Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (11 page)

 9 

A
small sign on the building in front of us read,
FREE
FAMILY CAFÉ, P
LEASE USE FRONT ENTR
ANCE
.

“I'll get Devin to help us unload,” V said as she got out of the truck. “I'm not technically on the schedule today, but I might have to do a few things before we can go back to the house.”

I automatically put on my work gloves, which I had stuffed in my coat pocket.

“Love that farm girl attitude,” said V, closing the driver's side door and going into the café.

I walked around to the refrigerated section, grabbed the first box of egg cartons, and waited for V at the door. She returned, followed by a tall skinny boy with black hair and a T-shirt that said
SUB POP
. He was younger than V, maybe twenty-three.

“Bird of the stars.” He bowed to me. “The walk-in is on the right.”

“We call Devin ‘Skinny Cook,'” said V. He grabbed at her like he was about to tickle her side, but she lurched away.

Following Devin's directions, I carried my box of eggs through the back door and took a right down a hallway and into a substantial walk-in cooler. It was the size of a large bathroom and had wire shelving along each wall. We had some industrial refrigerators on the Farm, but nothing like this. I passed Devin and V in the hall as I got a second load and met them again in the walk-in.

“She's been here four minutes and she's already outworking me,” said Devin, reaching over to squeeze one of my biceps. “Check out these pythons.”

“I know,” said V. “The Farm girls are workers. Maybe she can pull us out of our downward spiral.”

“Save us, Starbird, we're drowning.” Devin pantomimed a desperate swimmer.

“Venus, I need to talk to you about the schedule,” a girl's voice broke in.

“What a surprise,” mumbled V, continuing to unload.

“I'm not working the double tomorrow, and I don't care who's sick, either. That would be twelve days straight.
Twelve
.” An attractive, dark-haired girl had entered the cooler. She looked remarkably like Venus.

“Good news, Felicia,” said V. “Starbird is our newest waitress.”

The dark-haired girl turned toward me and then looked me up and down, folding her arms over her chest.

I put my hands together in prayer position over my heart and bowed my head to greet her.

She kept staring at me, her arms still folded. “Okay,” she said to V, “I'll take the afternoon shift tomorrow. I'm sleeping in.”

“Human resources meetings outside the refrigerator,” said Devin, pushing Felicia and V out of the walk-in. “Also, there's only enough eggs here to keep us going until around two o'clock Saturday, unless you've got some hens riding shotgun.”

“We're doing a polenta special this weekend,” said V. “Everything that traditionally involves eggs is now made with cornmeal.” She signaled for me to follow her down the hall to an office opposite a swinging door. The space was tiny, with barely enough room for an overloaded desk, a row of hooks holding coats and aprons, and the two of us to fit inside. I stood in the doorway while she grabbed a clipboard from the wall.

“Do they both live at Beacon House?” I asked.

“No.” V looked down at the clipboard. “Felicia isn't Family. Devin used to be, but his mom moved out of Beacon House when EARTH left and they took their Outside names back. His brother, Paul, works here, too.” She was talking to me, but she was concentrating on reading the papers in her hand. “Okay, here's the schedule. So, in a perfect world, each of us would work five days and get two days off.”

“Only five days?”

“Oh right.” V laughed. “There's no such thing as a weekend on the Farm. Don't worry, between school and work, you will feel like you're working eight days a week. Ideally, we each work five shifts, but I guess the world hasn't been perfect in forever, because we never seem to get there.” She looked down at a chart on her clipboard. “We're closed Mondays and we have two shifts a day. Weekdays we have one waitress on, weekday evenings we have two. Saturday and Sunday breakfast is hustle time, so we need three members of waitstaff working full tilt, and weekend nights we fall back to two. With three waitresses, you can imagine how crazy that's been.”

“Yeah, you've each been working seven and a third shifts,” I said.

V looked up from the clipboard. “What?”

