Smarty Pants, page 4
“Sometimes people like that. Especially in romance.”
“It was the fiction category.”
“Either way, it’s not a real person. Even if the awards ceremony seems bent on making these characters come to life. Is there going to be cosplay there?”
Olive finally glanced up from her computer screen, but Hailee knew that the excitement and possible smile on her dark complexion was mere professional curiosity. Olive was a linguist—one of the best in the country—and she preferred to study speech patterns in subcultures. Sometimes that meant the White Power Movement, and presenting a fantastic, if a little unsettling, paper about how racism worked online based on sentence structure, or like her famously published book analyzing the manifestos of gun nuts, if there was a small group that had a particular way of speaking to one another beyond slang, and especially if they published their own materials in some way, Olive was all over it.
And for a time, Hailee had been just as excited by Olive’s work, too. She’d come to this university, in spite of the Arts being chronically underfunded, solely for Olive. She was the best linguist in the country, and early on in Hailee’s life and her latent research as a psychology nerd in her undergrad, she’d realized her own stuttering in her youth and the stuttering she was seeing in so many of the pages of her psychology textbooks was not understood. It wasn’t just an error to be fixed, but it could be, like the deaf community in some way, a way of life and speech. When she finally stumbled on Olive’s work, Hailee saw her clear life trajectory. Get a Masters in English, just in case her undergrad psychology wasn’t enough, and take elective classes in Linguistics just to be sure. Then, for the PhD, head to Waterloo and work with Olive.
As it turned out, “work with Olive” had taken at least fifteen emails and numerous meetings for her to remember her name. She was the closest thing to an academic superstar there was in this school, and anytime there was a shooting in the US or Canada, Olive was on call for a research sound bite. Eventually, though, Olive had found Hailee’s research fascinating. When she connected her own stuttering to her sexuality and started to notice a trend among other women with stutters, she had her dissertation.
“No, as far as I know, there will be no cosplay,” Hailee said with a sigh. “Just an awards show in the middle of summer. I might get to dress up in a real dress, though.”
“That’s nice. I’m gonna have to head to the shops myself soon. I was hoping to find something for my book launch.” Olive flashed a winning smile, one that surely graced the back of latest book on violence and language. “You going to attend?”
“Um.” Hailee hadn’t planned on it but wasn’t sure if it was part of her supervisee duties. “When is it?”
“Thursday night, a couple weeks from now. I’ll you the exact date in a second.” Olive opened her laptop again, but Hailee reached out. She had Olive’s attention and did not want to give it up, not for a single second. This meeting had been too hard come by.
“Never mind. I’m booked on Thursdays. Improv, you know.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot. Well, if your schedule clears, let me know.”
“I will. So should we talk?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” Olive said, her eyes now glued to something else on her screen. With a sigh, Hailee produced the form that she was tasked with completing every year during the summer semester: her progress report.
“Did you not see the email going around?” Hailee asked as she put the sheet on Olive’s desk. “I’ve filled it all in already, but I was hoping you could sign it off. We can send it to the committee, and then we’re done for another year. Not that I want to be here in another year.”
“You might.”
“What? But I’m done my dissertation.”
“Yes, and exactly on schedule, which is what I will put in my comment section here.” Olive grabbed a pen from her desk and wrote quickly—and surely, illegible in that second. “But the wheels of the academy move slowly. After I read it, it goes to the committee, they read it and give you feedback, and then you make their changes.”
“Sure, that’s not a problem. I’m used to editing. My Masters, if you remember, actually needed to be defended, so I’ve done something like this before.”
“Hmm. But the PhD needs a display period, too, and we need to make sure all other people involved can make it to the defense on the day. I know, it’s hard. Like herding cats sometimes. So I just want you to brace yourself that it may in fact take another year.”
Hailee let out a low sigh when all she wanted to do was groan. A year, another year of her life. She’d hated the moment that she’d finished her dissertation because…she’d had nothing to do. She’d poured her time, life, and energy into this project for four years and then it was out of her hands, and into Olive’s, for months now. Her boredom and restlessness had been half the reason why she signed up for the Book Awards. Now, even its frustrations seemed far more manageable when compared to the long line of waiting she had in front of her.
“You’ve read it though, right?” Hailee asked as Olive still fussed with the paperwork. “I mean, it should be coming back to me soon?”
“I’ve been a bit busy with my own book. My apologies.”
