The Extraterrestrial Truth And The Girl From Seat 2B [ONC 2022]

2.2 [THE WORLD'S GREATEST PRANK, NOT CLICKBAIT]

Vic had worked at the Chumuckla Trolley Diner since she was sixteen. This place wouldn't run without her. To be frank, that was a lot to put on the shoulders of someone who was only a few weeks into being nineteen. Everyone else who worked there didn't really seem to notice or care. Vic was ninety percent sure it was part of a money laundering scheme run by Leo's parents, but she didn't care enough to look further into that.

The guys in question were being stupid behind the front counter. By the looks of it, Connor was trying to set his tongue on fire, but failing because he was doubled over, laughing like this was the funniest thing to ever happen. Leo was rolling his eyes like he wasn't amused. What else was new? Scotty disappearing like that hadn't changed either of them. And why would it? Why should anything change?

Neither of them really noticed when Vic walked in. That was par for the course, and she was fine with it. She had to set up the kitchen anyway. It wasn't like either of them were going to do it. While tying on her apron-- red, one of the very few gifts she had ever been given that was brand-new when she got it-- she leaned through the window between the two spaces. "You know that's going to hurt you, right?"

Leo rolled his eyes. "You sound like your mom, Vicky."

That earned a chuckle from Connor, who relit the cheap plastic lighter and held it to his dirty tongue once more.

Vic rolled her eyes and, grinning, got to work. Some things never changed. She was glad for it.

Cooking made sense to her. Maybe it was just a holdover from so many days spent in the kitchen with her parents back before they split, or maybe it was a genuine calling of hers. Either way, she lorded over this kitchen-- at least, she did when she was working. And she worked very often, since she had been eighteen for a while and was now technically graduated. She was great at it, too. The guys knew not to come in unless they needed to get a dish or a sauce or a drink or something. She could get real persnickety in here.

The guys could be real jackasses. She knew that. She was just like them.

And then she was thinking about 2B again.

She tried not to, she really did. There were plenty of girls that could have been on her mind. There was a time when she would have insisted that guys could be on her mind, too, but she knew better than that now. 

Why did it have to be 2B? Of all the people she had known for so long-- neighbors, classmates, that girl she was co-counselors with when she picked up that gig at Camp Hux a month or so ago, people she saw from time to time but didn't really talk to anymore-- why did it have to be the girl from 2B?

It wasn't the girl thing that got to her. Vic had long since made her peace with that, and honestly wasn't even bothering to keep it a secret from Leo and Connor anymore. As if it was a secret in the first place. Please. These days, they ragged on her for her bad taste all the time, and Scotty wasn't there to help with that-- or make it worse. She missed him. It was easier to take the ribbing thn to think about why she used to go after guys nobody would think were attractive anyway.

She let the grill heat and the meat start thawing like she did every morning. She had no idea how many patties she was going to actually need, but she was cutting it close to opening time as-is, so it was better safe than sorry.

Vic wiped her hands on her apron as she walked out to the front. The guys had long since moved on from the tongue thing and were talking about something else now-- some guy they wanted to get back at. Some guy they went to high school with. Vic remembered him vaguely. Eric Ham had a face full of pimples and the unearned confidence of a future tech mogul. He made fun of Vic back in junior high. She didn't remember what, exactly, she had been targeted for. A lot of junior high was already blurry thanks to her shit memory, and a car crash she had been involved in around that time didn't really help. She wasn't sure if it was brain damage or not, but she was definitely missing a lot of memory.