Ultimately, our mother was made to realize her error. You would have thought she would have noticed it herself at some point, looking at the boldfaced headline from The Herald News. Quitting was the first word in both the headline and the article, one that she clipped from the paper and affixed by magnet to the refrigerator. “Quitting Will Improve Your Health.” Had she read the article, she would have realized sooner that the whole article was about cigarettes. By the time my sister, Ginger, announced her discovery that the article was all about “quitting”, our mother had already been to the craft store on Route 17 numerous times. A large plastic bag holding “her quilting gear” had, according to our father, “taken up permanent residency” in the dining room, next to the mirrored curio, which contained most of my mother’s rarely used wedding china.

That bag contained colored broadcloth and batting, but that was nothing compared to what had been laid out on the dining room table. These she had categorized, separating the quilting tools, her frames and hoops, a cutting mat, and seam ripper from what she described to us as her quilting notions, the adhesives, quilting clips, and tape measure. And these items hardly amounted to the entirety of her supply of quilting paraphernalia; there was a large basket containing the miscellaneous items, and this she had begun to carry with her from room to room.

“What’s in there, Peg?” our father wanted to know.

“Stuff.”

“Really? Couldn’t figure that one out by myself. What kind of ‘stuff’?”

“Don’t think I don’t know where this is going.” My mother shot him a look of slight disgust. “Like you haven’t been mocking my quilting since I took it up.”

“I just want to know a little about your project,” he demurred.

“It’s not my project. It’s my hobby.”

Curiously, my mother did not remove the news clipping from the refrigerator even after learning of her error. The correct wording was pointed out to her by Ginger, who was at the house to pick up some winter clothes she had left in the attic following the move to her own apartment, an excuse that she called a family visit. Casey, my other sister, was there as well, so that the whole family could serve as Ginger’s rapt audience, her well-manicured nails splayed against the refrigerator while she reviewed the headline.

“I never had a hobby before,” my mother told Ginger and everyone else in the kitchen in response to Ginger’s observation.

“So really, what do I care? As long as it improves my health.”

There was no evidence, at least not in the newspaper article before us in the kitchen that morning, to indicate that quilting actually would improve my mother’s health, but she was making at least a pound of bacon at the time, so that drew most of our attention.

As my mother’s quilting talent developed, her hands giving shape to the many squares that she was to piece together, we began to anticipate the appearance of the final product, something that might hang proudly on a wall in our family room.

*         *        *

Because the air conditioning in my car was leaking water and probably other chemicals, I had to borrow my mother’s car the day after Ginger’s visit. It was the car I used when Casey needed a ride to work. My sister who, at age twenty, still did not drive. Casey heaved a bag with apparently more quilting material out of the passenger seat before she got into the car.

“What is this stuff?” she asked. “I thought quilts were like material and cotton stuffing. That was heavy, you know, for just cotton balls.”

“I didn’t look,” I told her as I backed out of the driveway, my head turned over my shoulder so I could avoid the large oak tree whose roots were infringing on the edge of our property.

“I think it’s more of her quilting material. Maybe there’s some notions underneath.” Casey rolled down her window and lit a cigarette, thoughtfully blowing smoke in the direction away from me.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked after she had smoked the cigarette three quarters of the way down and flicked the remainder out the window.

Casey is my twin. We are not identical, although we have a stronger resemblance than most sisters. Someone once told my mother that we were a hybrid of sorts, the kind that share an unfertilized egg. The egg splits in half and each is then fertilized separately so only half of our DNA is identical; the DNA of our mother. I looked this up after my mother told me the story and found out the whole thing about the unfertilized egg is just a theory. We don’t really know if it’s true.

So we are not identical twins, but when Casey turned her face forward, just staring at the windshield with nothing to occupy her but the road ahead now that her cigarette was gone, I could swear it was my profile.

“When did you stop wearing a uniform?” I asked, concentrating on the navy sweater she had matched with pale blue pants, a sweater that was mine. I had last seen the sweater cleaned and folded neatly in my drawer.

“I do medical billing.”

“You always wore a uniform, even when you worked for Dr. Margulies,” I told her.

“That was a small office. I sat at the front desk with the nurse.”

Casey had left Dr. Margulies’ office three months earlier when she didn’t even have another job. “Because it was boooring,” she had told us. Now she was working at Rutherford Pediatrics, located in the Medical Arts Building on Berkery Avenue. She had been there for less than two weeks. This was the first time I had seen her in non-uniform attire. My sweater was stretching uncomfortably over the folds of skin that draped the waistband of Casey’s pants. Casey did not even pretend to diet, the way some people do. I turned onto the one-way street that led to the parking lot.

“Let me off here,” Casey said quickly. “I like to get coffee from Jerry’s.” She leapt out, slamming the passenger door.

