Half a World Away

Cara’s already waiting for me by the time I get to Peter’s Pals!, Auburn’s fast food restaurant catering primarily to children and tweens, her face anxious and her moves erratic. I’m slipping on my dark purple apron as I get through the glass doors, dodging two toddlers that’re rushing to get who knows where, when she turns to look at me and says, immediately, “A table for fifteen is coming in and we’re the only servers here so far,” in a squeaky, tight voice.

“A table for fifteen?” I ask, surveying the remaining four tops to figure out a way to make room for all of them while still having room for other customers. Through my pounding headache (it had been a long night last night, mostly full of Ruben begging me to watch one more movie with him at three in the morning while I fail to resist doing just that) and my sore body from Ruben’s vigorous workouts, I have to wonder why a table of fucking fifteen is coming at eleven in the morning to a restaurant that sells lunch and dinner foods.

“I have no idea why you’re so calm right now,” says Cara, still bouncing around and constantly checking to make sure no tables need drink refills or napkins or general service. The restaurant is loud, with poppy, teeny-bopper music on re-run, the color theme a dark purple and blue, and people under the age of fifteen screaming, playing, or messily eating everywhere you look. Sometimes the occasional teens would come, pretending that they’re cool for coming to Peter’s Pals while being a seventeen year old high school drop out, but, otherwise, it was full of exuberant children and their stressed parents.

“How many tables do you have?” I ask, ignoring her probably-redundant question. “I can pick up some and get them served quickly before the party of fifteen comes in.” I take out my notepad and a pen from the pocket in my apron and look to gauge her reaction. She still looks scared shitless. “And what’s the schedule for today? Wasn’t Aaron supposed to be here an hour ago?”

Cara smooths some loose hair back into her poofy ponytail and makes a face. “Called out sick.” She tilts her head at me. “And you know not to rely on Aaron by now.”

I sigh. “How is he still not fired again?” When she laughs, I just shake my head. “Alright, let’s just get some tables served and out of here. Do you have any tables I can pick up for you?”

I follow Cara to the serving station, and we both look down at the seating chart, Aaron’s name long wiped off from a certain area. “You can pick up Aaron’s tables,” she explains, the terror from her voice gradually dissipating. “And I can give you tables five, eighteen, and eight. They already got their drinks; they just need their food.”

“Sounds good,” I say, nodding reassuringly at her. She nods back, her smile twisted on her face, and before I turn to leave I tell her, “Oh, and, I’m sorry about leaving you and Harrison to eat at the cafe on your own. You know how Ruben is with his bike riding.”

Cara looks up from the seating chart at me. “Harrison was sort of mad, but he’ll survive. We’ll just all finally eat out together another time.” She pats my back, and I smile. “But, for now, let’s get this place somewhat cleared out for that fifteen-people party. Today’s gonna be a long day.”

We finally go our separate ways, her to check up on tables and me to sweep up some of the forgotten fries by the empty booths. We’ve been able to work together on so many things — projects in high school, friends and family blow-ups, and beyond — because we’re natural opposites. Cara freaks out at any little thing that goes wrong while I’m the calmer half that guides her through it with simple solutions and constant reassurance. On the other side, Ruben is the one that likes to tease her about all her breakdowns and Harrison just tries to stay out of all of it with his simple head shakes and muttering under his breath. I think if it was just up to Cara and I to get stuff done, we’d be way more effective than with Ruben and Harrison.

Turns out, I’m right. We get half the place cleared out by the time five adults and ten children come rushing through, and Cara hurriedly seats them at the four-toppers we shoved together while I make sure I placed enough napkin-wrapped utensils for everyone. The children carry on with some banter and discord while three of the adults attempt to get them quiet and seated as two adults order for everyone.

“Those mini burgers and fries for all the kids,” one of the women says to me. I scribble the order down while she continues with, “And the adults will just have your frank dogs with relish and mustard. Bring extra ketchup just in case.”

“Yes ma’am,” I say to her in my best cheerful voice. “And what about anything to drink?”

