Free Sometimes It Happens by Lauren Barnholdt Page B

my stomach is still flipping all around.
    “How do I look?” I ask him, smoothing down the khaki shorts and white Cooley’s T-shirt we have to wear.
    “Like you’re going to have a great day,” he says. It’s super cheesy and he knows it, but it makes me feel better.
    “What if I screw up?” I say. “Does anyone ever get fired from Cooley’s?”
    “Hannah,” Noah says, turning off the car. “You’re going to be fine.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because you passed the two-cup test.”
    “The two-cup test?” I ask, pulling down the visor and smoothing my hair down in the mirror. I really should have gotten up earlier and put on makeup or something. How am I supposed to get good tips if I look like a mess?
    “Yeah, in your interview? When Cooley asked you to get those two sodas?”
    “That was a test?”
    “Yeah,” he says. “If you fill the two glasses at the same time, you pass. If you fill them separately, you fail. It’s like an efficiency exam.”
    “I had no idea,” I say. “Why didn’t you warn me about that?”
    Noah grins. “I had to make you earn it at least a little bit.”
    “Thanks,” I say and roll my eyes. “How nice of you to make me earn a job I didn’t want in the first place.”
    “If you didn’t know it was a test,” Noah asks, “then why did you think you were hired?”
    “I thought Cooley was just crazy.” I want to ask Noah if Cooley’s maybe a drug lord, but somehow that doesn’t seem appropriate. I swallow a big sip of coffee, take a deep breath, and then smooth my hair one more time.
    “Hannah,” Noah says, reaching out and squeezing my shoulder. “You’re going to be fine, seriously. Come on, you can hang with me for the first half hour, and I’ll show you around.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out of the car, and a second later, I follow him.
    But as soon as we get inside, Lacey pops up from behind the counter, seemingly out of nowhere, then grabs my arm and pulls me into the bathroom, leaving Noah standing by the door, holding the bag of muffins and looking confused.
    “What are you doing?” I ask. “Why are we—”
    “Shhhh!” Lacey hisses. She pushes the bathroom door shut behind us, locks it, and then leans against it and presses her arms out to the side, like she’s afraid someone might follow us in. “Did you see that girl out there?” she asks.
    “No.”
    “You didn’t?”
    “No. You didn’t give me a chance before you grabbed my arm and almost wrenched it out of its socket.” I rub my shoulder, which is all sore from her pulling on it.
    “Sorry,” she says, looking sheepish. “But there’s a girl out there, a very horrible girl.” She wrinkles up her nose. “Her name’s Danielle, and she used to be my best friend, until she had sex with my boyfriend behind my back.”
    “Ouch,” I say. At least Sebastian had the decency to hook up with some girl I didn’t know. Imagine if he’d hooked up with Ava ? That would have been a huge disaster, much more so than him hooking up with some random sophomore with toned arms. Also, I’m kind of relieved that this has nothing to do with the spot behind Lacey’s ear. I am so much better at helping with relationship drama than I am with dermatalogolical conditions.
    “I know,” she says. She studies her reflection in the mirror over the sink, which is super streaky. Someone really should clean in here. Hopefully that’s not the new person’s job. Not to sound snobby, but cleaning toilets on my summer vacation might be enough to really make me lose it. “So, anyway,”Lacey says, whirling around, “you have to wait on her.”
    “Who?”
    “Danielle!” Lacey says, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you.”
    “But I don’t know what I’m doing!” I just got here five seconds ago for God’s sake! I haven’t even had time to . . . I don’t know, whatever it is people do when they first get to work. Drink coffee, catch up on coworker gossip, ease