Hailee gritted her teeth. “But soon, right? You’ll have it read, I can make the changes, and—”
“Honestly,” Olive said, lowering her tone in the manner she did before she threw some serious shade on the department director. “I think your writing is strong enough as it stands. I probably won’t ask you to make too many substantive changes. Just typos, you know.”
“I do have a lot of typos.”
“You write fast, read fast, and the small things get by you. It’s okay.” Olive waved a hand and insisted that she’d take care of them. “I can fix those if you’ll let me. Then we can just, whenever I’m done, pass it onto Professor Browne. Sound good?”
“Yes,” Hailee said. Her second reader was an older prof who had given her one of her best grades in her PhD work. Her specialty was sexuality in literature, and though this project was not technically about books, it was about stereotypes of gay and bi voices, and how that came out or was expressed in the act of stuttering. Either way, Hailee knew that Professor Browne would do her best to read over the manuscript in a reasonable period of time—no matter how much Olive warned her, now that with summer vacation, she might take longer than average, too.
“But it is getting done,” Olive said. “I know it can feel like you’re wallowing in purgatory, not sure what is next, but hey, at least you didn’t have to do two degree all over again.”
Olive was referring to the fact that she’d done her original grad work in her home country of Jamaica. Then when her master’s degree wasn’t accepted, she’d needed to start her grad work from scratch. Hailee knew that her minor inconvenience of needing to wait through another summer, without any work since she also didn’t teach this semester, was not something to worry about at all. It was, truly, something to celebrate.
“So you should keep in mind my book launch party,” Olive said again. “If you find the time.”
“I have improv, like I said. And from the way things are going there, we’re only going to get more people, rather than cancel sessions. But thank you. I will keep you in mind for the awards ceremony for the Blue and Pink awards, too.” When Olive scrunched up her face, Hailee clarified. “The awards show I’m volunteering on. It’s on the progress report, too. The semi-finalists were just announced.”
“Right, right, the bad romance you were mentioning.”
Hailee didn’t bother to correct Olive this time around. She watched as Olive surveyed the attached CV to the form, and nodded in an approving manner as she clearly noticed its growth. “Good. This isn’t an academic position, though, so I would move it around to service. You know? Don’t give people the impression it’s the Pulitzer.”
“Sure. Can I fix that later, though? And hand it in now?”
Olive merely extended her arm with the paperwork. “You bet. Good luck.”
“Thanks, same to you!” Hailee rose from her seat and shut the door to Olive’s office tight. She heard her fingers glide across her keyboard in no time, and then stop suddenly. When a low hum of music emerged, she knew that her supervisor was watching movies again in her office. Her latest project was now hate speech in film, but Hailee knew that was her supervisor’s way of finding a time to catch up on all the old Oscar films. Four years ago, when Hailee had first met Olive, she would have thought something like this was cool. Rebellious. The exact kind of professor she wanted to be.
Now, though, it sort of felt childish. You’re just mad that she didn’t acknowledge your bi book awards, so it feels like she didn’t acknowledge you. Hailee nodded away her insight, and thanked her own study of psychology that she could handle a shitty meeting like this so well. it was the same when she saw her parents, who were still so much a part of the small-town life she left behind, and who still believed she was with a boy named Jake from her high school. Some people could not process new information, especially about people they loved. Change was hard, so much harder once we reached the age of twenty-five and our brains were done developing.
Hailee’s phone buzzed just as she reached the English Department so she could drop off her forms. It was barely four, so she’d made it by the deadline. Yessina, a friend from her Improv group, had texted in the group chat about their auditions tonight. Hey girlies. Something neat happened. I’m gonna be late, but don’t worry, I shall bring a person for our event tonight.
I’m already here. Indie, another friend, texted back within seconds. So does that mean I can eat all your fries, now? I ordered the basic platter.
Sure, go for it, Indie, Yessina texted back. Hailee was a second behind her with her lightning speed response.
Indie, I’m going to fight you for those fries.
Put your money where your mouth is, Indie texted back. I’d like to see you try.
You won’t like me when I’m hungry, Hailee added a catchphrase nearly everyone in the group had used at some time, especially during these pre- or post-Improv nights when they’d gather and reflect. And eat, and eat, and eat. And my secret? I’m always hungry.
