The S.P.E.

Chapter 4

Logan didn't rear his hideous blonde head around the restaurant for almost two years. I liked to think it was shame, but in reality, it was likely school that kept him busy. School and his summer job with Fischoeder, running what was left of his businesses for him while he enjoyed retirement on his estate. I spent the time growing up. To piss off my mother, I had a friend of a friend (someone Mickey knew) pierce my nose. I grew another few inches. "Becoming a woman" as my mother called it, changed me from a scrawny kid to a "young lady." Tina showed me how to deal with bras. Mom showed me how to shave my legs, to my never-ending embarrassment, and then she sang a song about it and made me a cake. She also cried because her last baby was a baby no longer. Gene was miffed over the whole affair since he didn't get a cake when his voice changed. So, then we had another cake and another song.

I stopped wearing dresses and switched to leggings and jeans so that I could enjoy my curves, just a little. For the first time, I started to feel a little grown up and not like the baby of the family anymore. Switching to pants also gave me a great excuse to cover my legs because despite knowing how to shave, I saw little need for it and fulfilled my promise to grow out my hairs all long and scraggly. Mom would make a face when she saw my legs; wearing pants was just easier.

Tina graduated from Huxley High in May of that year. Gene went from chubby sophomore to slightly taller but still chubby junior. I got ready to leave all vestiges of childhood behind as I left the eighth grade and moved to Huxley, the last of the Belchers to switch. The best of the Belchers, in my humble opinion. Frond surprised no one when he retired that same year. Getting me to high school was his "magnum opus, his Everest," as he claimed. I took pride in knowing that I could save the kids after me from his specific brand of cuckoo. Aunt Gayle had long since dumped him, so he was officially out of my life, for good.

Hudson University in New York was Tina's destination. She got a full scholarship for her work on the school paper and now her major in journalism in the biggest, fastest news hub in the world was the path set before her feet. I would be lying if I said I was one hundred percent okay with her leaving. It meant I got a larger room all to myself. It meant that there was more hot water for everyone and that we wouldn't have to hear her talking in her sleep through the walls at night. But it meant my big sister was leaving and I wouldn't get to see her every day. She left early to spend her summer in the city, working as a coffee girl for the New York Post so we didn't even get to see her much after graduation.

Nobody felt the loss more than my father. She was his grill buddy, his assistant chef. It was really hard there for a few weeks until, at the height of summer, just after my fourteenth birthday and mere days after Mickey's friend "Needles" pierced my nose, that Dad hired help for the kitchen. He said he still couldn't trust me or Gene on the grill, despite both of us being years older than Tina was when she started burger flipping. While we had lived in the trailer post-fire, Dad took to cooking burgers at least twice a week on an old grill that Teddy found for us and fixed up. The whole trailer park started looking forward to burger nights and we supplemented our income a little by selling burgers to our neighbors. We kept it very hush-hush because one never knows when Hugo would show up, Ron in tow. One of our neighbors was Zeke, Tina's friend, and after teaching Home-Ec my dad thought Zeke had a real talent for cooking. Zeke started helping out Dad on burger nights.

Then, suddenly, Zeke was working in the restaurant to fill in the gap left by Tina. It wasn't too weird, actually, even though I truly expected it to be. Tina was a five-foot-seven, bespectacled girl with a penchant for day-dreaming and a soul for gossip. Zeke was a six-foot linebacker who barely seemed to fit through doorways and who, after growing out of his habit of rambling, became the strong, silent type. He only really spoke when spoken to. But I wasn't going to complain. The most onerous of tasks, like hauling deliveries and the like, became Zeke jobs. He was so good that Dad actually let him... man it's weird to say... change the menu. I love my father to death, and he would kill me if he heard me say it, but he turned out a lot like Grandpa Bob. His menu was his and his alone to fuck with. Burgers was the game. But Zeke convinced Dad to first let him create some burgers of the day, then to play with proteins. He added chicken, then pork, then eggplant and mushroom. Soon there were things on the menu that weren't served on a bun. And after that, he even convinced Dad to take one day a week off. Because of this, Mom decided to nominate Zeke for sainthood. They were able to take date night from once a quarter to once a week.