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In hindsight, she really should have seen this coming.
“Guys,” Erin hisses. “You can’t be here.”
Mac has the audacity to look bewildered. It is, Erin knows after four years of friendship, an act—a bare hop of improvement on the faux-innocent puppy eyes that have never sat quite right over Mac’s sharp smirk. If she didn’t know any better, she might think Mac is genuinely shocked to find Erin displeased.
If she didn’t know. Which she very much does. Which is why:
“Seriously.” She resists the impulse to flap her hands through the tiny window, her black uniform cap slipping off-kilter in her distress. “You gotta get out of here.”
“Why?” Mac’s eyes are huge, imploring. Her grin is wicked. She’s leaning forward, resting her elbows on the track, preventing Erin slamming the window shut on her. “We’re supporting you. That’s what friends do, New Girl. They’re supportive.”
“Mac,” KJ snaps, “quit wiggling around, I’m gonna dump your ass.”
“In a McDonald’s drive-thru?” Mac twists at the waist, pinning her girlfriend with those same not-quite-innocent eyes. “That’s harsh, Kaje.”
“Dump you on your face, dipshit,” KJ corrects affably. “I can’t keep balance forever.”
“Then why don’t you drop your kickstand?” Mac challenges.
“And hold up the line?”
“Guys.” Erin’s face is on fire. “Get out of here.”
She should have known, really. When she told them she was finally doing it—finally quitting the paper route for something more adult, more impressive on college applications—they’d all been just a little too normal about it. Mac had asked if she could score them free food. KJ had lamented the loss of Friday night movie dates. Tiff nodded like she’d been expecting the news for a year.
None of them argued. None of them pointed out the obvious: that Erin was, in her own quiet way, driving a small spike through their foursome. They’d kept the route, kept a certain particular brand of us against the world, since they were twelve years old. Every once in a while, one of them would ponder the pros and cons of quitting—but it never felt real. It was merely what you did when things began to grate, when getting up at the asscrack of dawn to bike the bitter morning truly sucked. It was the natural response to grown men whistling through car windows, to racist assholes trying to cheat them out of fare, to fingers gone blue in the February cold.
None of them really thought they’d ever actually quit. Not until college, anyway, which is coming up faster than they’re willing to discuss.
And then Erin did it. Cut the cord. She needs this job, needs something with more hours and better wages, if she’s ever going to actually pay for that college career. Which they all understand, she knows rationally. Understand, and even respect.
Doesn’t mean they won’t give her shit about it, though.
“Fine,” Mac sniffs now. She’s precarious as hell, seated on the handlebars of KJ’s bike. Going on sixteen, Mac’s all limbs, stretching off in every direction. Her hands, always deft enough to snake a pack of cigarettes or a candy bar without notice, fumble in her jacket and come up with a gleaming pile of coins. “Don’t take our money.”
“I can’t,” Erin tells her witheringly, glancing over her shoulder. No sign of her manager, not yet, but at any minute the man might notice the chaos of his drive-thru lane. Specifically the sixteen-year-old girl holding her bike in limbo, a second trying to shove a grubby handful of quarters toward Erin. Erin doesn’t want to imagine what he’ll say.
“It’s good money,” KJ points out. “More than enough for a cheeseburger combo.”
“And a large Coke,” Mac adds.
“Ooh, and one of those apple pies—”
“I can’t,” Erin grits out. “You aren’t in a vehicle.”
She hates them. She really does. It’s the kind of hate that pulls her lips into a hysterical smile against her better judgement, the kind that sings warm under her skin. The kind of hate that is actually love of the brightest variety, as you only feel at sixteen with best friends needling at you your first week on the job. She hates them, and almost bursts out laughing when KJ says primly, “Now that just feels classist, doesn’t it, Mac?”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Mac adds sagely, nodding so hard she almost upends herself onto the blacktop. “I expect better of you, New Girl.”
“Really.” KJ’s face is trembling with the effort of holding her Polite Debutant Smile, the one she wears only in the presence of her mother. Behind it, the real KJ shines, all dark humor and delight. “It’s unkind to insult a person’s mode of transportation.”
“You need to be in a car,” Erin says, chomping down on her laughter. If she so much as giggles, it’s all over. If she so much as cracks, this will turn into the first of many late-night illegal drive-thru ventures.
“Says who?” Mac asks, sounding almost interested.
“It’s in the handbook.”
“Uh huh,” KJ adds. “And who wrote that?”