Chapter 5
Hailee stepped into Mel’s Diner fifteen minutes later. The quaint, 1950s retro-throwback restaurant had become the main hub where all her friends met for the past four years, long before they had even started their improv group on-campus. Hailee had been a newbie to the city and waltzed into the registration office to ask the people at the front desk to help her with her scheduled. When a tall and brash—and sort of cute—woman named Yessina had been there and helped her with the alacrity of someone who had grown up in the city, she’d asked her that. Yessina laughed, said she was from another town over, but had gone to the school and either worked in the food service building or at the register’s office for the past ten years. She loved it here, and it was through Yessina, that Hailee met the other members of their already established group.
Indie was already at Mel’s when Hailee arrived, which was no surprise. Indie’s schedule was flexible, since she was a quasi-YouTube star who made most of her cash through side-gigs doing informative online teaching videos for the university and local college. She was almost always around, doing something or videoing something else, and whenever she was close by, it was hard not to hear her. Either she was laughing loudly, or she was shouting something across the room, or her tone was just annoyed or strong enough that you paid attention. When she met Hailee’s eyes across the room, she lifted her hands in greeting—but also clearly in challenge.
“I have the fries,” she said as Hailee reached her booth. “And I have been waiting to meet my match.”
Hailee slid into the red vinyl booth. The waitress gave her water, and then tried to give her a menu, but Hailee brushed it off for now. A plate of fries sat in front of Indie with a covering on top. Hailee could only identify the fries through smell—and through Indie’s insistence that they wait for a countdown.
“Sort of like a duel?” Hailee asked. “Are we going to draw fries and fire?”
“I was thinking more like an eating contest. See who gets through the most first?”
“There is an eating contest, you know,” the waitress said and pointed behind her to the tacky sign that announced the Burger Buster challenge. “If you finish a twenty-nine ounce burger in under thirty minutes, you get it for free.”
“Sorry, but no cow for me.” Indie smiled. Her tone was polite, but it was firm. The waitress blushed a bit, realizing her faux pas, and then disappeared. Indie ran a hand through her hair once she was gone. “Was I too mean? I’ve been reading comments online lately that tell me my jokes are too mean.”
“Ugh. Never read the comments.”
“Says you, who went to grad school, which is basically like the living embodiment of the comment page on YouTube.”
“Shut up. Not it’s not.”
Indie lifted her hands in a gesture of compliance. Then she set her gaze on the obscured fries. She inhaled deeply. “Oh, I’m starved.”
“Us, too,” Josie and her girlfriend, Rebecca appeared by their sides. They stood at the edge of the table, clearly eying the plate of fries with watering mouths. Josie slid alongside Indie while Rebecca slid in next to Hailee. The four of them exchanged lightning-fast greetings, mostly across the table.
Rebecca and her girlfriend Josie had been the main people who wanted to do the Improv group. After a spontaneous trip to see Josie’s family in North Carolina one year, the two had come back as girlfriends, practically wives, and with a clear goal for their new year: laughter, instead of horror. They’d both worked on a podcast with their other friend, Dominique, about horror films for so long that the joy of blood was diminishing. At least for Josie for some time. Given their last improv display around Halloween, and how easily Josie and Dominique were able to keep up a steady scene involving zombies, perhaps their taste for horror was coming back. So many slasher movies sort of read like bad comedy sketches though, and so many SNL sketches too could be horror-like, that Hailee easily saw the fit between everyone’s favourite genre.
“You have any idea what’s going on with Yessina?” Josie asked as she lifted the lid off the fries. She reached out and nabbed one first. “Who do you think she’s bringing?”
“An ex, maybe?” Indie wondered aloud, also eating some of the fries. “Though I always figured her for more of the pine from afar.”
“She is. Not many of us have the number of exes you two, too.”
“Are you calling me a slut, Rebecca?” Indie said. “Because I prefer the term Vixen. It’s what my nail polish is called.” Indie beamed as she displayed her recently painted fingernails in a dark red shade. Lingering marks from henna were also over her wrist and fingers, form a wedding she’d gone to before.
“I wasn’t calling you a slut, or a vixen,” Rebecca said.
“Or a minx or a whore or a down and dirty bisexual,” Hailee added, her tone sharp and teasing at the same time.
“Hey,” Rebecca said. “I’m bi.”
“So am I! But I resist the stereotypes in everything I do. Even when people at the fucking bi book awards don’t listen to me. God. Their choices in the categories just suck. They suck.”