I sat for a while in the car next to the convenience store, which offered better coffee than the “swill” that was brewed in the back office space of Rutherford Pediatrics. I wanted to catch Casey buying the packaged baked goods that I knew she was stockpiling. I sat watching nothing at all pass by out the window. Customers parked and walked into Jerry’s Minit Stop, one after the other. They all came in different cars and trucks, except the last two who worked for the same refrigeration repair service. The men held the door for each other. There was still no sign of Casey even after several of the men I observed walking in had come out minutes later holding cardboard cups of coffee and matching logoed paper bags. I called my mother to see if she needed the bag that Casey had thrown into the back of the car, deciding not to wonder what Casey was doing in the Minit Stop. Not caring if she ate an entire box of cinnamon frosted donuts while pretending to peruse the magazine rack, as she had once been caught doing when Ginger had agreed to drive her home from Dr. Margulies.

When my mother answered the home phone, I explained in detail the items we had found in the rear of her car.

“That’s just some extra cotton, dear.”

“You don’t need it for your quilt?”

“Not now. You can just leave it in the car.”

That was the first feeling that my mother was hoarding her quilting material. Purchasing quantities beyond her ability to stitch her squares together. Spending money on cotton fluff and gold lacing that she did not want my father to know about. I moved the plastic bags from Marcia’s Crafting Attic to the trunk of the car when I got to my part-time job at Healy Dry Cleaning. The bag would be there for my mother to find, should she need the materials, which I began to doubt that she would. I had left while Casey was still in the convenience store and tried not to wonder about that.

My mother had begun a pattern entitled “Crossroads,” she told us over dinner.

“It took me a while to think about which quilt I should start with.” She lifted the lid off the butter substitute that she spread over a roll she had peeled open.

“I almost did “Monkey Wrench” because, to tell you the truth, it’s a pretty pattern. I just couldn’t get past the name, Monkey Wrench.” She balanced her grease-smeared knife on the edge of her plate. “Monkey Wrench. The woman at Marcia’s told me it’s an all-time favorite, but in the end, I just couldn’t go for it.”

Casey eventually picked up the thread of conversation that my mother had left hanging for us to gather.

“I’m sure that Crossroads will come out fine.”

“Well, I just want to do some justice to the pattern,” my mother announced.

“Justice?” Even my father could not ignore that clue.

“The woman, …Bonnie,” my mother began, turning her attention away from the remains of her second roll, “is a member of the American Quilter’s Society. And she says that it makes a wonderful story, even if no one can actually prove it.”

“Are we still talking about quilts?” Casey asked.

“There is evidence,” my mother informed us with as much authority as she could infuse into her voice, “that quilt patterns, such as Crossroads and Monkey Wrench, were part of a code.”

We thought that she had paused for dramatic effect, maybe she wanted us to pull the information from her, as she teased us along. Her attention was focused on a portion of string bean casserole on her plate until one of us interrupted her gaze.

“Code.” Casey used her facial expression to make this a question.

“In the underground railroad. Quilts were used as codes, hung on a line, left on a fence, so that the escapees would get information they needed.”

“Information? From a quilt? What kind of information are we talking about, here?” my father asked.

A long sniff emerged from my mother.

“The kind of information that an escapee would need when they were making an escape.” After her triumphant reply, she repeated several times that, as Bonnie had mentioned, it was a wonderful story.

The structure of the Crossroads quilt occupied my mother. Its construction, its supposed meaning. Left, in various stages of completion in our family room, it occupied all of us as well, mostly because we were constantly moving bags of material from couches, the passenger seat of my mother’s car, anywhere a plastic bag full of batting could possibly be set down. As my mother’s quilting talent developed, her hands giving shape to the many squares that she was to piece together, we began to anticipate the appearance of the final product, something that might hang proudly on a wall in our family room. All that remained was for my mother to actually complete the quilt.

*         *        *

And while she continued to speak often about the Crossroads pattern and its specialness, my mother never told us the quilt’s secret meaning. It was my guess that she did not know. That remained curious to me. During a break from class, I wandered into the computer room of the library. The equipment was not intended for personal use, there were warning stickers on every computer. But most of the staff at Ramapo Community College was tolerant, as long as you were discrete. I sat at a terminal and typed in “quilt codes.” After scrolling through various websites, I was led to a page with eight distinct patterns, the illustrations depicted in black and white. There they were. Monkey Wrench and Crossroads. There were others as well. Log Cabin, Bowties, Flying Geese, Drunkard’s Path, North Star, and Tumbling Blocks. Each had its own paragraph in justified text. The secret codes revealed. Crossroads, a block pattern quilt, spoke of travel. Travel onward to Cleveland, Ohio! Cleveland having been the crossroad of the Underground Railroad.

Most of the “secret codes” were not very secretive at all, although Bowtie was said to have meant “choose a disguise.” There were instructions on how and when to leave. And what to do once on your way. Particulars, like follow the birds north to Canada (Flying Geese). Or go “zigzag” (Drunkard’s Path). Of all the coded meanings, my mother had chosen Crossroads, often described as simple, a “quick block pattern.” No doubt that simplicity figured most into her decision.

I swiped my student ID and printed out the page with the eight quilts and their secret codes. I printed the page and placed it in my binder even though I had seen other websites claiming there was no proof from oral history or otherwise that the quilts were used as codes along the route of the Underground Railroad. Many claimed that some of the quilt patterns had not been designed until the early Twentieth Century.