“Mini Coke sodas for the kids,” she answers instantly. “And the five of us will have iced water. More water than ice, please.”

“Coming right up.” I tuck the pen back into my apron and pass my notepad to Cara when she slips behind me. “We’ll have your drinks up in no time.”

“Alright,” the woman mummbles.

Cara goes to the serving station to start on the drinks while I call back the order, from my memory, to the chefs in the back. When I get their signature thumbs up, I toss one back, then go to help Cara out with her drink orders.

“Thanks again, Scout,” she says when I start filling kids’ cups with Coke. “When Aaron didn’t show I was ready to burst into tears.” She pauses to fill an adult’s cup with all her attention, and then tells me, “Things have been really stressful lately … Did I tell you my mom wants me to go to Lakeview?”

Now I have to stop to look at her. “Lakeview? Y’mean that college in the city?”

Cara gives me a grave look, and that’s when I realize she’s not kidding. And although Cara isn’t the type to joke around about this type of stuff, I like to hope that she still has some kind of funny bone inside her somewhere. “Wait,” I say, holding up a hand so we can both take a breath about this. “Why is she sending you away?”

She continues to fill her cups, shrugging curtly. “I ‘dunno,” Cara says softly. “‘Cause she’s insane.”

“No — that’s not her excuse anymore. What’s the real reason?”

Cara sighs heavily at me, like I’m the parent that’s prepared to send her off to the city, one hour away from us and, practically, civilization. If you call Auburn civilization and the city a barren wasteland. But the fact is that her mom has always been up to something ever since her husband up and left a few years back; from trying to get her to go to private school from even thinking of shipping her aboard to some faraway country like England, her mom seems desperate to get Cara out of the house. Which is the part I don’t understand, because if you’re a single mother with an only child, why the hell would you want the place to yourself? Any other mother would cry at the thought of their daughter leaving for good, while this mom just wants her out.

“She seems serious this time,” Cara tells me, her voice dangerously breaking. “I don’t think I can talk myself out of this anymore.” I can tell she’s trying hard not to look at me, feeling all too vulnerable with her brown eyes glassy and burning. “She makes me wanna just run away sometimes. God.”

I swallow hard. “Let’s just,” I look at the fifteen table, gauging the annoyed looks on the adults’ faces to estimate how much time we have left before they start wondering where their beverages are. “talk about this after work, alright? With Ruben and Harris?”

Cara places another completed drink on her tray, with the others. “I don’t want them to know yet,” she explains, voice still cracking with a threat of tears. “They’ll freak out twice as much as I am.”

“So you told me instead?”

She gives me a soft smile, full lips curling upwards. “You’re not a freaker. You just listen.”

This, I think as she lifts her tray and starts making her way to her table, is really comforting to hear. Knowing someone pretty secretive like Cara can tell me things that nobody else in the world knows but us never fails to make me feel important, like I’m not outside looking in — I’ve always been in. I guess it’s wrong of me to assume that just because Cara informs me of recent events in her life means that, by default, she’s told Ruben and Harrison, too.

Cara found someone she can trust. She can trust me.

When she glances nervously back at me, I realize that I still have my half of the drink orders sitting, idle, on the serving station in front of me. With a smile much too bright and genuine to have while working as a waiter at a kids’ restaurant, I get the drinks onto my tray and exuberantly step over to where she’s standing.

“Sorry,” I whisper to her. “Got lost in thought there.”

“No problem.” She bows her head shyly.

“Okay,” I say happily to the table. “Who ordered the Cokes?”



Ruben and I go so far back that I don’t even remember the years I spent without at least acknowledging his existence. Some things just sort of happen, and that’s the best I can explain Ruben and my relationship. One day we weren’t friends — me probably having just been born — and then one day we were. Family dinners always, by default, included Ruben’s parents and older brother, and game nights weren’t game nights if they weren’t there with us, cussing at Monopoly or cheering at UNO.