Rebecca flinched, but it was barely noticeable, so Hailee kept going with her thoughts on the latest picks. Olive may not have understood her outrage at some of the stereotypes that were trotted out in the latest works, but her group of queer and progress-oriented friends did. Even Indie shut up as Hailee went on and on about the choices, why she didn’t like them, and how all of this reflected badly on the community. “Just don’t have the awards show if you can’t do it right. I’m so worried that this final round will be even worse. At least some of the good ones stuck around for the semi-finals, but I dread when they will disappear.”
“Didn’t your book make it?” Indie asked when there was a moment in the conversation. She was talking to Rebecca, who was eating some fries slowly. She nodded, just as the waitress came by.
“Can I get anyone else some more?” she asked, and for a while, the conversation was lost in the deluge of orders. Dominique had also arrived at this time, and there were some more gymnastics to make sure they all fit in the booth. Rebecca got out of the booth, seeming to make room, but quickly disappeared into the bathroom.
“So what did I miss?” Dominique said as the waitress left with the orders, and she finally sat down. “You know, other than all the fries.”
“More are coming,” Hailee said. “And you didn’t miss much that wasn’t in the chat. We were wondering if the person Yessie’s bringing is an ex or not. And then I was bitching about books.”
“Ah, so really nothing.” Dom nodded and ate the late fry remaining. “Same ol’, same ol’.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately. I’ll be right back.” Josie slid out of the booth and disappeared into the bathroom after Rebecca. Dom turned over her shoulder to watch her go, an unsure expression on her face as she came back. Then again, Dom also had a lazy eye, so perhaps she had a normal expression. A sinking feeling bloomed in the pit of Hailee’s stomach, one that she tried to cast off as hunger.
“I think I see the slice of pie we ordered,” Hailee said. She let out a disappointed sigh as the waitress brought it to another table. She topped up their water and coffees, though, so the moment wasn’t lost. She had just pressed her straw to her lips when she realized that Indie was giving her a look across the table. Dom was next to her, and though it was still possible that her lazy eye was making her seem strange, she also seemed to be furrowing her brow.
“What?” Hailee asked. “What’s going on?”
“You know Rebecca’s book was in that awards nominee list, right?”
“Yeah. I had to tell the organizer since I ended up judging in her category.”
“And still,” Indie said, hitting her hand on the table in emphasis, “you say that some books don’t deserve to be there?”
“It was the fiction category.”
“Either way, it’s not a real person. Even if the awards ceremony seems bent on making these characters come to life. Is there going to be cosplay there?”
Olive finally glanced up from her computer screen, but Hailee knew that the excitement and possible smile on her dark complexion was mere professional curiosity. Olive was a linguist—one of the best in the country—and she preferred to study speech patterns in subcultures. Sometimes that meant the White Power Movement, and presenting a fantastic, if a little unsettling, paper about how racism worked online based on sentence structure, or like her famously published book analyzing the manifestos of gun nuts, if there was a small group that had a particular way of speaking to one another beyond slang, and especially if they published their own materials in some way, Olive was all over it.
And for a time, Hailee had been just as excited by Olive’s work, too. She’d come to this university, in spite of the Arts being chronically underfunded, solely for Olive. She was the best linguist in the country, and early on in Hailee’s life and her latent research as a psychology nerd in her undergrad, she’d realized her own stuttering in her youth and the stuttering she was seeing in so many of the pages of her psychology textbooks was not understood. It wasn’t just an error to be fixed, but it could be, like the deaf community in some way, a way of life and speech. When she finally stumbled on Olive’s work, Hailee saw her clear life trajectory. Get a Masters in English, just in case her undergrad psychology wasn’t enough, and take elective classes in Linguistics just to be sure. Then, for the PhD, head to Waterloo and work with Olive.
As it turned out, “work with Olive” had taken at least fifteen emails and numerous meetings for her to remember her name. She was the closest thing to an academic superstar there was in this school, and anytime there was a shooting in the US or Canada, Olive was on call for a research sound bite. Eventually, though, Olive had found Hailee’s research fascinating. When she connected her own stuttering to her sexuality and started to notice a trend among other women with stutters, she had her dissertation.
“No, as far as I know, there will be no cosplay,” Hailee said with a sigh. “Just an awards show in the middle of summer. I might get to dress up in a real dress, though.”
“That’s nice. I’m gonna have to head to the shops myself soon. I was hoping to find something for my book launch.” Olive flashed a winning smile, one that surely graced the back of latest book on violence and language. “You going to attend?”