*         *        *

Another of Ginger’s phone calls came when no one else was home. She must have planned it that way.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

When I asked Ginger how things were going for her, she began to speak rapidly. I held the phone slightly away from my ear, thinking how much better my room would look with lavender walls. Changing the color of my room was something I had been considering for a while. That, and moving out entirely. All of the books on my desk would have to be cleared off and boxed so I could store them in the basement. If the choice were painting my room.

“She needs to stay away from the carbs!” Ginger was yelling into the phone. “Are you listening to me? What are you keeping in the house? Doughnuts? Is that what they’re eating?”

“I don’t, I mean, I’m not sure. Doughnuts?”

“Yes. You’re the one that can talk some sense into them. I’m not there and Dad, he’s, I mean, really. Do you think he gives any thought to carbs?”

“Okay.” I answered. She barked a list of approved fruits and vegetables into the phone, demanded to know whether I was writing all of her instructions down. Ginger was good at giving advice, letting us know exactly what she thought. I had a harder time of it. Casey would see my weakness, ignore my best efforts to keep her off doughnuts.

It was Casey, after all, who was stronger than I was. She was the sister I admired most when we were younger. Not Ginger, to her immense disappointment, although she did not have to wait long to reclaim her rightful spot as older sister, as the boss of the family. As the boss of me. But for a brief moment, it was Casey who I adored. Casey, with her blonde, confident wedge haircut, the one that I copied shamelessly. Her bold stance as catcher on our softball team. Casey could hit the ball, could throw it. She could do everything. At night, we would talk, as sisters do, going over the days events, what we thought of our neighbors, the Nichols family, the first people we ever knew to get a divorce.

Over time, the conversations would change. At night, Casey would tell secrets to me about the girls in school that she hated, how they were mean to her. How they secretly avoided her in the locker room, rolled their eyes, “accidentally” bumped into her in the hall. When we reached high school, I understood, then I understood, that Casey was not sharing secrets with me. She was telling me all of the reasons to avoid her. All of the reasons I should enroll in drama after school, the student newspaper. Anything except softball with Casey. I began to model myself after Ginger. Taking the time to groom myself. Growing my hair out of the wedge. Like all of the other girls, who wore those long, silky layers.

At some point, a package arrived from The Basket Factory, a local store for shoppers looking for knockoffs of better quality home goods. Inside were four really good-sized baskets with lids. My father opened the cardboard crate with the utility knife he retrieved from the bottom kitchen drawer. It was a dull paring knife we kept only for slicing tape off of deliveries. He left the baskets for my mother in the family room, and when she came home that afternoon, she placed her still-in-progress quilt in one, the plastic bag from Marcia’s Crafting Attic in another. The other baskets were soon filled with Mom’s quilting notions and fluff. They looked good in the family room, the varying shades of rattan soft and unoffending. The baskets were useful as ottomans. No one cared if you put your feet on them while slouching on the plaid couches that formed our conversation circle.

The college library was often noisy and there were only a few carrels. I preferred the family room where I could study on the couch with the new basket/ottomans for my books. On a Wednesday afternoon shortly after the quilt had been put away, I heard the tiny click of the rear door returning to its place against the jamb and looked up, expecting to see my mother, who sometimes came home for lunch. Casey was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room. It was almost 1:00 and I was due to pick her up from Rutherford Pediatrics at 5:30.

“Don’t you have work today?” I asked.

Casey had most of a muffin pressed into her mouth.

“Ummm.” She kind of nodded along with that answer.

“Work. I thought you were working today.”

She added a half shrug to the information that she had already provided.

It felt like we might have the exact conversation as when she left Dr. Margulies. At any moment, she might look at me and say, “It was boooring.” Or she might say nothing this time and just leave me with her little shrug. If I were to pursue a better answer. Of course, her means of transportation, how she had wandered home, remained puzzling.

There was not a lot of room to hang out in our house. The spaces were small, our rooms too narrow and confined for us when we were in high school, and we were older now. Young adults encased in bedrooms that barely fit our twin size mattresses. Casey moved a plastic bag filled with shiny ribbons onto the floor and sat across from me. It was, I noticed, the lone bag that had escaped enclosure into the baskets. I also noticed that Casey seemed to have swallowed her muffin. Her speech was much clearer.

“Did you get a flu shot this year?” Casey asked.

I moved my yellow highlighter across a portion of text that explained the cycle of water being absorbed into the atmosphere. I heard a noise coming from Casey’s direction. It sounded like marbles. I used my highlighter to underline another sentence. Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air.

“Here,” Casey said. When I looked up her arm was outstretched, a few vials resting on the palm of her open hand.

“What?”

“Flu shots. I got them from the office.”

“They gave those to you? What, I mean . . . why? Why would they give you flu shots like that? Don’t you need a nurse to give you the shot?”

“I’m a technician,” Casey announced.

“Right. I know. Right. But you don’t do that at the office. I mean, you file and stuff like that. Right? You file.”

“So? You don’t need to be a genius to give someone a flu shot.”

Casey looked around. The lid was off one of the baskets, revealing the partially constructed quilt that our mother was producing, the pattern that may or may not have once told an important story. “You want one?” she asked.

