I move to the side and try my best to look like I belong. There’s a bulletin board on the wall covered with neon flyers. Voice lessons, dog walkers, tutors, auditions, roommate, new play, babysitter, anarchist book club—fringes of phone numbers cut at the bottom. There’s even a personal ad, handwritten and photocopied. It says: You want me. Your body knows. Heart will follow. NSWM. Agnostic. Bi. Let’s explore your wildest fantasies and silliest whims. Must be open to anything; like Depeche Mode. The picture is a naked man sitting the wrong way on a chair so the chair back covers his privates. He has chicken legs. He’s wearing a black bowler hat; his eyes are rimmed with liner and there’s a fat black tear drawn on his cheek. He’s sticking out his tongue. It’s long and pointy. One of the phone numbers is torn off. I don’t know what agnostic means, but it sounds like some kind of weird sex thing. I can’t imagine the person who not only looked at that picture and wanted to do agnostic things to this guy, but also had the courage to pull off the phone number in the middle of the coffee shop with everyone watching.

“Here about the job?”

I jump back, hoping what I was looking at isn’t obvious. A short, skinny girl with spiky black and purple hair smiles at me. She has a ring in her nose, right in the middle like a bull, and holes in her earlobes filled with what look like tiny black tire rims.

“Yeah,” I say, straightening up. “April.”

I offer her my hand, and she shakes it. Her grip is weak, palm icy and damp.

“Carly. You done this before?” Her voice sounds scratchy, like she has a bad cold.

“Um, I waited tables for like five years.” I try to look in her eyes, but it’s impossible. There’s too much else to look at. Tattooed blue wisps, like the tips of tentacles, creep from her shirt collar, reaching up the left side of her neck. “After school and stuff.”

“Any experience as a barista?”

I shake my head. I don’t even know what a barista is. “I’m quick to the uptake,” I tell her. It’s what Margo always said when she bragged about me to other people.

Carly sighs. “I was hoping for someone with experience.” Her eye shadow matches the streaks in her hair. She looks back at the line of people. She’s already done with me.

I will myself not to cry. Not to think about icy pin needle showers forever and ever.

“Thanks anyway,” I say, head down, hair falling. Hoping to get to the door before I lose it.

“Hey, wait,” Carly says. “Going home for Thanksgiving?”

“No.”