Chapter 22
LACHLAN
Humming under my breath, I peek over the tall stainless steel deli case the following morning.
Manny’s hands fly as he makes my “Original on a French roll with extra salami, hold the onions” with the ease that comes from decades preparing delicious meals for his faithful customers.
Mom used to come here when she was in high school.
I love Emmanuel’s Deli. It’s a classic hole-in-the-wall, with old-school wood-pattern laminate booths like they have in the good kind of bad doughnut shops.
A huge flat-screen television blares channel five news, and a few older men are drinking coffee and eating toasted bagels with cream cheese in the seating area.
You step inside, and it smells like fresh bread and Manny’s special vinegar that he sprinkles on the sandwiches. It smells safe.
It smells like a place where I don’t have to make a decision about the musical. I didn’t come to any magic conclusions overnight.
I check my phone: 8:09 a.m. Emmanuel’s Deli is about a five-minute drive from campus, and school starts at eight thirty. Plenty of time. I open Countdown. 195 days. Better than 196, but it still sucks.
I can barely wait until lunch, when I’ll get to hang with my friends and eat this artistic piece of deliciousness Manny’s creating.
I can’t wait to get to school, period. Last night, my sister was in rare form. It was probably loud enough that the neighbors could hear. I can’t even imagine how much the Hammonds know about us.
How much Isak knows. My toes curl up, and I grit my teeth. I wish my family would keep it down for their own good.
Yeah, no. Not thinking about home. I clear my throat. Say something. Anything. “I’ve been searching my whole life for someone sandwich-worthy,” I blurt, bouncing on my toes.
Manny looks up from layering meats and provolone, his bushy eyebrows drawing together as he studies me.
He’s about a head shorter than me and stocky, with graying hair under a Dodgers baseball cap and wrinkled, mellow-brown skin.
Plastic gloves cover his hands, and his white apron is pristine. “Sandwich-worthy?”
“You know what I mean.” I wink at him. “Someone special. Someone I’d bring a sandwich to without them asking. Like you! You deserve a sandwich.”
Manny douses my sandwich with oil and red vinegar from clear squeeze bottles and chuckles. “If you’ve been searching, does that mean you found a girlfriend, finally?” He adds salt and pepper with a flourish. This is a man who is most definitely well-versed in the sandwich arts.
“No, but maybe it’s like that movie with the baseball diamond in the cornfield.” I wave my hand. “I forget the name. ‘If you build it, they will come.’”
“Field of Dreams,” one of the old men calls out.
“That’s right.” I smile at Manny. “You know it?”
“Yeah, but you got the line wrong, It’s ‘If you build it, he will come.’ That’s one of those lines everyone gets wrong, like how in Snow White, she actually says ‘Magic mirror on the wall,’ not ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall.’” Manny places the sandwich on a square of white butcher paper, expertly rolls it up and slices it in half, then wraps it in an additional piece of paper and affixes a piece of white tape to my bundle of joy.
“Aren’t you full of trivia?” I say.
“So, yeah, if you build it, she will come,” Manny says.
My stomach feels a little queasy. “Okay, go ahead and make another one. Please.” I get an idea: Maybe I can ask Francesca to prom with a sandwich. I can find out if she likes Emmanuel’s Deli.
Of course she likes it. Everyone does.
Manny sets my sandwich on the deli case in front of me and gets to work on another. “I’ll make your second sandwich on the house, kid. Your uncle did me a good turn last week. Code compliance was getting on my case, but he got them to back down.”
Well, damn. Now I’m weighing a free sandwich versus gossip of any kind getting back to Uncle Norman. I’d prefer he know as little as possible about what I do with my days.
Manny must see the calculations going on inside my brain, because he says, “Take the Manny’s Original and find a girl who’s sandwich-worthy.”
Or a dark-haired boy who barely talks to me.
But that will never happen. Not while I have to live at home.
“Okay.” I smile. “Thanks. Although … do I have time?” I glance at my phone. It’s 8:12. “Crap.”
“How old are you now?” Manny gives me an up nod as he pulls out another sourdough roll from a plastic bakery bag covered in condensation. Must be still warm. Yum.
“Eighteen.”
He looks at me meaningfully, and the lightbulb goes on.
“That’s right! I can excuse my own tardies. I never do that. I like school too much. But sandwiches are important, too.”
“Right you are.”
In no time flat, Manny makes me a second sandwich. He rings up one and hands me a plastic bag with both inside.
“You’re the best! Thank you!” I pay with my phone, then wave at him and everyone else as I dash out.
“Yeah, yeah. See you later, kid,” I hear him mutter at my back.
I smile the entire way to school. Lunch may be the best thing going on in my life. At least, the best thing that goes on in the open.