“Bet it was Ronald,” Mac says, her shoulders beginning to tremble with suppressed laughter.
“Oh, not Ronald. He’s so out of touch.”
“Hasn’t been among the people in ages. Fuckin’ forever. Can we even trust his opinions anymore?”
“Makes a mean milkshake, though. Hey Erin, how much for a milkshake?”
Erin snorts. God, she regrets pushing them together sometimes. It was maddening, watching them circle each other like two wary strays, but together, they form a truly unstoppable beast. Like Voltron, if Voltron had a penchant for stacking harassment until any self-respecting opponent caved in.
“Get out of my drive-thru,” she says with as much dignity as she can muster. “Or I won’t bring you the fries left over at the end of my shift.”
Mac throws a hand over her heart in mock horror. Several coins spill from between her fingers, rolling into the pavement cracks. KJ pedals forward and back, the bike wiggling perilously to the left like it might finally go over.
“Oh my god,” a new voice bursts like a cannon blast. “Will you two get in the damn car already?”
Erin pokes her head out the window, almost headbutting Mac in the face. Tiffany is hanging out the window of her grandmother’s ’86 Corolla, her eyes blazing.
“I told them,” she calls to Erin, “this was a terrible idea. Let the record show. They never fuckin’ listen.”
“How dare you.” Mac is having a great time with this put-upon persona. “I’ll have you know I’m a fucking fantastic listener!”
“It’s true—” KJ can no longer choke down her mirth. The bike tips and she slams a sneaker down at last, barely preventing bloodshed. “When I suggested McDonald’s for dinner, she listened right away.”
“Which, I think we can all agree—progress for me.”
Tiff rolls her eyes. “Fuck’s sake, you guys. I want my goddamn Nuggets. Will you just get in the car?”
“Depends,” Mac calls back. “You buyin’?”
Tiff grumbles something, flipping the bird. Mac flips a double back, the rest of her coins lost to the night in the process. She shunts forward off the handlebars, Doc Martens slamming the ground, and KJ pedals back toward the idling grandma-mobile. Behind Tiff, someone punches their horn twice, two long blats of irritation beneath the harmony of their laughter.
Erin’s still giggling when they pull to the window, Mac in the passenger seat, KJ squashed under her bike in the back. Tiff balances an elbow on her door, her smile radiant enough to make Erin want to clamber through the small gap and into the car.
“Sorry about the children,” Tiff says gravely. “I fed them after midnight again.”
“Rookie mistake,” Mac chimes in. KJ’s chin rests on her shoulder, her cheeks apple-bright. “You forgot to lock the door, too.”
“This is what happens without you, Erin,” KJ adds. “Chaos.”
Her heart tugs. She’d worried, a little, at the back of her mind, about quitting the route. Worried that those paper bags and early mornings were the one thing holding the four of them together, like frayed twine around the muddle of their disjointed lives. Four different schools. Four different families. The route was all they’d had, and she was severing the connection by choice.
But looking at them now, huddled in her drive-thru wearing shit-eating grins, she can’t imagine losing them. They’ll be here, the four of them: prodding Erin at this fast-food gig, and Mac at the library, turning up to throw pebbles at KJ on lifeguard duty and beg bandages off Tiff’s internship at her mom’s hospital. They’ll turn up, no matter where each of them goes. Holding up the line, the hour, the whole world in the name of their friendship.
“When do you get off?” Tiff asks as she passes the bag over (with a free Happy Meal toy, because Mac’s never had one before, and they’ve got a little Bugs Bunny Erin knows she’ll love).
“Ten,” Erin says. Tiff pops a fry into her mouth.
“See you at Kaje’s after? We’re doing a Back to the Future marathon.”
“With booze,” Mac says. KJ punches her shoulder.
“No booze. My mom would freak.”
“So? She’d freak if she saw what we do at my house, too—”
“—which is why she’ll never know your house exists—”
“I’ll be there,” Erin says before they can really rev up to an argument about Nora Brandman and the finer points of either her daughter’s makeout partner or newfound appreciation for shooting off illegal fireworks in a residential neighborhood. “Now. Get out of my drive-thru, before you get me fired.”
Tiff blows her a kiss. Mac draws out the Bugs toy and holds it triumphantly over KJ’s head. Erin watches them speed away, shaking her head, laughter spilling out over her next, “Welcome to McDonald’s, may I interest you in a Big Mac combo?”
They’re idiots, it’s true, but they’re her idiots—and they’re not going anywhere.
She should have seen that coming, too.