“Um.” Hailee hadn’t planned on it but wasn’t sure if it was part of her supervisee duties. “When is it?”
“Thursday night, a couple weeks from now. I’ll you the exact date in a second.” Olive opened her laptop again, but Hailee reached out. She had Olive’s attention and did not want to give it up, not for a single second. This meeting had been too hard come by.
“Never mind. I’m booked on Thursdays. Improv, you know.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot. Well, if your schedule clears, let me know.”
“I will. So should we talk?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” Olive said, her eyes now glued to something else on her screen. With a sigh, Hailee produced the form that she was tasked with completing every year during the summer semester: her progress report.
“Did you not see the email going around?” Hailee asked as she put the sheet on Olive’s desk. “I’ve filled it all in already, but I was hoping you could sign it off. We can send it to the committee, and then we’re done for another year. Not that I want to be here in another year.”
“You might.”
“What? But I’m done my dissertation.”
“Yes, and exactly on schedule, which is what I will put in my comment section here.” Olive grabbed a pen from her desk and wrote quickly—and surely, illegible in that second. “But the wheels of the academy move slowly. After I read it, it goes to the committee, they read it and give you feedback, and then you make their changes.”
“Sure, that’s not a problem. I’m used to editing. My Masters, if you remember, actually needed to be defended, so I’ve done something like this before.”
“Hmm. But the PhD needs a display period, too, and we need to make sure all other people involved can make it to the defense on the day. I know, it’s hard. Like herding cats sometimes. So I just want you to brace yourself that it may in fact take another year.”
Hailee let out a low sigh when all she wanted to do was groan. A year, another year of her life. She’d hated the moment that she’d finished her dissertation because…she’d had nothing to do. She’d poured her time, life, and energy into this project for four years and then it was out of her hands, and into Olive’s, for months now. Her boredom and restlessness had been half the reason why she signed up for the Book Awards. Now, even its frustrations seemed far more manageable when compared to the long line of waiting she had in front of her.
“You’ve read it though, right?” Hailee asked as Olive still fussed with the paperwork. “I mean, it should be coming back to me soon?”
“I’ve been a bit busy with my own book. My apologies.”
Hailee gritted her teeth. “But soon, right? You’ll have it read, I can make the changes, and—”
“Honestly,” Olive said, lowering her tone in the manner she did before she threw some serious shade on the department director. “I think your writing is strong enough as it stands. I probably won’t ask you to make too many substantive changes. Just typos, you know.”
“I do have a lot of typos.”
“You write fast, read fast, and the small things get by you. It’s okay.” Olive waved a hand and insisted that she’d take care of them. “I can fix those if you’ll let me. Then we can just, whenever I’m done, pass it onto Professor Browne. Sound good?”
“Yes,” Hailee said. Her second reader was an older prof who had given her one of her best grades in her PhD work. Her specialty was sexuality in literature, and though this project was not technically about books, it was about stereotypes of gay and bi voices, and how that came out or was expressed in the act of stuttering. Either way, Hailee knew that Professor Browne would do her best to read over the manuscript in a reasonable period of time—no matter how much Olive warned her, now that with summer vacation, she might take longer than average, too.
“But it is getting done,” Olive said. “I know it can feel like you’re wallowing in purgatory, not sure what is next, but hey, at least you didn’t have to do two degree all over again.”
Olive was referring to the fact that she’d done her original grad work in her home country of Jamaica. Then when her master’s degree wasn’t accepted, she’d needed to start her grad work from scratch. Hailee knew that her minor inconvenience of needing to wait through another summer, without any work since she also didn’t teach this semester, was not something to worry about at all. It was, truly, something to celebrate.
“So you should keep in mind my book launch party,” Olive said again. “If you find the time.”
“I have improv, like I said. And from the way things are going there, we’re only going to get more people, rather than cancel sessions. But thank you. I will keep you in mind for the awards ceremony for the Blue and Pink awards, too.” When Olive scrunched up her face, Hailee clarified. “The awards show I’m volunteering on. It’s on the progress report, too. The semi-finalists were just announced.”
“Right, right, the bad romance you were mentioning.”
Hailee didn’t bother to correct Olive this time around. She watched as Olive surveyed the attached CV to the form, and nodded in an approving manner as she clearly noticed its growth. “Good. This isn’t an academic position, though, so I would move it around to service. You know? Don’t give people the impression it’s the Pulitzer.”
“Sure. Can I fix that later, though? And hand it in now?”
