Chapter 10
Emerson
So, I’d been thinking a lot about hash browns.
Specifically, Sam’s Diner hash browns—crispy, golden, with just the right amount of cheese and a side of hot sauce.
If there’s one thing in Everston that had never let me down, it was them.
And trust me, I’d had my fair share of hash browns: I was qualified at this point. Nothing compared to Sam’s.
This, I told myself, was the reason I agreed to meet Coach Tillman at the diner this afternoon. Not because I was ready to face her. Definitely not because I wanted to talk about my future. Just because I wanted hash browns.
The bell rang as I entered Sam’s, and the smell of coffee and dough hit me in all the right places.
“Emmy!” Mrs. Wilks said as she noticed me. “The usual, hon?”
“Yes, please,” I replied. “Any free booths, Mrs. W?”
She laughed, and looked around at the mostly empty diner. “We’re pretty full today, but I’ll make special room for you.”
I grinned, sliding into my favorite booth, the one with coffee rings etched into the surface of the table.
Mrs. Wilks brought a pot of coffee over. “You doing okay, sweetheart? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I’ve just been busy,” I replied, which was sort of true considering I’d picked up loads of extra shifts at Adventure Rudy’s. Between work, meetings, and hanging out with Winnie, I really hadn’t even had time to drop by Sam’s.
Mrs. Wilks’s eyes lingered on me a moment, and I could almost read her mind.
I knew she wanted to ask me about treatment, about doctors’ follow-ups, about whether they thought my scars would heal over.
But she didn’t ask me whatever she wanted to know; she just said, “How about I give you some extra hot sauce?”
“You’re the best,” I replied.
I watched as Mrs. Wilks disappeared around the counter and into the kitchen, calling to her husband for a serving of hash browns.
I basically lived at Sam’s my entire senior year.
Brady and I would hang out there after nearly every football game.
There was a crash from inside the kitchen as Sam cursed.
I felt my body lock up at the sound of glass shattering.
Mrs. Wilks rushed from the kitchen and fetched a long-handled broom.
“Always dropping things,” she mumbled and disappeared to clean up the mess.
My mind flashed back to those early days at Adventure Rudy’s.
I was restocking carabiners when something heavy hit the floor behind me.
A metal shelving unit had tipped, sending a row of water bottles clattering to the ground.
I froze. The impact jolted through my body, the crash triggering something deep and instinctual.
My heart pounded. The noise dragged me back to the accident; the sickening crunch of metal, the sound of my own breath catching as my world turned upside down.
“Emerson?”
Jarrod, the manager, stood near the back, watching me with concern.
“You good?” he asked.
I swallowed, forcing myself to move. “Yeah,” I replied. “Just spaced out for a second.”
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“No more than I already have,” I said dryly, holding up my arm to show where I was still wearing pressure garments.
He blushed slightly, and I sort of felt bad for being a brat.
“How about you just mind the store?” he said brightly. “If you need any help, just call out to me.”
“Sure thing,” I responded.
By the time I rang up the twentieth customer of the day, my arm and neck were hurting.
I was sweating, and those beads of sweat over my burns?
Well, not a feeling I recommend. The bell above the front door rang again, and I braced myself.
This customer was elderly, and I really did not think she should be considering skiing or hiking or anything outdoorsy… like, at all.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi, how can I help you?” I replied.
She placed a tote bag on the front counter; it had a hummingbird embroidered on the side. She removed a shoe box and opened its contents.
“I’d like to return these,” she said. “I purchased them for my husband.”
The woman had panache. She was dressed in a striped maxi skirt, with a well-worn vintage leather jacket.
Around her neck she wore layers of mismatched beaded necklaces in various bright colors, and she peered at me through oversized round glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.
She fumbled in her pockets and handed me a receipt.
Her weathered hands were adorned in an assortment of rings that I would absolutely wear myself, and on her wrist she had a tiny tattoo of a hummingbird, which matched her tote bag.
“They didn’t fit?” I asked, looking over the receipt.
“Oh, they fit,” she replied.
I was confused.
“So why are you returning them?”
“Because my husband left me, and he has no intention of coming back, so I don’t think he will be needing his boots, and I could use the refunded money to get myself one of those yummy-looking cinnamon rolls from Lou’s Bakery next door.”