“No thanks. I got one at the pharmacy. They started giving them in the back near the reading glasses around October.”

“Oh.”

I would have to remember to go to the pharmacy and get my flu shot there, something I had been meaning to do for a while. That was preferable, not having to tell Casey what to do with her flu shots, that she was only a barely competent technician who just made her way through six months of training. We had that conversation once before, when she was in school, at a time when I could not leave her failure alone. Casey was missing her classes, leaving books that had their bindings perfectly intact in the kitchen, not doing any of the assignments. One afternoon, I just had to tell her.

“You never read these. It’s so obvious. Look at this book. It’s never been opened.”

I picked up the book and opened the cover, a stiff movement of paper.

“How do you know what I do? And why do you care?”

“You’re going to get thrown out of that school, you know that? Thrown out.”

“They don’t do that when you’re paying, you know. They never throw you out of school when you pay them.”

“Really? I think they do. When you don’t show up, when you don’t do any of the work, I think they do.”

And it was because she looked so much like me, her cheeks the same as the ones that I brushed with pink bronzer, it was because of those cheekbones that I choked on those words. But apparently she had been right because she had earned her technician’s degree and now here she was with a handful of flu shots and most likely syringes as well.

She was wearing sweatpants and a matching long sleeve tee shirt. Her office attire. Perhaps there were other drugs that she stole from her new office, from Dr. Margulies as well. Maybe that was why she left his office, before she even had another job. Most people took pain killers, things that you wanted but could not get for yourself easily, things that you could sell. Casey took flu shots and wanted to administer them to her family. Would my parents let her? I could picture my mother, holding the little vials close to her face, her eyes squinting behind her glasses. They could be tucked away with the mounds of quilting material, just disappear and Casey would never get into trouble for stealing them. Lost among the notions and the barely remembered tape measure.

Here is the thing about the quilts and their secret meanings. We used to see drinks listed on the placemats at Valley Forge Restaurant with names that hinted at more. Those names, Singapore Sling, Sloe Gin Fizz, Caribbean Rum Punch, suggested dark mystique. Nothing unfathomable, nothing beguiling existed in names like Bowtie or Log Cabin. But if you did your own research, found out a little more on your own, then it all came out. Beyond the quilts, beyond the small paragraphs and their meager information. Then it all flew right at you.

The code name for Cleveland was Hope. There, on Lake Erie’s shore, someone might reach Hope. That was the message of the Crossroads quilt. Nearing the end of a long journey, with Port Stanley, Ontario just across the water. Port Stanley. Code name “God be Praised!” Surrounded by dark woods, no one to trust but some quilts that may or may not have been imbedded with secrets that you had to rely on. Secrets coming from total strangers whom you had been told to trust like the family you never really had. Around you is a kind of darkness no one has ever seen before and now you are alone and in danger and desperate for the North Star. True North. The truest star in the night sky. The quilt told you one thing, inspired and encouraged you at the start of the journey but how could you trust everything that they told you. How did they know? This is what you would wonder, about the Crossroads quilt, whether its message was real.

And then the faintest sound of water. So tiny a sound at first that you might think it was just a soft rain getting ready to fall a little harder. But the water is rushing, you hear it now as a river now that you are nearer. It starts to smell of cardinal flower and swamp rose mallow and dampness itself and everything wet and cold but it is Lake Erie and you rush forward, as fast as the river. Maybe faster. It’s there across the water. Port Stanley. Waiting for you to cross. God be Praised!

Imagine that.

Or imagine our home that afternoon. Surrounded by our mother’s new baskets and never-to-be finished quilt, snoring in an easy chair on a Wednesday afternoon, there was my sister, my twin. The ugly plaid of the family room, the ottomans, none of it large enough for all the misplaced strips of gold quilting, the more often than not flawed stitches, nothing to make all of the flaws and imperfections disappear, or at least unknowable. How I longed to not look at her. Or maybe just once to see her differently. With long, silky layers of blonde hair.

*         *        *

Melanie Anagnos is an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College and the current nonfiction editor of LUMINA. She was awarded the Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship at Sarah Lawrence for her short fiction. Her work has appeared online and in Ozone Park Journal. Melanie lives with her husband and two children in Haworth, New Jersey and is completing a collection of linked stories.

Summer jobs are supposed to be fun. Earn a little money to help save up for a car or maybe college. There’s a whole bunch of movies about the people working for carnivals or as life guards. Even if they’re miserable, they still have adventures and get to make out a little bit.

I work at the Milwaukee County zoo. Next to the elephants. And I’ll be honest, there is nothing romantic or adventurous about standing next to elephants all day. They smell, they’re loud, and nobody cool ever wants to hang out around them. I wear a stupid uniform and a little plastic name tag: Carlos. The money I make doesn’t go into some fancy savings account. It helps keep the lights on and food on the table. I don’t even have a cool job like feeding the animals or helping with demonstrations. I sell ice cream from a cart at the corner of the exhibit.

Early morning is bad for ice cream sales. Parents like to save it for an after lunch or going home treat, so I spend most mornings on my phone, tucking it away before a supervisor can see me. It’s against park policy to be on a phone at work, but everybody does it.