Olive merely extended her arm with the paperwork. “You bet. Good luck.”
“Thanks, same to you!” Hailee rose from her seat and shut the door to Olive’s office tight. She heard her fingers glide across her keyboard in no time, and then stop suddenly. When a low hum of music emerged, she knew that her supervisor was watching movies again in her office. Her latest project was now hate speech in film, but Hailee knew that was her supervisor’s way of finding a time to catch up on all the old Oscar films. Four years ago, when Hailee had first met Olive, she would have thought something like this was cool. Rebellious. The exact kind of professor she wanted to be.
Now, though, it sort of felt childish. You’re just mad that she didn’t acknowledge your bi book awards, so it feels like she didn’t acknowledge you. Hailee nodded away her insight, and thanked her own study of psychology that she could handle a shitty meeting like this so well. it was the same when she saw her parents, who were still so much a part of the small-town life she left behind, and who still believed she was with a boy named Jake from her high school. Some people could not process new information, especially about people they loved. Change was hard, so much harder once we reached the age of twenty-five and our brains were done developing.
Hailee’s phone buzzed just as she reached the English Department so she could drop off her forms. It was barely four, so she’d made it by the deadline. Yessina, a friend from her Improv group, had texted in the group chat about their auditions tonight. Hey girlies. Something neat happened. I’m gonna be late, but don’t worry, I shall bring a person for our event tonight.
I’m already here. Indie, another friend, texted back within seconds. So does that mean I can eat all your fries, now? I ordered the basic platter.
Sure, go for it, Indie, Yessina texted back. Hailee was a second behind her with her lightning speed response.
Indie, I’m going to fight you for those fries.
Put your money where your mouth is, Indie texted back. I’d like to see you try.
You won’t like me when I’m hungry, Hailee added a catchphrase nearly everyone in the group had used at some time, especially during these pre- or post-Improv nights when they’d gather and reflect. And eat, and eat, and eat. And my secret? I’m always hungry.
Chapter 5
Hailee stepped into Mel’s Diner fifteen minutes later. The quaint, 1950s retro-throwback restaurant had become the main hub where all her friends met for the past four years, long before they had even started their improv group on-campus. Hailee had been a newbie to the city and waltzed into the registration office to ask the people at the front desk to help her with her scheduled. When a tall and brash—and sort of cute—woman named Yessina had been there and helped her with the alacrity of someone who had grown up in the city, she’d asked her that. Yessina laughed, said she was from another town over, but had gone to the school and either worked in the food service building or at the register’s office for the past ten years. She loved it here, and it was through Yessina, that Hailee met the other members of their already established group.
Indie was already at Mel’s when Hailee arrived, which was no surprise. Indie’s schedule was flexible, since she was a quasi-YouTube star who made most of her cash through side-gigs doing informative online teaching videos for the university and local college. She was almost always around, doing something or videoing something else, and whenever she was close by, it was hard not to hear her. Either she was laughing loudly, or she was shouting something across the room, or her tone was just annoyed or strong enough that you paid attention. When she met Hailee’s eyes across the room, she lifted her hands in greeting—but also clearly in challenge.
“I have the fries,” she said as Hailee reached her booth. “And I have been waiting to meet my match.”
Hailee slid into the red vinyl booth. The waitress gave her water, and then tried to give her a menu, but Hailee brushed it off for now. A plate of fries sat in front of Indie with a covering on top. Hailee could only identify the fries through smell—and through Indie’s insistence that they wait for a countdown.
“Sort of like a duel?” Hailee asked. “Are we going to draw fries and fire?”
“I was thinking more like an eating contest. See who gets through the most first?”
“There is an eating contest, you know,” the waitress said and pointed behind her to the tacky sign that announced the Burger Buster challenge. “If you finish a twenty-nine ounce burger in under thirty minutes, you get it for free.”
“Sorry, but no cow for me.” Indie smiled. Her tone was polite, but it was firm. The waitress blushed a bit, realizing her faux pas, and then disappeared. Indie ran a hand through her hair once she was gone. “Was I too mean? I’ve been reading comments online lately that tell me my jokes are too mean.”
“Ugh. Never read the comments.”
“Says you, who went to grad school, which is basically like the living embodiment of the comment page on YouTube.”
“Shut up. Not it’s not.”
Indie lifted her hands in a gesture of compliance. Then she set her gaze on the obscured fries. She inhaled deeply. “Oh, I’m starved.”
