. “So this morning my phone rings at seven a.m., and . . .” I stopped suddenly, noticing that while Palmer was wearing normal clothes—jeans and a tank top—Tom was wearing a collared shirt underneath a brightly pattered red-and-white Christmas sweater. The collared shirt wasn’t that unusual—Tom usually looked like he was attending something slightly more formal than the rest of us—but the sweater was. “Tom, why are you dressed like a holiday card?”

Tom opened his mouth to reply as Carly, one of the waitresses who tolerated us, appeared at the table, pen already poised above her order pad. “Ready, doll?” Everyone Carly waited on got a nickname. She always called Toby “Freckles,” which Toby was less than thrilled about.

“Can I get the number one with crisp bacon and a Diet Coke?” I asked.

“White or wheat?” Carly asked without missing a beat.

“White, just the tiniest bit toasted. Like, more warmed than toasted. And hash browns instead of home fries.”

“Gotcha,” Carly said as she turned to go.

“And can you make the bacon really crisp?” Palmer interjected, leaning slightly across the table. “Like, more crisp than you would think. Cook it to an amount of crispness you think that nobody would ever want, and bring that out, and it’ll be perfect.”