I didn’t even know what to say, but the words, “What an asshole,” came out of my mouth before I could control myself.
The woman chuckled.
“He was an asshole,” she said. “He never appreciated me, always made everything about him. Nearly fifty years I wasted with that man, yet I’m the one having to deal with the mess of it all.”
“Those cinnamon rolls from Lou’s can probably help you with all that grief,” I said, and I rung up the refund on the computer.
Her eyes twinkled. “They’re that good, are they?”
“They’re very good,” I said. “I pretty much lived on them in my recovery.”
Why had I just blurted that out to a random customer? I didn’t know why I felt immediately at ease with this lady. But her eyes didn’t move to my scars, they didn’t linger on my pressure garment, or fill with pity in the same way everyone else’s did.
“Well then, I’ll be getting a few to take home as well.”
“I won’t be long,” I said. “I’m new and I just have to figure out how to put the refund through.”
“Could have fooled me, pet,” she said. “Don’t rush yourself.”
As I was entering the item number into the system, the bell signaled another customer.
He walked in wearing a football jersey from my old high school.
He could have been Brady, with the same tousled chestnut hair, broad shoulders, and almond eyes.
I overheard him asking Jarrod if we stocked cleats.
My stomach sank. There was nothing in this world that could prepare you for how to live with life-altering change.
Nothing. My mom had told me that everything was going to be okay, that I would regain use of my fingers again, that I would grow into my new skin and learn to feel beautiful in it, and learn to filter out the staring and the comments.
But she didn’t know that I often heard her crying at night, and hearing Mom cry brought me a new type of pain.
So much of me didn’t want to live with this new skin.
It was as though I now shared a body with sadness, and I infected anyone and everything that came into contact with me.
“Never liked football,” the woman quipped, and I’d almost forgotten she was standing there.
I laughed. “It’s totally overrated,” I said. “I prefer gymnastics…or at least, I did. Just waiting to see if my doctors will ever let me do it again.”
She scoffed. “What do they know?” and her eyes shone. “You can do anything, so long as you put in the work, and reward yourself with something sweet.”
I smiled. “I’ll take that advice,” I replied.
This woman had fixed my whole day, and I probably was never going to see her again. I handed her another receipt and her refund in cash, moving the shoebox underneath the counter.
“All set,” I said.
“Thanks for all your help.” She smiled. “You take care now.”
Turned out, I did see that woman again, because it was Winnie.
Mrs. Wilks placed my hash browns in front of me: a double serving, with extra hot sauce. The sound of the plate clinking in front of me brought me out of my daydream. I smiled at her, suddenly realizing how hungry I was.
Do you ever wonder if you’ve met someone in another life?
Or whether life is all predestined: the stars align and you are set on the path that was already written for you…
those kinds of things? The series of events that led me to working at Adventure Rudy’s, meeting Winnie, and then somehow seeing her again at one of Henry’s meetings, seemed so unlikely, and yet, all in all, it saved my life.
Was it fate? Destiny? Chance or luck? Or maybe a combination of all those things?
What was it going to take to get me to drive again, or to get me to love gymnastics again?
My coach suddenly sat down in front of me, talking at a million miles an hour—apologizing for being late, explaining that her four- and six-year-olds had gotten into the pantry and smeared peanut butter all over the countertops, and that her teenager was allergic to peanuts.
“Nightmare,” she concluded.
“It’s all good, Andi,” I replied. “Mrs. Wilks served me my hash browns as soon as I walked in the door.”
Andi smiled. “Yes, I do remember you, Brady, and the gang coming in here quite often.”
I tried not to let my face fall at the mention of him.
Andi waved at the waitress and quickly ordered a coffee and a muffin.
“How are you?” she asked.
It’s like, the most common question to ask someone, and yet half the time people either don’t give an honest answer, or the questioner doesn’t want to hear an honest answer.
“I’m better, sort of,” I replied.
“Sort of?” she asked.
“Well, I mean, I’m functioning,” I replied. “But I still can’t drive, and I haven’t thought much more about UCLA.”
Andi smiled as the waitress placed her coffee and muffin in front of her. She added sugar and stirred for a moment.
“It’s been tough on you Emmy, I know, but one way or another we are going to have to let UCLA know about that scholarship.”
“I know,” I said, sinking into the chair.
“What does your mom say?”