I’ve checked the weather, my email, and texted David about six times already this morning. He hasn’t answered. It’s not a big deal, though, because his job is pretty important and I’m just bored. Other than the group of Girl Scouts that came by earlier, it’s been quiet.

Off to the side, there’s a movement that catches my attention. I see this funny line of little ducklings charging along the sidewalk, like they’ve got somewhere to be, and behind them, David. Like most of the zoo staff, I look ridiculous in my uniform: unflattering colors against my awkward teenage limbs. I’m too tall for the shorts to look good and too narrow in the shoulders for the shirt to sit right. David, though, looks like he’s just stepped out of a jungle and onto a TV set, all tan arms and legs, his dark hair pulled back and glossy in the sun. Even at a distance, his light blue eyes make my mouth dry. I grab a handful of crushed peanuts from the cart and throw them in the path of the ducklings so they’ll stop.

“Hey,” I say as David catches up.

He’s taller than me, with permanent dimples I want to press my fingers into while I hold his face. “You shouldn’t feed them.”

All I can think about is David standing over the ducklings. He’d been so protective of them, watching out for dangers, keeping them safe. But it’s a lie, he’s not trying to protect anything, he’s a predator.

I shrug and try not to feel like I’m one of the kids in his exhibit that he’s just scolded. I met David because I needed a tutor for physics. Mom couldn’t afford to hire somebody, but he got extra credit in another class to help out. He was nice when he wasn’t around his soccer friends and he said I made him laugh. We got close as the school year ended but since summer started, it’s like we’re not even dating.

Not that we are. Dating, I mean. Not really. We hang out and we’ve messed around a few times when his parents weren’t home, but it’s not like we hold hands in public or he tells his friends he’s going to spend the weekend with his boyfriend. Mom thinks he’s keeping me a secret, but that doesn’t make any sense because the whole school knows he’s gay. He says he just wants to keep me to himself, and I don’t mind.

“Did you get my text?” He might have missed it. He’s real particular about following the park rules.

The ducklings aren’t going anywhere until they’ve eaten every last peanut, so he clips his walkie back on his belt and crosses his arms. “Yeah, about that—”

“Cause I thought we could do something Saturday since we’re off.” It’s not cute to stalk the employee schedule, but he forgot to text me his hours for the weekend. “If I don’t make plans now, my dad will try and drag me out across the state to see the world’s biggest penny or some shit.” Dad’s trying to make up for lost time, I guess, from when he wasn’t around when I was little and mom says I should let him.

He picks these weird trips for the two of us, the windows rolled down in his truck because the air busted three years ago and he’s never gotten it fixed. We’re supposed to be building memories, I think. Of something other than sitting around his trailer watching reruns.

David won’t meet my eyes. I move a little so the sun isn’t directly behind me, but he’s still shifting his gaze between the ducklings and looking over at the elephants. “Maybe you should. You don’t get to see him that much.”

“I get to see you less.” I swallow against the tight feeling in my throat. He won’t look at me, he didn’t smile when he saw me, the way he’d smiled when we crossed paths at work before. Every time I edge a little closer to him, just to draw in the scent of his woodsy cologne, he leans back or waves off an imaginary fly.

It seems like he’s going to say something, so I lean in. But the lead duckling picks up the last peanut and then darts off like he’s late for an appointment. The rest of the ducklings follow their leader and David steps away, breaking the last illusion of intimacy between us. “Sorry. I have to go. They got separated from their mom and we’ve been trying to get them back all morning.”

He walks off, following the birds, his shoulders back and his posture perfectly aligned as I hunch in on myself. Something’s not right, but I can’t tell what it is. David didn’t even answer me about Saturday. I wish there was a way for me to wait for him at his car after the end of my shift, but he usually leaves before me. I don’t start until the park opens and he’s here an hour or two before. I pull out my phone and send him a text to call me when he’s done, even though I can still see the shape of his broad shoulders in the distance. I think his head dips and I tell myself he’s smiling at my message.

The sun’s creeping up, so I duck back under the cheerful striped umbrella that does a terrible job of keeping me cool. An older man comes up to my cart, though his attention is on the same outline of David and the ducks. He’s in slacks and a tie, like he’s on break from a meeting, a little girl with pristine blond hair at his side.

There’s a faint smile on his face when he finally turns away from the ducklings. “Hi,” he looks at my name tag, “Carlos.” I hate it when they do that. “Could we have two vanilla cones, please?” He speaks slowly, like because I’ve got brown skin and look more like my Chippewa mom than my white dad I won’t understand him.

“I want sprinkles.” The little girl doesn’t look at me, but to be fair, she doesn’t look at him either.

I start to pour the cones from the soft serve machine. “Sorry, we don’t have sprinkles.”

She turns to me. I’ve got her attention now. “But I want them.”

“I could add peanuts.” She shakes her head and I hand over the cones. “That’ll be eight dollars, please.” I expect some kind of comment about how expensive it is, but the guy just hands over a twenty like it’s nothing, doesn’t even bother checking the change when I hand it back.