My friendship with Cara and Harrison isn’t as clean cut. I met Harrison somewhere in between hating him for beating me as the best test taker in U.S. History (“You probably pulled an all-nighter to get that grade,” I’d told him bitterly after checking over his shoulder and discovering that, yep, he won me over by two points again. Harrison had only shrugged at me, barely giving me the time of day as Mrs. Yow explained to us how we needed to study harder for the next test) and being in fierce competition with him in required physical education class (“You’re probably running when you go home, aren’t you?” Harrison had asked me after I beat him in the mile run by a whole ten seconds. I had only shrugged at him, trying to barely give him the time of day so that he knew how it felt to be disregarded). Ruben was the one that broke the ice between us with a few dumb jokes (“Knock knock / Who’s there? / Claire / Claire who? / Claire the way; I’m coming through! / You guys know that was funny — just laugh!”) and a lot of bike riding dates through the neighborhood, and that’s how we eventually leveled off onto even terms.

Cara, in the beginning, was just the one to shout at us to stop arguing in U.S. History and laugh whenever she happened to come around when Ruben was telling me dumb, exaggerated stories about his night after I left or went to bed. Her formation into our weird group (Harrison also always happened to be there to stifle a laugh along with her) happened gradually and all too quickly at the same time; I still can’t figure it out, nor do I try to anymore.

Because all I know is that, yeah, things do just sort of happen, and making an effort to question everything that does is kind of stupid and unnecessary. That’s something my father had told me, and that’s something that, as I grew up and tripped into my summer before college, followed me, ringing true time and time again.

Harrison, unfortunately, isn’t one of those people.

“Why is he doing that?” he’s asking me while we sit on the curb outside of my house with melting popsicles and our shorts rolled up as Ruben tries to do a front wheelie on his bike over and over, falling forwards and off of his bike more often than not. Then he’ll just get up, give us a goofy smile, and then jump right back onto the scratched-up bicycle, desperate to get it right this time.

I shrug. “Because he’s a fucking idiot?”

Harrison nods, letting his floppy, brown fringe get in his eyes. “You got that fuckin’ right.” He takes a lick at a runaway droplet of his cherry popsicle. “It’s like he’s got half a brain, or something. Yet I can’t stop watching him?”

“Welcome to my life.” Too many times to count have I been sitting on this curb, outside of my house while my mother is off planning parties and my father is down in town, working at the local cable company, making sure Ruben doesn’t cause any trouble or give himself fatal injuries. I had always been deemed The Observer while Ruben was The Do-er. And, hell, he’ll do anything if he knows any responsible adult isn’t watching.

“Shit,” Ruben gasps when he’s thrown off of the front of the bike and hits the ground by his elbow and knees, scraping off some skin on the pavement. He lets out a breathless laugh, rolls onto his back and flops down, the harmed knee bent upwards while the other one lies limply below. “Shit.”

Harrison shakes his head with an annoyed eyeroll, getting to his feet. “Well,” he says while wiping his butt off with a free hand. “I think I’m gonna head inside your house and get more popsicles. I can’t stand this anymore.”

“Sure.” Snapping into medic mode, I jump up and jog over to Ruben, crouching down to inspect the damage. He lets me hold his leg in place while I survey the damaged knee, where the skin is gone and there’s red left. A trail of blood is snaking down his shin. “Jeez. You need to stop, dude.”

“Not ‘till I’m dead,” Ruben cheers like a drunkard, tossing a lazy fist into the air only to let it subsequently drop back by his side. “Lemme try one more time; I think I got it this time.” He props himself up onto one elbow, thin lips stretching as his teeth come out from underneath. “See, what nobody is telling you is that it’s not only about your weight distribution, but the bikes’, too. You have to make sure the bike is balanced before you’re balanced.”

I check his elbow next. Not as bad as his knee, but he’ll still need some disinfectant and a couple of band aids to take care of it. “Huh,” I say. “So that’s why you haven’t been able to manage it, right?”

“Dude.” Ruben shoves his frizzy, dirty blonde disaster he calls his hair. Widening honey eyes excitedly at me, he tells me, unfazed by my jab, “I’m nearly there. I think I got it this time. Just let me try again.”

