“Um, like, where the hell are you?” I look at my watch, and it’s after six. No wonder my stomach is growling. “Sawyer and I took the bus to U of C.”
“Mom and Dad are freaking out. They keep calling me and Rowan and we’re trying to run the stinking truck. It’s a nightmare. We could actually use your help . . . if you hadn’t quit, you know.”
I shrug. “Maybe if they buy me a new cell phone they could get ahold of me. You may want to mention that.”
“I’m going to tell them that you called me from . . . shit. What do you want me to tell them?”
I look up at Rockefeller Chapel and see a door open, inviting in the spring air. I step inside and see a group of adults wearing choir robes, rehearsing. “Tell them I took a really long walk, looking desperately for a pay phone.”
“Whatever. Did you figure anything out?”
I glance at Sawyer, who is sitting on the chapel steps with his head in his hands. “No.” I pause, and then I say, “Tell Mom I’m coming to help you. We’re only about twenty minutes away.”
I hear Rowan utter a muffled swear word in the background. Trey sighs. “Thanks, Jules.”
We hang up and I go back outside and hold my hand out to Sawyer. “Hey,” I say with fake enthusiasm. “Wanna go run the giant truck o’ balls with team Demarco?”
He looks up at me, and despite the situation, a slow grin spreads across his face. “That actually sounds awesome,” he says.
Thirty-Three
Trey’s eyes light up when he sees us. “Thank the gods,” he breathes. “Did you see the line?”
“How could we miss it?”
Rowan’s hair is stuck to her forehead with sweat. She grabs a towel and wipes her face, then throws the towel into the dirty bin. “Blown away,” she says. “I do not understand why you guys enjoy this truck so much.”
I give Sawyer a hasty tour, show him how we do our orders, and set him up filling bread bowls with meatballs and sauce so we can catch up on the backlog. I make him taste everything. “This is excellent,” he says, his mouth full.
“Don’t be stealing our recipe now,” Trey says as he hands an order through the window to a customer.
Sawyer laughs, but he shoots me an anxious look that says, Does he know about our parents?
I shake my head and start grating fresh mozzarella like it’s going out of style. “No wonder you’re blown away. You’ve got no mise en place. You’re out of everything.”
Trey gives me a scornful look. “Oh, we had everything prepped, I assure you. Again, I refer your gaze to the line out front and ask you to kindly note that it’s been like this for four hours.”
“Point taken. We’ll set you back up. Right, Angotti?”
“Yes, boss,” Sawyer says.
I look around and it feels a bit too crowded in here. “Ro, you want to go outside and take orders and hand ’em through to Trey? That way you can go down the line a bit and we can get things moving faster.”
“Good call,” Trey mutters.
“Gladly,” Rowan says. “It’s fucking hot in here.”
I look at her as she leaves. “When did she start cussing?”
“Mmm. Yeah. That would be today,” Trey says.
Sawyer laughs. He works really fast, and once he’s caught up with the bread bowl orders, he looks for other things to do. “How can I help?”
I grab bunches of fresh spinach from the cooler and shove them at him. “Rinse, spin, steam two minutes, and rough chop. Got it? Then garlic and onions over in that cooler—you okay chopping onions?”
“Pfft. Of course,” he says, like I just insulted him. And I freaking love that he knows everything I’m talking about. I remember my dreams of leaving love notes made of green peppers for him on the cutting board and laugh under my breath.
Once I have the cheese tub filled, I chop tomatoes, and then the orders start getting filled again and the line begins moving.
“Okay,” Trey says when we have a good rhythm going. “Catch me up. Are we still looking at Monday or Tuesday for the thing?”
“Don’t know,” I say. “For a while we were actually thinking tomorrow night, but now we’re not sure. Still, Sawyer’s visions are so bad he can’t drive, and he’s seeing them everywhere.”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Yeah.”
“Great.”
“At least if it is tomorrow, it’ll be over soon,” Sawyer says, moving to get onions. He looks in the caddy to see how we dice them and starts in. His knife skills are pretty great, and I’m freaking in love all over again.
“So what’s the plan?” Trey asks. “Do we have one?”
“Um . . .” I say, and I feel really helpless, because we don’t have a plan at all, despite my promise to Sawyer that we’d have one by now.
“I think what we need to do is forget about the classroom,” Sawyer says decisively. “And focus on the sidewalk and the shooter guy—girl—walking there. If we stop her, the rest of the plan doesn’t come together for them. If she doesn’t show up, I bet the other one—or two—abandon the plan.”
Trey gets backed up, so Rowan pops in to help with a stack of new orders. “You guys better not die while I’m gone,” she says. “I mean it.”
“Shit,” I say, remembering. “I’ve got to get you to the airport.”