In my back pocket, I feel the quiet vibration of my phone. I bet it’s David. I can’t wait to get rid of this guy so I can check. David’s probably sorry for how little time he got to stay. I understand. Keeping after the ducks is part of his job.

The guy starts to wander off, headed to the elephants, or maybe the giraffes, but the girl lingers by my stand. She takes a slow lick of the cone and sneers at me. I’ve never seen a nine year old sneer like that before, and I’ve got, like, a million cousins. “You should really have sprinkles.”

I shrug. “Okay.”

“Who was that boy?”

I look down at her, then off after the missing space of David. “He’s a friend.”

She grins and it might be a sweet look on some other kid, but on her it’s wicked. “Are you dating? Is he your boyfriend?” Her voice takes on a sing-song quality, high pitched enough to draw attention. “He didn’t seem very interested in you.”

The guy gets a little farther away and doesn’t seem to notice that she’s not with him. “You should go keep up with your dad. You don’t want to get lost.” I try to shake her words off, shooing her in his direction.

“Oh, he’s not my dad.” She takes one more lick of the cone, then dumps the half-eaten thing in the trash. “He’s my mom’s assistant. He’s supposed to keep me busy while she has an affair with our gardener.”

Jesus. I don’t know what to say, but she doesn’t seem to expect an answer, just curls her lip at me and wanders away. How hard must it be to know that kind of thing? I’d probably try to pick fights with strangers, too. Better not to have parents together at all, like mine, than to see them break up when you’re still young enough that juice boxes are a highlight of your day.

Once she’s gone I check my phone, the happy face at the top of my screen lets me know I have a text and I smile back in response. I open the message. The smile is a lie. Instead of an apology, David’s message is brutal. I don’t want to see you anymore.

No one’s waiting for ice cream, and even if there was, I don’t think I would care. I take two steps away and dial his number. It goes right to voice mail, so I hang up and try again. After the fifth time, he answers. “I’m working, Carlos,” he hisses. His voice is echoey, like he stepped into a bathroom, maybe.

“What do you mean?” I stutter over my words, my tongue thick and caught on my teeth.

“I was pretty clear. I’m sorry if you’re hurt, but I thought you understood when I saw you earlier. It’s just,” he pauses and I can hear him suck in a deep breath. “This year is going to be a big year for me. Scotty Harmon got a full ride last year and coach says I’m a better player, easy. I can’t have,” he stops again and I want to see him so badly I start to walk toward the bird sanctuary, “distractions.”

I remember his flushed face, tucked against my neck. “I thought you liked my distractions.” I hate how young my own voice is in my ears, how far away he sounds. I’m gripping my phone so tight that it’s slippery in my sweating palm. If it crashed to the ground, at least the conversation would be over.

“You’ll understand when it’s your senior year.”

I breathe into the phone, unable to speak. All I can think about is David standing over the ducklings. He’d been so protective of them, watching out for dangers, keeping them safe. But it’s a lie, he’s not trying to protect anything, he’s a predator. I want to warn the little leader, to scoop up his soft, warm body and hold it close to my chest. Watch out little duck, the world is full of foxes.

“I have to go back to work. And you shouldn’t be on your phone in the park.” He hangs up and it takes all of my strength not to hurl the phone into the elephant enclosure where they could stomp it to pieces. Sweat is falling off of me and the sun feels like it’s going to set me on fire.

I want to go home. Mom won’t be there for hours and I can sit in my room with the music as loud as I want, no matter how hard Mr. Henderson bangs on the wall. I need the soft edges of my blankets, the rounded corners of my windowsill, and space to breathe. The precisely placed sidewalks and manicured lawns of the park are too sharp against my eyes. But we need the money. I can’t just walk out. I can’t.

The only reason I took this job, twelve miles away eating up time and gas, was so I could be close to David. I could have worked at the Pick ‘n Save in my neighborhood instead of coming all the way out here every day. The cart mocks me, standing empty, waiting for me to slink back over and take my place. I’ve never walked out of a job before and the thought of it makes me sick. My hands are shaking at just the thought, but I can’t make myself do it. David is friends with everyone in the park and he’ll know that he made me leave.

I don’t understand what happened. Is there someone else? I bet it’s one of his teammates; he and Amir are always together. David ditched me more than once to hang out with Amir, but he said it was for soccer.

One of the elephants trumpet. Informational tours come by sometimes and if there are little kids in the group, they always talk about how smart the elephants are. How long their memories last. Elephants who spent a day together can remember each other after twenty years. Twenty years from now, would they still remember my humiliation?

I pace back to my spot because I can’t make myself leave. But I can’t stand still so I roam around the edges of the cart, my breath high and short and hands shaking for almost half an hour. I torture myself by reading his last text, butted right up against others: I had a good time, ur funny, send me another pic.

I take a picture of my middle finger, but I don’t send it.

A little while later, just before families start coming by for their afternoon treats, I see the little girl wander back by, only now she’s got a balloon tied to her wrist and a cuddly monkey wrapped in her arms. The price of her silence, I guess. I feel almost bad for her until she slides up to my cart.

She looks me over, the way people with money look at cashiers in grocery stores. How did she learn that look so young? “They’re laughing about you, you know. Over in the bird sanctuary.” She pouts a fake lip at me. “Poor Carlos.”