“Well, I guess you don't divide shifts into thirds, but you would each work seven or eight shifts,” I said. I could feel the red blotches start on my chest because I felt stupid for saying someone would work a third of a shift.

“Did you just do that math in your head?”

I shrugged.

“Are you messing with me?”

“I just added the three weekday shifts a day to the five-per-day weekend shifts, and then divided those twenty-two by three. Someone must have to work both shifts on Saturday and Sunday, because there are five shifts that day.”

V studied me. “We have four cooks,” she said, resting the clipboard against her thigh. “There are always two cooks on a shift, except for weekend mornings when there are three.”

“So they work six and a half shifts. But they probably don't do half shifts either.”

V tapped her pencil against the clipboard. “All right then. Well, for now, I'm going to add you to tomorrow's Saturday morning shift and our Sunday morning shift. I won't lie, it's going to be insane having your first shift on a Saturday breakfast. But I'll help as much as I can. On Monday I'll take you to get enrolled in school.”

“So soon?” The blotches spread from my chest to my neck.

“School started last week for Cham. Sorry, but the time is now. Okay, let's go home and find you something to wear that says ‘waitress' instead of screaming ‘farmhand.'”

 
 

On the three-minute drive from the café to Beacon House, we passed fifty homes that were the size of our farmhouse, all sitting right next to one another. There were trees growing in tiny ribbons of grass between the road and the sidewalk. There were stoplights and wires running over our heads in a complicated spiderweb of black lines. It made me feel nervous, like I was allowing myself to be coaxed into a cage.
This is how Outsiders live
, I reminded myself.
They aren't like us. They don't love the natural world
.

V pulled up to a curb and backed the truck into a space between two cars. “Welcome to your home at home, Beacon House.”

We were sitting on a narrow street lined with houses, mostly made of brick. But it wasn't hard to tell which one we belonged with. Beacon House was a collage of peeling purple paint, orange trim, and a mural of a cloud with sleepy eyes blowing wind in the eaves below the roof. I opened the passenger side door, grabbed my sack of clothes, took a deep breath, and followed V up a steep set of stairs toward a green door, rounded on the top.

“Where are the vegetables?” I was looking at all the gardens in front of the houses on the street. “These are all flower beds.”

“Yeah, the next few days are going to be full of culture shock for you.” And with that, she opened the door to a living room just as music started blaring out of a speaker inside the door.

“Are you kidding me?” V yelled, crossing the threshold and going straight for the volume knob. “You should be so sick that you can't move, not so sick you're rocking out!” She turned down the music, then grabbed a pillow and threw it at the boy holding the remote control.

“I was trying to turn it down.” He protected his head from the pillow with his arm. “I
am
sick, but I can't just sleep for twenty-four hours straight.”

“Starbird,” V sighed, “this is your new little brother, Cham.”

“How old are you?” the boy demanded, putting the pillow under his head.

“Sixteen,” I said.

“Right. So,
big
brother.” The boy smirked at V.

“We'll see,” V said back.

I recognized Cham from his occasional pickups at the Farm and from Family gatherings. He had a head full of curly black hair that was hard to forget.

“Where's Ephraim?” V asked him.

Cham pointed toward the ceiling and settled back into the brown corduroy couch, pulling an afghan up to his chin.

“Way to take care of others,” V said.

“I checked on him an hour ago.” A woman walked into the living room with a small child resting on her hip. “He just needs soup and sleep. I'm Europa.” She put her free hand in front of her heart and nodded toward me. She was older than V, maybe in her thirties, with tired bags under her eyes. Her blonde dreadlocks were tied in a tall knot on her head, and she had enough jewelry on her neck and fingers to fill a silverware drawer.

I put my hands together in front of my heart and bowed my head to her.

“This is Eris.” She wiggled the child's foot. “He's two, and my daughter, Kale, is five. She's at Outside school right now, if you can call it that. I shudder to think what she might be
learning
.”