I give him a purposely exaggerated deadpan look. “After you get your injuries checked out; C'mon, let’s go ask my mom where she’s keeping that peroxide.” I get up after patting his shoulder twice — a silent beckoning — and he hesitantly follows suit.

For once, my mom is home, standing in her work clothes in the kitchen and talking sternly to someone on the phone. The living room television is playing some news channel, Harrison on the couch and eating a new popsicle — orange, by the looks of it.

“Mom,” I call out to her. “Where’s the peroxide?”

My mom glances at us. “Hold on, Georgia,” she says, then presses her hand against the receiver. “Don’t tell me Ruben hurt himself again.”

“Just trying to do a front wheelie, ma’am,” Ruben explains to her like she knows what that is, or cares, for that matter. “I almost got it this time, ‘swear.”

My mom gives him a deadpan look, much like my own, and then waves absently towards the downstairs bathroom while turning her back to us. “Just down the hall, love.” She removes her other hand from the receiver and asks, “Georgia? You still there?”

A soft, muffled voice answers from the other line while I follow Ruben down to the bathroom and inside, flicking on a light as Ruben settles on top of the closed toilet, on instinct. We’ve been here, in this place, endlessly, it seems, him waiting for me to get out the cotton balls and peroxide and me mumbling angrily under my breath. I wonder why these moments have become our most precious, even so close to our inevitable separation, when college comes around.

Ruben’s got a full ride to Stanford, a university that stresses importance on athletics. Which, yeah, it’s no surprise that Ruben has made it into Stanford; he’s Auburn’s most well-renowned immature athlete, after all. It’s just shitty, honestly, that our fabric is coming loose so soon. Ruben’s got Stanford and I’ve got Primrose, another university hours in the other direction.

But when you already feel so comfortable where you are, hours feels like months — or years, even. Who knew our differences — me with my brain and Ruben with his well-built physique — can, in the scheme of things, rip us away from our shared world. Who knew that it’ll be that much harder to leave knowing that Ruben’s got something to adamantly look forward to, too.

Like always, Ruben’s watching me in dead silence as I blot at his wounds with peroxide-soaked cotton balls, me furrowing my brows to make it look like I’m concentrating instead of worried or sad. I’m supposed to be mad right now, because Ruben’s hurt himself and I have to be the one to clean up the mess, but all I can think about is how I have to cherish this moment and this breath, right here, right now; who knows when we’ll ever be able to do this again.

“So,” Ruben finally says when I reach over to get the Mickey Mouse band aids from off the sink counter. “when I get this front wheelie perfected, we should go hiking through the woods. I found this pretty great spot to build a fort and I need a second opinion, cause, y’know, you’re the one afraid of bugs and poison ivy.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I say through the lump in my throat. I take my time pressing one of the band aids to his knee where I can add another adjacent to it and not have them overlap. “You … you’re better at this than I am.”

I can practically feel the incredulous look on his face as he asks, “Really? Picky and Stubborn as Fuck Scout is letting me be the tie breaker? Since when?”

I shrug. The second band aid fits perfectly next to the first; even close to tears my handiwork is impeccable.

“What,” he starts, a teasing tone to his voice. “you’ve finally given up? Gonna let me win this one?”

I get up from off my knees and start packing all the tools away, right in their proper place. “I guess so,” I tell him. “Yeah. You win this one.”

Albeit Ruben can be immature, careless, and selfish, one thing that Ruben has been able to do time and time again is sense any sort of negative emotion from me like a dog. He’s always been the one to find me from when we were kids when I’d hide and cry, and he’d always be the one to comfort me in his own weird way; usually, it’d be punching me or begging me to go do something with him until my tears dried and I was stumbling right behind him, choking on hiccups. This skill has unfortunately followed him until now, him looking at me with this uncertain, worried look on his face.

Unlike back then, though, Ruben has learned to just let things be. And this time he does just that; I feel his eyes on me as I manage a, “Let’s go find Harrison so he can see your front wheelie,” and remains there, in that nostalgic bathroom, while I walk off without him, towards the safety of the living room.

Where the time has passed us, I don’t know, but what I do know is that I can’t live in this moment long enough for it to count.