I shake my head and look around for the guy she was with, desperate for him to take her away. “No, they’re not.”

“We followed them all the way back to the birds. That boy you were talking to said he doesn’t know why you won’t leave him alone.”

He wanted me. I know he did. It couldn’t all have been a lie. “What else did he say?”

Her eyes light up the way a normal kid would for ice cream. “I shouldn’t tell you. It’s not very nice.”

I want to play it cool and not get taken in by a kid seven years younger than me, but if David won’t talk to me, I want to know what he said. “I don’t care.”

“He said you were—“ Her mom’s assistant calls her away before she can finish. She doesn’t hesitate to run after him and I’m left with nothing. She probably did it on purpose. I bet she thinks it’s funny.

All the anger comes flashing right back at me, and I’m shaking again. Of course he’s talking about me to his friends; he worked at the park for three summers and I’ve only been around a couple of weeks. Of course they’ll take his side. I didn’t need that little girl to tell me what David said, I could imagine it well enough on my own. I turn, like I can see through the trees and exhibits and see right to where David is standing. He’s probably laughing right now.

“Hey!” A guy is standing at my cart; I don’t remember him coming up. He’s got money clutched in his hand while his kid bounces around his legs. “I said I want two cones.”

How does this guy not know? How is it possible that there are any people in the world who can look at me and not see the way David ate through my heart? My chest hurts and I wonder if I’m too young to have a heart attack.

I take a step back, out from under the useless umbrella. The surprise on the guy’s face is pleasant, but it’s not enough. He’s still just seeing the uniform, the way my dad sees lost opportunities, the way David only ever saw a diversion. I place my hands on the side of the cart. The metal is hot under my fingertips and I can see the guy move away, clutching at his wife and kid. I might not be as built as David, but the cart is cheap. First it wobbles, then tips with surprising ease as I shove against it. The ice cream spills out in lazy, looping swirls. Behind me, the little family starts shouting.

The dad waves his hands at me. He sees me now. “What the hell are you’re doing?”

It’s the question of the day. What am I doing? I try not to think about David on the other side of the park with his cluster of friends, of the paycheck that will be half as much when it comes through next week, of how hard it’s going to be to replace this job already halfway through the summer. But I can’t stand here another second and pretend everything is all right.

I open my mouth to respond. If I was in that summer job movie, I’d know what to say, but all my words get stuck in my throat. Instead, I rip off my name tag and throw it on the ground. My car is waiting in the parking lot and I have a long drive home.

Keely Cutts holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College and has work published in Jersey Devil Press, Crack the Spine, Front Porch Review, and Inaccurate Realities. Originally from Florida, she now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her wife and two terrible cats.

Since sophomore year, the crew walks three blocks to the bakery with the bitchy lady at the counter. Sometimes we get the cheese-filled dough beuregs, but sometimes we get the ground-beef flatbreads for only two bucks each. You can smell the cheese wafting through the smog on Broadway, and it meets the sweet smell of nazoug cookies from the pastry place across the street. The crew thinks it’s better than the Chinese place since Owner lets us sit there until Vartan picks us up. At least Ashot thinks it is, and we all care about what Ashot thinks because he’s fuckin’ Ashot–the only guy that can pull off a collared shirt without looking like a wimp.

One time, Owner said some shit like, “Tghek, do your homeworks.”

“You don’t need to graduate to start a business, aper,” said Ashot.

“Right. Back in Armenia, I graduate for music and was composer. What you want to be?” he said, wiping his hands on his sweaty apron.

Ashot said, “Rich. I want to be fuckin’ rich.” All of us busted out laughing, including Owner.

Ashot always knew what to say. Since the seventh grade, he always fucking knew. His dad beat him up with a belt almost every day which made him a smart ass, but he would move up in life as a loyal one too. When we were in the eighth grade, I got caught touching Maria’s tits because I didn’t really know how to ask her out. He didn’t even know me well, but he followed me to the principal’s office and told him that he dared me to do it.

We stare up at the sky and try to figure this all out. The moon just looks back laughing with us.

He told the principal, “They mentioned it in biology class and I wanted to know how it felt. Consider it a lab.”

“Do your work to be rich,” Owner said. “Want Cokes?”

We never want Cokes. We just go out on the sidewalk to smoke a pack instead.

Ashot says, “Kobe killed it last night. I love him, man. If only I could be him.”

Standing behind him, I can see a scar near his collar.

“Fuck yeah,” I say. “Who doesn’t?”

*     *     *

I actually like Maria. I’ve liked her since the incident with the boobs, for the last four years. The crew calls her a slut because she hangs out with the other Mexican girls near the football field at lunch and because there’s a rumor going around that they slept with the same guys in the soccer team. I didn’t really care if she did, because I knew she wasn’t dumb. I had English class with her, and one time, she read a poem she wrote about a car crash. It made me feel wack–like someone had pulled out my gut for a second.

The glass windows slide deeper into my heart. And I can feel me rip apart with each painful toss–hoping to be loved and pulled together, she’d written.

After class I said, “So you write poems?”

