Axis

august 26th

IT'S A GLOOMY DAY to be at work. Quinn and Olivia are both officially done for the summer, and have already moved back at their respective colleges (but have been talking every day, Olivia informed me last night when we were texting for a bit). Even sadder yet—it's Jasper's last day working.

Another "last" I have with him to check off my list. Pretty soon, there'll only be one "last" left: the last time I'll see him before he moves away. But I don't want to think about that right now. It's too hard to stomach.

"Here are your drinks," I say to my three-top, dispersing them accordingly. "Are you guys ready to order, or do you still need a few minutes?"

"If you could give us a few minutes, that would be great," the mom says, smiling at me with kind eyes.

"Of course," I say, turning around and veering back toward the kitchen, grateful for a nice table. When I make it to the back, I notice for the first time that Jasper is looking pale and clammy. Uh oh.

"Have you eaten lunch yet?" I ask him as he fills up a glass with water that sloshes up and down the sides due to his shaky grip.

"It's fine, I will soon," he says with a flippant tone. "Just gotta get through this lunch rush and then I'll order a sandwich or something from the kitchen."

I can tell his blood sugar level is plummeting dangerously low. "Absolutely not. Jasper, you need to get something in your stomach right now or you're gonna faint. You don't look good."

"Gee, thanks," he says in a derisive tone. "I appreciate your concern, Lex. But I'm okay. Besides, my one table is way too demanding to care that their appetizer is getting cold because their diabetic server needed food."

"Jasper—" I start to argue, but he's already picking up his drink tray and walking breezily towards his table. Idiot.

Moments like this remind me of the importance of Champ, and why Jasper's mom insists that he takes her with him nearly everywhere he goes. He likes to think he can beat his diabetes and control his body's reactions to various glucose levels. But he can't.

I tune momentarily back into my own life, particularly my rising levels of anxiety. For some reason, this morning I woke up in a cold panic that Jasper decided to stop being friends with me due to the revelation of my past that I gave him two days ago. He and Aunt Colleen have been drilling into my head that what happened wasn't my fault, but I still feel like I could've done more to stop it.

It's weird how one moment, I can almost be at peace with it, and the next, I'm a bundle of anxiety wondering why anyone would ever care enough about me to remain being my friend. But I guess that's all part of the rollercoaster that is healing.

My fingers twitch over my server's notepad, itching to sit in solitude and process everything lying dormant in my mind through the words that flow out. It's odd how easy journaling everything has been; almost like a crank someone keeps turning that releases paragraphs of suppressed emotions.

Eventually, I have to rip myself from the asylum of my thoughts to go see if my table has decided on what they want to eat yet.

It's a simple act, really. A mindless one. I ask my table what they want, they give me their order, I jot it down, I return to the back to punch it in the computer system to send to the kitchen to make.

The mindlessness of it is making me go crazy.

After I take my table's order and refill water glasses at another table, I slink back to the kitchen to ask one of the cooks to whip something up for Jasper. Ozzie, my favorite cook of the bunch, agrees to make him a grilled cheese sandwich, and I thank him.