“Us, too,” Josie and her girlfriend, Rebecca appeared by their sides. They stood at the edge of the table, clearly eying the plate of fries with watering mouths. Josie slid alongside Indie while Rebecca slid in next to Hailee. The four of them exchanged lightning-fast greetings, mostly across the table.
Rebecca and her girlfriend Josie had been the main people who wanted to do the Improv group. After a spontaneous trip to see Josie’s family in North Carolina one year, the two had come back as girlfriends, practically wives, and with a clear goal for their new year: laughter, instead of horror. They’d both worked on a podcast with their other friend, Dominique, about horror films for so long that the joy of blood was diminishing. At least for Josie for some time. Given their last improv display around Halloween, and how easily Josie and Dominique were able to keep up a steady scene involving zombies, perhaps their taste for horror was coming back. So many slasher movies sort of read like bad comedy sketches though, and so many SNL sketches too could be horror-like, that Hailee easily saw the fit between everyone’s favourite genre.
“You have any idea what’s going on with Yessina?” Josie asked as she lifted the lid off the fries. She reached out and nabbed one first. “Who do you think she’s bringing?”
“An ex, maybe?” Indie wondered aloud, also eating some of the fries. “Though I always figured her for more of the pine from afar.”
“She is. Not many of us have the number of exes you two, too.”
“Are you calling me a slut, Rebecca?” Indie said. “Because I prefer the term Vixen. It’s what my nail polish is called.” Indie beamed as she displayed her recently painted fingernails in a dark red shade. Lingering marks from henna were also over her wrist and fingers, form a wedding she’d gone to before.
“I wasn’t calling you a slut, or a vixen,” Rebecca said.
“Or a minx or a whore or a down and dirty bisexual,” Hailee added, her tone sharp and teasing at the same time.
“Hey,” Rebecca said. “I’m bi.”
“So am I! But I resist the stereotypes in everything I do. Even when people at the fucking bi book awards don’t listen to me. God. Their choices in the categories just suck. They suck.”
Rebecca flinched, but it was barely noticeable, so Hailee kept going with her thoughts on the latest picks. Olive may not have understood her outrage at some of the stereotypes that were trotted out in the latest works, but her group of queer and progress-oriented friends did. Even Indie shut up as Hailee went on and on about the choices, why she didn’t like them, and how all of this reflected badly on the community. “Just don’t have the awards show if you can’t do it right. I’m so worried that this final round will be even worse. At least some of the good ones stuck around for the semi-finals, but I dread when they will disappear.”
“Didn’t your book make it?” Indie asked when there was a moment in the conversation. She was talking to Rebecca, who was eating some fries slowly. She nodded, just as the waitress came by.
“Can I get anyone else some more?” she asked, and for a while, the conversation was lost in the deluge of orders. Dominique had also arrived at this time, and there were some more gymnastics to make sure they all fit in the booth. Rebecca got out of the booth, seeming to make room, but quickly disappeared into the bathroom.
“So what did I miss?” Dominique said as the waitress left with the orders, and she finally sat down. “You know, other than all the fries.”
“More are coming,” Hailee said. “And you didn’t miss much that wasn’t in the chat. We were wondering if the person Yessie’s bringing is an ex or not. And then I was bitching about books.”
“Ah, so really nothing.” Dom nodded and ate the late fry remaining. “Same ol’, same ol’.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately. I’ll be right back.” Josie slid out of the booth and disappeared into the bathroom after Rebecca. Dom turned over her shoulder to watch her go, an unsure expression on her face as she came back. Then again, Dom also had a lazy eye, so perhaps she had a normal expression. A sinking feeling bloomed in the pit of Hailee’s stomach, one that she tried to cast off as hunger.
“I think I see the slice of pie we ordered,” Hailee said. She let out a disappointed sigh as the waitress brought it to another table. She topped up their water and coffees, though, so the moment wasn’t lost. She had just pressed her straw to her lips when she realized that Indie was giving her a look across the table. Dom was next to her, and though it was still possible that her lazy eye was making her seem strange, she also seemed to be furrowing her brow.
“What?” Hailee asked. “What’s going on?”
“You know Rebecca’s book was in that awards nominee list, right?”
“Yeah. I had to tell the organizer since I ended up judging in her category.”
“And still,” Indie said, hitting her hand on the table in emphasis, “you say that some books don’t deserve to be there?”