“Yeah,” she said, fixing her shirt. I could see her tits.

“It was cool,” I said and walked away. Her sharp, green eyes followed me out the door.

*     *     *

The football field where she hangs out is Latino territory, and one time, Ashot got busted for kicking a guy named Juan in the dick because he hit on Ani, the hottest girl in the school–and Ashot’s childhood friend. She has black, straight hair and rarely smiles, kind of like those Russian dolls–the ones Mam likes to collect to put over the fireplace. Ani moved here when she was four, same as Ashot. I don’t think Ashot liked Ani, but I think he just likes to protect the girls in the crew from older guys, mostly Mexicans.

“No one’ll want to marry her if she fuckin’ sleeps with that Mexican,” he said.

“What if she actually wants to sleep with the Mexican?” I said, unwrapping my burger.

“I don’t give a shit,” Ashot said. “There’s no way in hell she’s gonna do that shit. And if Vartan isn’t gonna do anything, then I am.”

“Let her brother handle it,” I said. “Why you gotta get involved and get us all in this?”

“Because we have to,” he said. “Because we’re the Armo fuckin’ corner.”

And then he sent a note to Juan through Marco, the half-Armenian half-Mexican kid to have him meet the crew up in their territory at lunch the next day. Juan showed up with five other guys, and Ashot kicked him in the dick. Everyone got pissed and started fighting each other–even me. It was messed up because Ashot got suspended and the rest of us had to do community service for a few months.

When the counselor called me in, she asked, “Who started it, Armen?”

I hate how counselors use names to make something sound more serious. The small waterfall on her desk chimed and echoed the sounds of rushing water. What the fuck?

“They started it,” I said. “Juan and his guys.”

“That’s not what I heard,” said counselor.

“Isn’t that called hearsay or something,” I said. Her face didn’t get soft.

“I’m just messin’. Listen, Juan asked us to be there ‘cause he had to talk to Ashot about something and then he just attacked him.”

She eventually let me go after firing off questions about why my math and science grades had dropped.

*     *     *

When I come home from school, Mam already has dinner ready for us–us being me, Pap, my three aunts, their husbands, and two single uncles.

“Of course Obamacare is a bad thing,” says Uncle Khachik. “They want our tax money to pay.”

“It’s for the greater good,” says my other Hopar.

“The Soviet Union was too,” Pap says.

“Greater good is capitalism. That’s all I know,” he says.

“So you vote democrat but aren’t one,” says Hopar Khachik.

After a pause my dad responds, “Of course, it’s California. And we like welfare.”

Everyone laughs, but I don’t really think it’s funny. The women don’t speak much and Mam doesn’t even work, but she has the smile of a woman who isn’t a fucking house wife–one that reminds me of a picture she has as a girl in Tzaghgatsor. She’s standing in front of a field of flowers in a skirt almost to her ankle, holding a set of books. As a kid she would tell me that the blooms in Tzaghgatsor were unlike any other, that they were caused by the beauty of Armenian’s most beautiful goddess, Anahit. The fields of flowers spill over into green, rolling mountains, almost like magic. I imagined, as a kid, that she was the goddess in some way, although her eyes have wrinkles around the edges and her hair is kind of faded brown. She dyes it blonde, probably to cover it all.

“Of course the United States will recognize the genocide,” Pap says. “The democrats will do it.”

“It’s a lie,” says my uncle Khachik. “They want us to vote like you.”

A pile of Asbarez newspapers sit face up on on our TV stand. Pap’s horn rimmed glasses shift lower on his nose. And no one can hear a thing.

My dad slams his hand on the table, “They raped our women and exterminated our people–the democrats actually give a shit. Armen, get us some cognac glasses.”

I bring him the glasses, and he says, “How was your school?”

“Good,” I say.

“Doctor or lawyer? Decided yet?”

“Not yet, Dad. One of them, though,” I say.

I go to my room. I like to think about Maria or watch porn or read. I stare at my Transformers poster sometimes or just watch trailers. Sometimes we even meet up at the parking lot near the Starbucks in La Cañada. All the guys from all the high schools meet up there to smoke–too young to have cognac anyway. We stare up at the sky and try to figure this all out. The moon just looks back laughing with us. Ashot rarely comes except for one night.

He sneaks out to join us. He’s wearing a stupid baseball cap, and he asks for a stog.

“What’s up with the hat?” Vartan says. “Vibin’ white guys, huh?”

And I see it then–the right side of his face all blue.

“What the fuck dude,” I say. “What the hell?”

“He just made a man out of me,” he says, smiling.

“Fuck man, you okay?” I say.

“Yeah, aper, yeah. Let’s have a smoke, and I’ll be good.”

“Should we tell the cops or call Counselor or something?” I ask.

“No, I’m good. I’m tight. I promised him I would get my grades up.”

“Yeah man, we should,” I say.

“We will. But let’s have a smoke first.”

“Fuck yeah,” I say, looking down at the pavement.

Talar Malakian graduated with a degree in English and an emphasis in Fiction from the University of California-Irvine. She works in digital marketing but really hates Twitter. You can find her in Los Angeles, usually with a book, an Apple product, and a cold latte.