“Please,” Cobb said. “Don’t have me fired.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Betty. “It’s really up to Amber. Amber, do you think Mrs Cobb should keep her job?”
There was some part of Amber, some sly and distant part, that wanted to say no, that wanted to punish her principal for her shrillness, her pettiness – but this was a part that wasn’t thinking of Cobb as a person. No matter how much Amber may have disliked the woman, she was not prepared to ruin her life just to teach her a lesson.
“Uh yeah, she can keep it,” Amber said.
“Thank you,” Cobb said, her whole body sagging. “Thank you.”
“Wait a second,” Bill said, stepping back into the office. “Mrs Cobb, you accused us of being bad parents. If you want your job back, you’re going to have to do more than just apologise.”
“Oh yes,” Betty said, clapping her hands in delight. “You should beg for it.”
Amber stared at her parents in shocked disbelief, and Cobb frowned.
“I’m sorry?”
Betty’s smile vanished. “Beg, I said.”
Amber had been wrong. She thought she had known the full extent of her parents’ punishments, but this was a level beyond. This was vindictive, like they were running out of patience on some scale no one else could see. This was something entirely new.
Cobb shot a quick glance at Amber, then looked back at Bill and Betty. “Uh … please,” she said quietly. “Please can I keep my job? I … I beg of you.”
Bill shrugged. “Yeah, okay.” He swept his arm towards the door. “Shall we?”
They left the office, left Mrs Cobb standing there with tears running down her face, and walked the length of the corridor without speaking. Right before her parents turned right, for the parking lot, and Amber turned left, for the classrooms, Bill looked at her.
“This girl you had the ‘fracas’ with,” he said, “Saffron, right? Wasn’t she a friend of yours?”
“When we were kids,” said Amber, her voice soft.
He nodded, considered it, then walked away.
Her mother patted Amber’s shoulder and looked sympathetic. “Children can be so cruel,” she said, and followed her husband.
THE HEADACHE THAT HAD been building since lunch finally struck by the end of school, driving thin needles of pain deep into Amber’s temples. She popped a couple of Tylenol and, by the time her shift at the diner was half over, the pain had faded to a dull throb somewhere at the back of her skull.
“My folks are getting weirder,” she said.
Sally looked up from the magazine she was reading. “Sorry?”
“My folks,” Amber repeated as she wiped the table. She did her best to sound casual. “They’re getting weirder.”
“Is that possible?”
“I didn’t think so. But do you know what they did today? They were called into my school and they made my principal cry. She literally shed tears. She was begging and everything. They … they traumatised her. It was so messed up.”
Sally shifted position, leaned back on the countertop in her red and yellow Firebird Diner T-shirt, and looked thoughtful. “That,” she said eventually, “is awesome. I would have loved my folks to have made my principal cry when I was a teenager. When my two start high school, I want to make their principal cry. I hated mine. I hated all my teachers. They always said I’d never amount to anything. But look at me now, eh? Thirty-three years old, no qualifications, and a waitress in a crappy diner with a neon Elvis on the wall.”
Amber gave her the thumbs up. “Living the dream, Sally.”
“Damn right,” Sally said. “And hey, at least your parents are taking an interest for once, right? Isn’t that something?”
“I … I guess.”
“Listen to me. Just stick it out for another few years and then you can go off to college somewhere and build a life for yourself.”
Amber nodded. New York, she figured, or Boston. Somewhere cooler than Florida, where the air alone wouldn’t make her sweat.
“My point is,” Sally continued, “wherever and whenever you decide to start your own family, you can do it right.” She gave a little grin. “Okay?”
Amber could never resist one of Sally’s grins. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”
“Attagirl.”
Customers came in, and Sally put a spring in her step as she walked to greet them. “Hi there!” she said brightly. “Welcome to the Firebird! Can I show you to your booth?”
Amber watched her, marvelling at how natural her sudden cheerfulness seemed. A smile from Sally could turn a bad mood on its head – it was a phenomenon that Amber had witnessed on multiple occasions, and it rarely failed. The customers smiled back and they exchanged a few words and Sally led them to a booth by the window. Even though the Firebird was the third most successful fifties-themed diner franchise in the state – and Amber had no idea where that statistic had sprouted from – Wednesday afternoons were always slow. On slow days, it was policy to sit as many patrons by the window as possible in order to entice people in. Hungry people liked eating with other hungry people, it seemed. Amber had never been able to understand that. For as long as she could remember, she had always hated people watching her eat. She didn’t even like eating meals with her parents.
Although, if she was to be honest with herself – and if she couldn’t be honest with herself, then who could she be honest with? – their inherent weirdness might have had something to do with that.
Her parents were odd. Amber had known that for quite some time. Ever since she could remember, it was like they shared a private joke that she’d never been let in on. She loved them, of course she did, but she’d always felt like an appendage. She didn’t complete the family because the family didn’t need her to be complete. Bill and Betty Lamont were so perfect for each other that there were no gaps left for Amber to fill.
Two guys walked into the diner, both in their late teens. Joking and chatting, they stood at the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign and only looked at Amber when she smiled and said “Hi!” in her perkiest voice. “Welcome to the Firebird. Can I show you to your booth?”
“Don’t see why not,” said the first guy.
She smiled again and turned on her heel, making sure to keep the smile in place. She wasn’t pretty like Sally, wasn’t tall like Sally, wasn’t captivating like Sally and certainly did not look as good in her yellow shorts as Sally did, but, even so, there were so many mirrors in the diner that to lose a smile at any point could mean a drastic loss in tips. She stood by the booth in the corner and her two customers slid in on opposite sides of the table.
“My name’s Amber,” she said, taking her notepad from her back pocket, “and I’ll be your waitress this evening.”
“Hi, Amber,” the first guy said. “My name’s Dan, this is Brandon, and we’ll be your customers.”
Amber gave a little laugh. “What can I get you?”
“We’re keeping it simple today. We’ll take your cheeseburger deals. The whole shebang.”
Amber marked the orders