Asha and I head in the same direction, and we end up walking side by side through the parking lot together. Outside the weather is clear and cold. There’s snow blanketed on the grass; it’ll be there for another two months, at least. Michigan winters are like that. Last year there was a blizzard in April, bad enough to close the schools. Usually I’m eager for all the snow to melt, for spring to start and the birds to sing and the flowers to bloom, all that jazz, but today I’m glad for this miserable weather. It suits my perfectly miserable mood.
“I love winter,” Asha announces out of the blue, winding her scarf tight around her neck. “I get to wear all of the stuff I knit. I need to buy some new boots, though. My old ones fell apart.”
I let my gaze travel down to Asha’s feet; she’s wearing scuffed-up black ballet flats. Her feet must be freezing. Asha seems unperturbed by this, though.
“So I guess I’ll see you around,” she says cheerfully. “Good luck with the vow!”
She starts down the sidewalk, but I touch her arm and grab my whiteboard.
Want a ride home?
I can’t let her walk in those shoes. It’s just too pitiful.
“I have to go to work,” she says. “Over at Rosie’s. You’ve heard of it?”
I nod. Rosie’s is the little diner in the center of town, right on the strip by the lake. We don’t usually eat there—Kristen always thought of it as a magnet for the “undesirables,” which I guess is her word for anyone below her family’s tax bracket—but I pass by all the time.
I can drive you.
“Really?” She beams. “That’d be great!”
My car is my baby. It’s an old-school Volkswagen Beetle my parents gave me for my birthday two months ago. Dad took me to the used-car lot and did all the haggling; he’s big into cars, and everything I know I learned from him. By the time I was twelve, he’d taught me how to change a tire, switch out the oil, add more steering fluid, name all the engine parts. Stuff like that.