Free Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler

room. Earl gives me an encouraging double thumbs-up as we pass, and I relax, just a little.
    “The good news is there aren’t any games tonight,” Danisays. “Sports equals booze, and that’s bad news, especially if the home teams lose. Remember that.”
    “Booze, lose, bad news. What else?”
    “Watch and learn, Hurley Girl.”
    After my near drowning in the kitchen, I put the sarcasm on simmer as she delivers the water to that ten-top. We listen in as Marianne expertly takes their orders, Dani schooling me in the background on side dish substitutions, specials, and upselling with appetizers and desserts. She shows me how to prep the salads and mix Coke and Sprite to make fake ginger ale that satisfies all but the most discerning customers. Marianne walks me through sidework and plate presentation and coupons, and then we revisit the tray thing, practicing until I can finally carry it without causing another tidal wave. The dinner rush slows, and after helping me with a particularly rowdy table—the regular Sunday night gathering of the Watonka Sassy Seniors Knitting Club—Dani and Marianne unleash me on my first solo table.
    “I’ve got a date with a plate of corned beef hash,” Dani says. “Scream if you need anything.” She vanishes into the kitchen, and I approach the booth, pen poised against the order pad.
    The woman doesn’t look up from the menu when she requests a Cobb salad and unsweetened tea, but the girls do, sitting across from her and snickering like everything is just the funniest joke ever . They’re both in blue-and-silver Watonka Middle School hoodies, sitting so close together that I can’t tell where one’s arm ends and the other’s begins.
    “Two Cokes, please,” one of them says. The other girl giggles, and I almost do, too. But then they order the tuna melt platter to share, and I swallow hard through the tightness in my throat, desperate to shutter the rush of memories.
    Kara Shipley. Me. Our skate bags stacked across from us as our moms chatted over coffee at the counter. This was our booth. The tuna melt was our order.
    I run my thumb over the table’s broken corner, remembering one of our last meals together. A lifetime ago. It was a celebratory tuna melt—Dad had registered me for regionals, and we’d just heard that we’d be competing at the Empire Games with some of our fellow Bisonettes.
    “I think I’m in love with Will Harper,” Kara confessed that night, picking at the chipped corner. “As soon as we start high school, I’m totally asking him out.”
    I smiled and clinked my loganberry glass to hers, wishing her luck. She threw a French fry at me and I caught it in my mouth, and though we’d both already landed our double axels, we cheered and clapped like catching that fry was the most incredible stunt anyone had ever performed.
    “How could you do it?” Kara demanded the morning after the Empire event, after the dust had settled and she’d called to talk. She knew I’d screwed up on purpose—we were practically sisters, and there was no other explanation. “If you didn’t want to compete, you could’ve let someone else have the chance.”
    I wanted to explain, but the words weren’t there. Maybe Mom had swept them into the dresser drawer with the proofthat my father was having an affair. Maybe they were already packed away in his suitcase, saving him a seat on the plane that would take him out west. Maybe the words to explain why I’d thrown away the one thing I’d loved and worked so hard for just didn’t exist.
    Her breath was heavy through the phone and I meant to tell her how sorry I was, but even those words got jumbled inside, knotting up in my throat on the way out. I couldn’t even give her a simple apology, and after a long, uncomfortable silence, she finally hung up.
    Weeks blurred into months, and then it was the end of summer, our last weekend before high school. For the first time in history, I wasn’t busy with preseason skate